 When I talk to people that ride on trails, I often hear people say, all I want to do is trail ride. They almost make it sound like it's something easy, something simple. So every time I hear that and I hear people say, oh, you want a trail ride, I think to myself, so you want to go ride out in the wild with wild animals, up and down rocky terrain that's possibly slippery, possibly with friends who can't always control their horse. And they're like, yes, that's what I want to do, right? And have you all, have you ever been on a trail ride where it gets a little, raise your hand if you've been on an interesting trail ride, right? Yeah. The thing about horses being that they're herd animals, if you're in a group that gets excited, it's easy for your horse to sort of feed off of that, isn't it? But I always think if you're going to trail ride, you need more preparation than somebody that's going to live in the arena, right? We're only as good as we are with our horses when we're under pressure. So you're only as good as you are with your horse as a team, as a unit when you're under pressure. Doesn't matter how you are on a day when your horse is calm and everything's perfect. What matters is what is your horse like on days when they're a little excited, when their pressure's on. So today, keys to trail riding success. The first thing that we need to make sure we have with our horses is smooth and easy forward. And you'll hear folks say that they want their horse to be forward off their leg. Have you ever heard somebody say a horse should be forward off your leg? Well, it's more about the horse being forward off of your seat, off of your core, off of your center. If your horse is forward off of your seat, the leg is there for a backup plan. The leg is there when you really need it. But if you're always using your leg, it won't be there when you really need it. Like when you're trying to cross water or when there's a horse in front of you that's a little bit maybe not going forward. So the first thing that we're going to work on today is getting our horse to go forward. And I want you to think about what indicators, what aids we can use to get our horse to go forward. The most important aid I can think of is where I'm looking my focus. So where am I looking? Where are my eyes looking? I don't want to be looking at my horse. He's not going to change color. I want to be looking at where I'm going. I want to think about a headlight on my sternum, a headlight on the chest. And I'm going to shine that headlight to where I want to go. As I sit up, I'm active in my position. So I'm sitting tall in my hips have movement back to front. And you can see this back forward, back forward, back forward motion. Now I don't want to be driving hard and forcing my seat because I'll be working against my horse. What I want to do is sit up, use my focus. I might even have my horse look where I'm looking, move my hips like I'm pushing the saddle up slightly towards his ears. And you can see how we can lengthen his stride or even get him to come up and do a trot. So I'm going to look towards the car wash here. I'm going to sit up, eyes are up, and I'm moving my seat forward. And he feels that, so he comes forward into the trot. When I want to walk slow, I want to convey a sense of relaxation. So now we start to sit a little low in the saddle. And I'm going to see how slow could we walk. And do you notice my posture is a little slouchy now? So you might think of this as inactive or slightly less active. Whereas this, ready? I sit up and I go. Feel that or see that? So we could do some warm-up exercises ourselves to work on this. One would be lift your hand straight up in the air like you're in class and you're telling the teacher, call on me. So you might lift your hand up in the air. And what this will do is get your eyes up, your focus up. This will get you lifting your sternum up. We want our chin up. I don't want to be sitting back here with my chin down. I want to be looking up here. Soft eyes. My eyes are open and wide. So I can take in as much of my environment as I can. So right now I'm looking towards you all. But I can see my horse nodding his head. I can see somebody walking over here. So my eyes are up and open. So I'm situationally aware. I'm going to bring my life down, bring his life down. And there's my halt. So you can see when I'm coming to a halt, I'm settling into that saddle. I'm getting less active. And I'm starting to sort of just, I think of breathing into my seat and coming to a halt. Now we'll expand on this a little bit. But our focus is so important. Where we're looking is so important. When we're trail riding, we should see things before our horse. We're up higher than our horse so long as we're on their back. So I will see things hopefully before my horse sees things. So if there's a deer coming off to the side, I want to see it first. If I do, I can own the situation and say to my horse, hey look, there's a deer over there. Do you want to look at it? So I direct him and he looks at me and he goes, oh, thanks for telling me about that. If my horse sees it first, Mother Nature says, there's something there. And so they can't help but to get excited and somebody's got to run the show. It's either going to be you or it's going to be your horse. But if your horse sees it before you see it, they're going to most likely react and then the human reacts to their horse. And so you're behind the game, you're behind the motion. So if you're aware of what's taking place, if you're up and your focus is up, you're an asset to your horse now. So that's really important. So as we ride, we'll start to work on bringing his life up a little bit more and we'll incorporate some trail obstacles in the mix just to sort of get him thinking. But as I ride, I think about the headlight. I think about my leg being underneath me. So you notice how I could lift my thigh. Now, even if I were to trot, notice how I could lift my thigh up and be off that saddle and then I could let my leg come right back down. It's easy to stand up for me because my leg is underneath me. And you think about an athletic, ready position and you think about being over your feet. I can't think of a time where we'd want to be playing sports or something where I would have my legs out in front of me and I'd be back here. I can't think of a time I'd want to do that. But when you think about people riding, you often see him in a chair seat, right? So if I'm riding in a chair seat, what happens is my hips can't move freely anymore. I'm blocking the motion of my hips. So my thigh, my femur is up. So my seat can only come back but it can't swing forward. When you get that leg underneath you and it may take some time for you to stretch your hip flexors and get used to that position, we get that leg underneath us. Now a horse can lift up and we can receive their back. I also am able to move with my horse much sooner. I can be in balance when my leg is underneath me. So I can't stress this enough. Being able to have your leg underneath you, being able to stand up, you might work on raising your hand, standing up. We could work on hand behind the head, stretching the shoulder, lifting the sternum. And sometimes you feel weird doing these things but don't because it causes you to relax, it causes you to stretch out and be supple. Talking about muscle tone, the tone that we carry our muscles with. This is something I work on a lot with my clinics. When we're nervous, people tend to sit they tend to squeeze their reins and they tend to roll their shoulders and their muscle tone is rigid like wood. And they're stiff. And obviously we've all heard a horse knows when you're nervous, a horse can feel when you're nervous. Well they feel the tone that you're sitting at so if we're sitting stiff, we're pounding on their back. We're like a lump on their back. Once in a while I'll see somebody sit really loose, almost like so loose. And I think of Jell-O. Now I'm not saying to go ride your horse like you're Jell-O but I'm saying that that would represent another extreme of muscle tone. Now we don't want to be so loose up there but something between wood being stiff like wood and being relaxed like Jell-O would be clay. You pick up a piece of raw clay, you squeeze it, it takes the shape of your hand. So I want my muscle tone to be like that of like raw clay. And that's what you can think of as you ride. If you feel nervous, think of Jell-O and loosen up for a minute and just purposely ride loose. But then as you go, start to lift your sternum, sit tall, thinking straight line shoulder, hip, heel, eyes up, open up your field of view, start breathing. And all of a sudden you feel so much better.