Advanced Guide for Perfecting Your Horse Riding Skills

Once you have mastered the basics of how to ride a horse, your immediate next step would be perfect your skills to more deeply enjoy your rides.

The foremost thing you need to cover before you even begin your journey of advanced horse riding skills is to learn how to connect with your mount on a deeper level. Unless you learn how to create a bond on a more basic level with your mount, you will always struggle to get to that stage where you’re extremely comfortable with your horse, no matter what the terrain is like or in what gait the horse is moving in.

To create that ‘bond’, you need to learn how to maintain your centre of gravity in line with the centre of gravity of the horse. So no matter whether your horse is trotting or zooming through, you have to learn how to adjust your weight so that you’re always connected with your horse.

To do so you have to ensure that all your joints are in a flexible position, where they can follow the motion and defy inertia. To do so more consciously, pay more attention to you sitting bones. These are the bones that will be absorbing most of the pressure when the horse is in motion. So one exercise you can do to strengthen your sitting bone so that you're more in control of its motion is to practice Arddhasiddhasana. As the name clears it, it is a Yoga posture that people do to strengthen their core muscles. You can also practice Pilates or certain exercises of the system for the same effects.

Such core muscle exercises are also helpful in stabilising your backbone and muscles in that area, also helpful in maintaining perfect postures, while on a horse ride.

Once you are physically ready to tackle the challenges that one may face during horse rides, you can start working on your mental steadiness to further improve your skills. To practice the same, get up on a horse, and relax for some time. Be conscious of each of your joints, their positions, and the level of stress they are in.

Then, slowly, take your attention to your knees and ankle joints, and ensure they are in a relaxing position, and not grippy or locked. Then make conscious efforts to relax your calf and thigh muscles, especially thigh muscles, as they are directly connected hamstrings and hip flexors that guide your sitting position on the horseback.

Once that’s done, adjust your backbone so that your spine is as comfortably straight as possible. Or at least ensure that you are neither crouching nor are arching your back. Now practice moving your horse in all the four gaits. You can practice your bond creation ability in all the gait and then learn what posture is more suitable for which gait. Normally, a needle-like posture, where you thrust your head forward make riders more comfortable during a gallop, and for trot, you will find straight back is more relaxing for longer durations.

Another way through which you can perfect your horse riding skills include spending more leisure time doing horseback riding. For that, you can take spend your holidays in places where services are available to practice the sport. One such place is Chum Creek, a unique accommodation centre in the beautiful Yarra Valley of Australia, where leisurely Melbourne Horse Rides are organised. As they say, the more you practice, the better you become!

I have always been an animal lover for as long as I can remember. I really think horses are some of the most reliable friends of humans who deserve all the respect, care, and love, we can afford.