How to Work on Getting the Lower Leg Back and Quiet Hands - Faith & Glory

The PonyPros show you an exercise for helping a rider get her legs under her body as well as developing better balance in her stirrups.

The hysterical laughter you hear this video belongs to 8 year old Faith, riding her pony, Glory. Faith is working on standing in her stirrups and leaning out over her horse, like Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet leaning over the bow of the Titanic. "The Titanic" is a great exercise for getting the rider's leg back under her body so she can have her heel aligned with her hip. When the heel is aligned with the hip, the triangle the femur and tib/fib make with the knee makes the rider much more stable laterally - in other words, the rider is less likely to fall off the side.

It is hard to ride with your leg back and keep your heel down at the same time. In this athletic stance, we're more accustomed to standing on our toes a bit and leaning forward, like in tennis. The rider has to learn how to disengage the upper body from the lower body, allow the hops to absorb the shock of the lower leg, and stack her weight over her core. Not that a rider needs to know all that. Mostly she just needs to giggle herself in to balance like Faith does in this video.

By the end of this lesson, Faith is posting very well while doing exercises that require a lot of upper body movement. Normally a rider would start to lean too far back and get behind the motion when asked to write letters in the air. Because of the Titanic exercise, Faith is able to keep upright, keep posting, and stay balanced while writing whatever letter I call out at random. It was a very fun and productive day.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• seatwork
• lunge
• seat+training
• balance+training
• seat
• work
• balance
• centered+riding
• winged+victory
• titanic
• hands
• quiet+hands
• bouncy+hands
• beginner
• riding+lesson
• riding
• lesson
• horseback
• pony+pros
• ponypros
• ponypro
• pony
• pros
• Dry+Creek
• Whiskey
• Glory
• Faith
• trotting
• lungeline
• longeline
• loengeline
• equestrian

[ThePonyPros]

A saying common to all good trainers - "Train each trick in isolation." Applies to the horse, and to the human.

[Stizou777]

FUCKING DONKEYS

[hackamore]

Yes, but --- rider's heels are up. The trick is to get the legs back AND have the heels down AND be seated. How do you do all that?