Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Lightness

In the hundreds of hours I've spent with horses, one of the guiding lights I've always followed was the search for lightness.  If you're not familiar with horsemanship, then you might not understand what I mean by the term lightness.  When riding a horse, we have three main aids to communicate with the horse that are always in play; our weight distribution, legs, and reins.  Within these three aids, we use pressure to influence the horse to move in the ways that we would like.  When a horse becomes sensitive to the pressure from our aids, then he is said to be a "light" horse.  This sense of lightness refers to how sensitive our horse is to our pressure that we use to communicate with them.  If we don't become aware of how to offer and coach a horse towards lightness, then it will never become the level of sensitivity that exists in the communication between the two of you.

Trail riding clinics are one of the most common clinics we give.  What a lot of people learn when it comes to improving their trail horse is that you have to improve your horsemanship, otherwise you can't have an effective conversation about staying relaxed and focused on the trail.  Improving our horsemanship is a constant game of improving the lightness, or sensitivity, to our aids when riding.

Just recently I gave a lesson to a friend on a horse that had been in training.  She was a nice 3 year old filly that had a natural sense of sensitivity.  Upon riding her, he was quite surprised at how smooth and "light" she felt.  Later that afternoon, when riding his own horse, he noticed that if he offered a similar feel to her, she was a lot more responsive than he would have guessed.  And that is the secret to developing lightness.  You have to offer it to the horse in order for them to get it.  That is the mark of an advanced horseman or horsewoman; knowing how to offer that light sense of feel is critical to advancing how effective the communication between the two of you can really become.

To learn more about Cooler Horsemanship, visit www.coolerhorsemanship.net and download our
latest Free E-book, "Horse Psychology".  It's a great look at the things a horseman can learn about all horses in order to improve their abilities on the "lightness" he or she can offer any horse.

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