November 11th, 2022

How Aware are you? What does Awareness mean with regards to riding? What do we need to be aware of?

Rider Aware is to be aware of ourselves as riders. Of our minds and our bodies as we all know how much both of these influence our horses! In fact, it was my inability to connect with a mare many years ago that lead me to learn to meditate and for that I will be forever grateful . How true is the saying “our horses are our teachers”! In more ways than one and not only with respect to riding and horse interactions but about life in general.

Some people are more body aware than others, but this is certainly an area everyone is able to improve. It is worth checking in on every now and again as it can change with stress, age and injury. Our minds are incredible about getting us back after injury… consider when you have an injury, initially we have an increased awareness of that area. It hurts and the pain forces us to rest the area and find other ways to function. Sometimes after a while we subconsciously block out the area so we can get back into the swing of life. Old movement pathways may never be completely restored to what they were prior to the injury, for whatever reason, and before we know it we have set a new “normal” feeling or new “normal” way of moving, sitting or standing.

In riding we may see this as riders sitting unevenly, leaning, collapsing, twisting and many other asymmetries. Fortunately there are now many new fun and easy techniques to allow our own brains to identify these patterns and very quickly open up new neural pathways. This is by far the most effective way to truly correct these and works much quicker and result in much longer lasting changes than when concentrating solely on the musculoskeletal system.

Your brain needs to become aware of the issues in order to reset itself. This is so much better than someone else telling you that you are sitting crooked, have uneven hands, shoulders, legs or whatever. If your brain knew this was the case then it wouldn’t allow it! We need to show your brain that this is happening and let it feel the correct pathway. We can even use trigger words until it has been reprogrammed and sees the correct pathway as normal. There are many different ways to do this depending on what we are trying to change. For example, we can increase our awareness of a particular part of our body by tapping or using training aids to work on superficial and deep proprioceptors. Training aids can also be used to either place your body in the correct position, or to do the opposite and exaggerate the undesired position or pathway to increase awareness. What works for one person may not be the same for another, even if they present as having very similar asymmetries. I think this is why I am so addicted to this way of training. It is often like detective work to result in a formula for the rider to take home and reprogram! That and the fact that the results are amazing!

Riders also need to be aware of our horses - their bodies and their mental state. For this, some knowledge of their movement and how it affects what we feel is important. Every rider should know the footfalls of each pace as well as some basic horse biomechanics so they understand what part of the horse’s body is resulting in what they can feel underneath them and at which part of the horse’s stride this occurs. This will then allow them to perfect the timing of their aids, as well as to work out which part of the horse’s body is not working correctly when they can’t feel what they should. This is so important not only for correct training, but also to detect early training and/or soundness issues. This is nowhere near as daunting as it sounds and is easy and fun to learn! With this knowledge, your aids will be much clearer for your horse. You will be giving your aids when your horse is perfectly set up to react – a great help for lateral work, transitions and flying changes.

We should also be aware of our environment when riding, for logical reasons such as safety, identifying potential dangers to us and also anything our horses may perceive as dangerous and react accordingly. If we are aware of the weather and work surfaces we can plan our ride accordingly such as being prepared if our horses may be fresh in cold, windy weather or tire easily when doing hill work or working in a deeper surface than normal and not overtax their bodies in anyway.

So we have a big job as riders! We need to constantly move our awareness between these three main areas – ourselves, our horses and our environment as it can be counter-productive and even dangerous to be completely oblivious to what is happening in one of these areas!