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Improve your Hands: 3 Tips for a Better Contact

Finding a steady and soft contact with the horse’s mouth and keeping your hands quiet is one of the most difficult things in riding! Here are some tips to help…
  1. Find the correct hand and arm position – It is very important to have a straight line from your elbow to the horses’ mouth. Imagine that you have a very long forearm and you can actually hold the bit with your hand. This will help you to keep the straight line from your elbow to the horses’ mouth.  Some of the common mistakes to avoid: (1) riders tend to ride either with their hands too high or with a straight elbow and their hands too low. (2) Indirect rein aids where the rider crosses the rein over the horses’ neck to turn are also incorrect.  Often riders use an indirect rein aid instead of using the leg to make the horse straight. (3) Riding with “piano. hands” or rotating the palms upward is also incorrect as this causes the forearm to be stiff. Make sure that your thumbs are up and your palms face each other
  2. Follow with your elbows – at the walk and the canter, the horse has a nod in their head.  Your elbows must follow this nodding motion in order to establish a steady contact and not hitting the horse in the mouth. It is essential to have the correct arm position in order to follow with the elbow. 
  3. “No seat, no hands” – Improve your seat to improve your hands – if you are having trouble with your hands, it is probably because your seat is not good enough!! Unsteady hands that bounce is often related to a seat that does not correctly follow the motion of the horses’ back.   Focus more on your seat and on lowering your center of gravity and you will find it helps your hands!!

What is your biggest issue with your hands? Comment and let me know! Maybe I can help!

Happy Riding! 

Amelia

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR
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I'm Amelia
I help foster a trusting, confident bond between horse and rider. By combining natural horsemanship with classical dressage, I create a holistic training approach tailored to the unique needs of each horse and rider.
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I want to thank Amelia from the bottom of my heart for creating this group and learning module for us. I've followed your suggestions religiously even when it felt like we were hitting a wall at times. Finally, it all came through, all at once! I never thought I'd get a connection and have such light hands in the left lead canter, and yesterday we pulled off a 7 in left canter and an 8.5 in right canter in our WDAA Basic 1 test, with a total score of 67.3!
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Holy Moly. I just learned that I earned 1st place at Training 1 with 5 entries in the class in a virtual show. I received a 65.00. Wow. This is starting to work. Thank you Amelia. Thank you supportive new friends. I encourage you all to try virtual shows. I have tried Greystone, Lower Puget Sound and Oregon. Very helpful for building confidence. I really support this idea. It works like this: you ride at home, send in your video, and then you receive your test with judge comments and your ribbon in the mail. See you all in Strides!!
Joanna Sachs
Joanna Sachs
We see and feel the difference!! Thank you Amelia for this difficult but very helpful program. Our #1 issue was giraffe head in transitions. Downward as well as up. Don't look at my position, I was giving everything to the aids for him to maintain roundness in the trans. Now it will be time to work on our position more!
Carol Anne Marano
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I can't stop making progress, thanks to this awesome program. Today my horse and I could do the counter canter on both hands on the first attempt without our trainer.. Thank you so much for explaining my missing parts! I have to wait until tomorrow, 8 hours of time difference, to see who is the lucky one, but I think we are all lucky to join this incredible program!!
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