This week riding I’ve noticed something. It doesn’t matter which rein I’m on I can’t make my hands do different things. So if I need to flex my inside rein I struggle to check in to what my outside rein is doing-usually it’s gone rogue….. hence the problem. 

 

Of course that causes problems as I’m sure you are aware the outside rein is vital for maintaining your horses position whether straight or flexed. 

 

Now if you have a similar problem , maybe hands like me or maybe it’s your lower leg that seemingly has a mind of its own; you will know how unhelpful it is when an instructor tells you to just stop doing it. Your brain is thinking “sure, yeh it’s that easy, I’ll just stop……”  It’s not that easy, if it was we’d have fixed it as soon as we noticed it!

 

Just because it isn’t easy doesn’t mean you can’t make it better.

 

You essentially need to wire yourself a new pathway from your brain to that particular body part and movement pattern.

 

I like to keep the exercises simple. 

 

Try this exercise to help train your limbs to work together or separately. 

 

Switch up the movements,moving a single hand forward or our or moving a leg back or out. The whole focus should be on what the other limbs are doing and then whether the moving limbs track the same path left as they do right in the same movement. 

These are the sort of exercises we do in my classes -Space in Wednesday 10 and Thursday 6.15pm.