Two rider mistakes that impede straightness and how riding with a neck rope can fix it!

I’ve always loved riding my horses without a saddle and bridle as it allows me to really feel how their body is moving and how they are thinking and feeling. I want to connect my body to my horse in a more organic movement pattern way and allow finer increasingly graceful communication to take place instead of using the reins and being separated from the horse by the saddle.

Riding bareback and bridleless is not without its risks and requires a high degree of responsibility and ability to read what mindset the horse is in.

I would never just throw a neck rope on one of my horses and take them out on a trail or even in the arena without training them progressively on how to be safe and responsive to my finer aids.

I’m much against jumping on and riding bareback and bridleless without proper preparation. If something goes wrong, the riders and their horses could be in serious danger as well as endanger other people and animals in their environment.

The best way to start riding without a bridle is to keep the bridle on whilst you practice using a neck rope/Cordeo.

By the way, you can ride bridleless without using a neck rope. You can train the horse to go bridleless using only your body or a dressage whip to extend the length of your body. However, there is a specific reason why a neck rope is a great tool for training straightness, so keep reading.

Riding without using the bridle is a great way to find out if you are being conscious about how you are applying your aids, in which order and whether the horse is actually responding to them.

Often, horses are non-responsive to the finer aids when we remove the saddle and the bridle. The finer aids are things like the weight aids, which can be expressed through the half halt of the seat, or the weighting of one leg for direction. Horses are also non-responsive to the leg aid when it asks for bend instead of forwardness.

Other finer aids can be:

1.?????The twist of your body/turn of your head

2.?????Which seat bone is weighted

3.?????Exhaling or inhaling of the rider

4.?????Moving the center of gravity of the rider

5.?????The seat asking for a stop

6.?????Lateral cues from the legs and seat

7.?????The difference in leg positions

8.?????The twist of the rider’s wrist

9.?????Where your eyes are looking

10.??Where your feet are facing

There are so many little nuances on how we can use our intentions, energy, weight and body language to communicate with the horse.

However, the main thing that gets in the way of the horse understanding our finer communication is our addiction to using the hands and the reins.

Even though most riders have heard that the seat is the Primary Aid and should therefore be used before any other aids, the implementation of this truth seems to go ignored.

The hand and rein aids are what are called secondary aids. This means that they should only be applied after the seat has been applied and only if needed to reinforce the seat.

I think we forget to notice how often we either skip the seat aid completely or reinforce with the rein. After all, if the seat aid is supposed to work, why does it seem like we always (100% of the time) need to reinforce and use the reins to get the result we are looking for?

It’s because the seat aid or the other finer aids clearly don’t work mainly because we don’t train them properly to begin with.

When we focus on our hands, many riders also have a tendency to look down at the horse. I have the theory that this is in order to increase "feel" mentally to the rider’s hands whilst maintaining frame, etc. I see a lot of riders and even trainers (myself included sometimes) do this. Some do it all the time.

But we have it all backwards…

When we look down, we automatically add weight to the forehand of the horse, even though it’s the forehand that we are all trying to lighten.

The other thing that happens is we lose directional sense because our eyes are looking down into the horse instead of looking up and paying attention to the path of travel. You might think that you should be able to look down and ride the proper direction at the same time, but after testing numerous riders and how much they improved by riding with a neck rope, I would have to disagree.

When you’re looking down, you are relying on your hands to steer the horse with the reins and as you go you make adjustments to your hands to keep going in the direction you think you are going.

However, your hands should not be making the adjustments separate from your body. If your eyes were looking ahead correctly your shoulders would match the turn of your head, which would automatically transfer down your spine into your hands and further down into your seat and legs and now everything would be aligned.

Without your eyes, your shoulders are not aligned with the direction and neither are your hips. Therefore, the hand can be giving completely contradictory communication to the horse that is out of alignment with the direction and movement itself.

No wonder so many riders struggle with straightness. They are not even looking where they are going!

This can be proven by letting go of the reins and noticing where the horse goes. Does the horse continue staying between the aids or does he blow right through them when you don’t have the reins anymore?

Sometimes if you are turning left the horse will look right, misaligning the shoulders with the haunches and making the whole horse crooked in the movement.

When the rider is looking down and leaving everything to the hand and reins, the hand will just overpower the crookedness and force the horse to turn. The horse is still crooked as ever, but the rider never notices because of the rein.

This is because the hands steer the horse by using the mouth/bit, instead of steering the body. It’s the body we need to gain control of and that is done by looking up, aligning your head, shoulders, torso, hips and legs with the direction or bend you want, and the horse should mold into place between your aids.

When you put on your neck rope, you will often start out with a crooked horse that’s looking in one direction and heading in another. All body parts will be going in different directions. It’s like trying to ride a snake. It’s impossible and when we override it with the rein, it’s not surprising that we start struggling with contact and connection because the horse is misaligned.

Once you start working regularly with your Cordeo, your body will start coming into alignment and it will be so much easier for the horse to mold into straightness between your aids.

Now the horse will follow his nose, both shoulders will rotate correctly, the ribcage will bend and the haunches will follow. The horse will have better horizontal and vertical balance as the rider is now balanced too.

This is when you can start picking up the rein again, but make sure that you use the rein how you would use the Cordeo and keep those eyes up.

Gradually you’ll have a straighter, lighter horse and your aids will continue to become finer and lighter until you can take the bridle off entirely and still be able to trust your horse.

It’s a wonderful magical feeling!

Ride with Lightness

Celie xo

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