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Step 1
Step 1: Check your equipment. Here are a few things you can check to see if your tack is hindering you at all:
- Are your stirrups too wide or too narrow for your feet? There should be about a 1/4-1/2" on either side of your foot when it is in the stirrup iron.
- Are your stirrup leathers wide enough? Wider leathers are easier to balance in, but tend to rub your legs more. If you wear chaps, the stirrup leathers won't rub.
- Do your boots have a sturdy flat bottoms and good ankle support? Your boots should flex some at the end of the toe cap but should not much through the toe box. The sole of your boot should provide a stable surface to stand on in the way that a figure skate does. -
Step 2
Step 2: Practice without a horse. Here are some exercises you can do at home to help you find your balance:
- Do calf raises on a stair.
- Jump off a stair onto the ground. Practice landing in the position you would need to be in if you were riding a horse in 2 point.
- Do squat jumps. These help you figure out how not to tip forward so much.
- Do 1 legged squats, keeping your posture and balance. Don't go down far, just until your knee blocks the tips of your toes from view.
- Stand in riding position (ie., stand with your knees bent just so much that you can't quite see your toes). Practice looking towards 2, 4, 8, and 10 o'clock without it affecting your posture or balance.
- Stand in riding position. Practice leaning the various directions without it affecting your posture or balance. When you're riding, you have to turn your head to look where you're going. Your body has to learn how to stay in balance while your head moves.
- Stand in riding position. Put 4 chairs around you at 2, 4, 8, and 10 o'clock. Pick up a 1-6lb weight. Move the weight from one chair to another without it affecting your posture or balance. Many people struggle to move their hands and stay in balance while riding. They find it even harder if the horse is a little hard mouthed and requires a little more energy to turn or stop. If you practice with a weight in advance, you will be able to balance even when riding a horse who takes more than a few ounces of pressure to turn. This is a very important exercise to practice because you want to be able to keep your balance should you ever have to pull hard to stop a bolting horse. -
Step 3
Step 3: Practice under saddle. Here are some exercises to do in the saddle:
- First ride with your hands about 8" in front of the saddle on the neck. You can hang on to the mane or press your hands into your horse's neck to stabilize yourself.
- Come into two point or half seat. In other words, stand with your bum just above the saddle. You want to be as tall vertically as you can be while being as close to the saddle as you can be. Bring your heart through your chest. This will help stabilize you. Pretend you were pushed from the side, or have someone actually push you. If your leg is underneath you properly, you won't feel like you're going to be pushed off the other side. If you are in a chair seat, with your legs too far in front of you, you won't have any lateral balance.
- Practice standing in two point and touching down, then coming right back up. To post or do two point, you have to want to be up more than you want to sit. So, tell yourself you want to be up, then pretend to loose your balance and start to fall backwards. The key is to close your hip angle so that when you start to fall backwards, you come down towards your crotch more than your bum. Don't let yourself actually sit when you start to come down. Just touch, then come right back up. The key is to want to be up, not sitting.
- To learn how to "post" or, in other words, how to do the "rising trot," have someone call out numbers 1-5 at random. If they call "two," you will go from two-point to touch your seat down once on your saddle. Come back to two-point, then immediately touch your seat down again, coming right back up. The key is to want to be up. With someone calling the numbers at random, you will gradually build the number of correct posting steps that you can do in a row.
- Practice standing in two point and looking to 2, 4, 8, and 10 o'clock without losing your balance. Then practice leaning those same 4 directions. Then practice putting your reins in one hand and pointing those 4 directions.
- Next practice picking up an imaginary object from in front of your saddle and putting it behind your saddle, like you did with the chairs and the weight at home. You should be able to move and imaginary object from your horse's right should to left hip without it affecting your balance.
