 Something like canter is going to be my inside-sit bone forward. All right? Or my inside-sit bone forward. Lifting the sternum tells my horse to lift up. To lift up. Good. Let's go forward. Good. There he goes. He's warming up. I'm going to lift the sternum. I think about a headlight on my chest, and I want to shine that headlight to where I need my horse to go. I'm going to go forward towards the protrition arena. Here's my focus. Here's my headlight. I start to think about riding them back, squeezing and releasing. The rain. My abdomen. My seat. It's so fun when you can use those aids to slow your horse down or stop your horse. So if I ride past you, I might think about there's my halt to rain back or to back up. Don't be leaning back because if you're doing that, you're driving their back down. He needs to lift his back to back up. So in a rain back, I want you to think about sitting tall and I push my seat back against the cantile. Imagine this. You're getting out of your chair at the kitchen table and you want to slide the chair back to get off the chair. When you slide a chair back, do you do this to slide a chair back? No. You'd flip over backwards. What do you do when you slide your chair back? You sit up and you push your seat back. He feels that on his back. Now if I want to go forward, I sit up and I swing my seat forward. It's really cool, isn't it? Now there's a saying, prepare to position for the transition and the transition takes care of itself. Who's heard that before? Come on. Yeah. Prepare to position for the transition and the transition takes care of itself. It means fix it up so good then let the horse do it. Let the horse make the change. Now let me show you what I mean. If I were to get him thinking about trot, I would shorten my reign because at the trot, we know his weight's going to come back. So maybe walking, let's say he's got 60% of his weight on the forehand at the trot, we know he's going to be about more 50-50 weight load. So I tend to shorten my reign up and he knows something's about to happen. The next thing is I sit up, I lift the sternum and I lift my body up. Now if he doesn't get lively, maybe I wiggle my leg a little bit and I say get your life up, get your energy up. Can you all feel when your horse gets excited? Can you feel when your horse gets relaxed? So we're all capable of feeling when their life is up. So I work on that. I work on that life coming up. So I shorten up the reign. I get him walking. I get his life up. I get him to where he's bubbling up. His energy's bubbling up and then all I need to do to trot is sit up. Bam. Right there. Now to walk, I squeeze release, my hands, my abdomen, my seat, and I squeeze release, squeeze release. And there's my walk. To trot, I build up the life. I get him working. He starts thinking to himself, I know we're about to do something. His life comes up. So I feel that energy come up. So when it's time to trot, I just sit up and go. And there it is. There it is. We think about a headlight on our chest. Shine that to where you want to go. Shine that headlight. Use your eyes. Focus on where you want to go. I can't tell you how much we'll see people looking down and slowly your body goes down. Down and the horse slows down. Look up. I want to see what happens before my horse sees it. So if I'm riding down the trail, I want to see it before my horse sees it. If there's something that's going to scare my horse, I want to see it before my horse sees it so I can set it up, give my horse a feel and say, look over there. If there's something scary, take a look. So I want to be up, focused and alert. Cantering. Let's talk about cantering. When the outside shoulder is coming back, it would be an opportune moment for him to strike off a left lead. It won't work if he's dead and dull. He's got to have life in him. He's got to have life in him. So I walk along and I think about my right reign. I think about squeezing and releasing my right reign a time or two to get ready. To say get ready, I set my inside sit bone forward, my outside leg back, inside leg at the girth, and I'll work on walking and maybe I'll bring him up into a trot a little bit, down to a walk, do a couple of transitions. I'll get his life up and then when I feel ready, I say we can strike off. When that outside shoulder is coming back, is an opportune time to strike off on a left lead. As the forehand is lifting, I could squeeze and release my abdomen and my reins and I could ride him up as if this, and it's a downward transition, but I want to ride a downward transition as if it were an upward transition, like a plane taking off a runway. So when I ride him down in transition, I don't want him plastering his weight on the front end. So I ride a downward transition as if it were an upward transition, getting his weight back. So we're going to strike off on our right lead and as his outside shoulder comes back, I could get ready, I'm getting ready, I'm getting his life up and we strike off. If we ask with the correct feel at the correct time, the horse thinks it's their idea. So the correct feel at the correct time makes your horse think they thought of it. If I'm getting in his way, well, it's like me making him do it. Notice at the canner my hips. So think of making a motion in your seat like you're scooping your seat forward and up. We don't want to be doing a pumping action with your front end doing that because why? They break. So what I want to do when I canner off is I want to think about my hips coming forward and up, forward and up. If you were to shoot pool, there's something called reverse English where you would backspin the cue ball so when it hits the ball in front of it, it comes backwards. Well, I don't want to be riding a wave this direction. I don't want to be this way because he's going to dump weight on the forehand. I want to ride reverse English. So what I do is I think about my hips coming forward and up. So the motion is like this. We think about lifting the sternum, open the shoulders. That same forward and up motion in my seat, I will use that to ride him in the downward transition. But what I'll do is I'll squeeze, release my abdomen, my hands, my seat as that forehand's coming up. Ready? One, two, walk. So as he's coming up, I'm riding up. I'm riding in a downward transition as if it were an upward transition. And that sounds funny at first, but when you think about it, all I'm saying is get their weight back. That's very, that's really handy. The body feel of a walk is very different than a trot or a can or a gallop. The body feel of a walk is my seat going back to front. And I could expand or reduce or cease, arrest the stride with my seat. A trot is more up and down. I like to post the trot, but I sit the trot as well. And a question that I often get is people will ask me, they'll say, how do I sit the trot? And I say, well, you don't exaggerate the down. You exaggerate the up, up, up. So I think about my sternum in my head and I think about the up rhythm. So I go up, up, up. Do you see that? If I sit down, down, down, I squish my horse and he slows down. And pretty soon that rhythm in that temple, I want to be able to sit up, up, up. So if I were rising, it would make a lot of sense. We could increase the speed or the temple of the trot by posting faster. We could decrease the speed or the temple of the trot by posting slower, slower. Sitting is the same. So I could sit up and increase that temple or get lively, get lively, lively, lively. Come on, lively. Or decrease it. Easy. We walk. As the outside shoulder comes back, we could strike off a canner. So there's a timing. And the correct feel at the correct time makes the horse think it's their idea. You see? But if we're using the wrong feel at the wrong time, uh-oh, what's going to happen, the horse goes, you humans force me and you're going to facilitate brace. So that of which is beautiful cannot be done in firmness.