 Today we're going to talk about AIDS and aiding, aiding our horse. AIDS simplified. This is something that you're going to hear people talk about but they're not always real clear on it, and I find people aren't always super clear on what that is, AIDS and aiding. We're going to see if we can make that real real easy real simple for you. One thing you have to really understand about horses it's in the little things. Less is more. Now sometimes in the beginning with horses we don't always have our horse's attention. Sometimes we're not always real significant to our horses, and there is a time and there is a place where people might get a little bit firmer with their horse to clarify an idea or to make their intention clear. But in the end less is more and that which is forced cannot be beautiful. Does that make sense? Especially with horses. If it's looking forced it's not going to look beautiful. The thing about aiding horses is this. It's all about being aware of ourselves, our horse, and our body. And if I don't have awareness of where my body parts are I'm surely not going to know where my horse's body parts are. So many people are fighting gravity first before they can actually guide their horse or give their horse feel. So I'm going to show you some positions that I see people get into with their horse, and you might consider if these are things you've seen or if these are things that you might do yourself. And in order to aid effectively we need to be centered and in the right position. One thing that I will see on a fairly regular basis is this. I see people sit sitting with their legs up here, and we call that a chair seat for a reason. Now all of you right now that are sitting in your chair stand up for a second. Get up from your chair. Your feet are in front of you. Now sit back down. Now stand up again. Now sit back down. Did you end up getting your feet underneath you a little bit more? Yeah, because when your feet are up here it's really hard to stand up, and you might see me roll my shoulders to stand up. You might see me use my elbows to help get momentum to stand up. If I have to do this I'm always behind the motion of my horse. I call that riding in a hole. I don't want to be behind my horse in a hole. I want to be on top of my horse. We need to make sure that we ride in a saddle that allows a centered position. Think straight line shoulder hip heel. Like an athletic ready position. If you're finding that you've got your feet up here and you slowly start riding back here the next thing that happens is because I'm behind the motion of my horse people start drawing their hands back. So now you're riding here. So now I drive his back down and he can't lift up and elevate underneath me. So an exercise you can do would be to take your knees off the saddle. Now I could do this at a trot. I could even do this up at a canner. I could take my thigh off the saddle lay it back down. We could do it at a trot. Lift your thigh up put it back down. You could lift one thigh up put it back down. Lift the other thigh up put it back down. But the idea is to get your femur down and back. Get your knee down and back. So my leg is under me. All of our joints in our body our ankle our knee our hip joint our elbow and our wrist should be in what we call a neutral position. So if I'm forcing my heel down look what that does to my horse's back in his head. If I force my heel down I start to sit heavy on their back. He starts to lift his head up and he looks back at me and it's like you're getting punched in the stomach or in the back and he's saying ouch don't do that. So my horse gives me feedback so when I'm moving him out if I get that leg back I'll feel him come up over his back and lift. He will feel free and have a swinging motion a easy swinging motion. For those of us that kind of ride with a chair seat check your saddle. And something to think about if I'm going to go on a long trail ride I'm going to pick a saddle accordingly so I might pick a western saddle trail saddle if I'm going to pony a horse I might pick a western saddle because I want that weight displacement I want to spread my weight out a little bit but if I'm going to ride my horse in the arena if I'm going to work on eating and some soft feel sort of exercises and be riding for less than an hour much of the time I pick a dressage saddle but I pick a saddle that allows my leg to be underneath me. If there's one thing you get out of this demonstration today and this is a game changer get a saddle that centers your leg up so you're up over your feet. When your leg goes here and you get nervous as a human we have an innate reflex to get our head over our feet so when I see people with riding chair seat with their leg forward and they get nervous you know what they do they pitch do any of you do that yeah because you're trying to get your head over your feet some exercises we could do to get started I might go palm down maybe I move my horse out a little bit roll your shoulder all of you feel free to give it a try roll your shoulder open your shoulder breathe lift your sternum lifting the sternum is so important if I drop that down look what I do my horse shuts down you see a disruption of his rhythm so I want you to work on rolling those shoulders switch sides roll those shoulders you could go hands straight up in the air like this lift up lift your sternum see when you're riding your horse and you lift your arm up and you ride you sit the trot you're starting to engage your abdomen more if you're riding along like this you're not using your abdomen that's so important the abdomen our center is so important the Germans have a term for that it's called Kreuz aids Kreuz aids means lower back seat weight it's also called the invisible aids so once I get centered up and I feel that my abdomen is engaged let me give you some tricks and tools that you can use to ride with your center ride with your Kreuz aids so here it is number one be able to squeeze the rain like water out of a sponge and I could squeeze the rain in time with his front feet right front left front right front left front see I could just squeeze as that foot's coming off right front left front I could squeeze both rains if I'm trotting and I'm doing a symmetrical gate if I wanted to get him to lift his head up as I stand up I could slightly drive with my leg slightly squeeze the rain as I come up up see so what I'm doing is I'm using both rains with the squeezing and releasing manner as I'm out of the saddle besides squeezing the rain you can use your abdomen pretend you're about to get hit in the stomach with a soccer ball it's too late to move there's a soccer ball coming it's too late to move right so you're going to get hit in the stomach uh-oh what do you do you go like this you squeeze your hands you set your elbows and you tighten up your abdomen I want everybody to try that come on pretend you're going to get the wind knocked out of you what do you do uh-oh too late to move tighten up now we're not going to hold that we're going to ask and release we could ask firmer and release but we're not going to hold that so we're going to squeeze the rain we're going to set our elbows we're going to squeeze our abdomen and here's the funny part here's the technical term we're going to squeeze our buttocks our seat our buttocks you've heard of that yeah it's like the top of your thigh so if I'm walking along and I squeeze my thigh my horse's back can't flow so I'm going to limit my hips and I limit his range of motion so when I want to walk forward I sit tall like I'm being lifted up with a string out of the saddle and I move my hips back to front now if he doesn't respond of the hip I could reinforce it with a leg a driving aid like a leg or a whip or but the idea is he's going off of me lifting getting tall active and moving my seat I'm going to move my seat less ready so my seat's going to move less I'm going to squeeze the rain like water out of a sponge I'm going to tighten up my abdomen and I'm going to squeeze my buttocks but I'm going to do it in an ask and release manner and look what I got now to go forward I sit up and my hips swing so walking is very front to back motion something like canter it's going to be my inside sit bone forward