Have you ever wondered, “Why does my student persistently do this illogical thing?!?”
You’ve pointed out the flaw, you’ve shouted, you’ve tried every analogy you can think of — but as soon as you turn your back, the student is back to riding with their old habits!
Is this rider unwilling to learn? Or do they just not care?
Consider another perspective: that your student isn’t even aware of what’s happening. Brains and bodies are constantly conspiring to create unconscious habits — and not always the helpful kind.
We’ve been teaching horseback riding for almost two decades now, so we’ve encountered a lot of weird habits.
Here are some of the most common quirks we’ve seen students develop in the saddle, and a few possible strategies for eliminating them:
The Eager Chicken
You know those awkward moments when you’re in traffic on the freeway and you realize you’re clucking at cars to speed them along? We’ve accepted that it’s just a fact of life: work with horses long enough and you’re going to cluck at everything that moves.
The problem is, clucking is supposed to be a very specific aid under saddle.
If a horse hears it all the time, the sound loses its power — especially if the horse hears it in moments where he is clearly not meant to respond with a burst of energy.
Occasionally, we end up with students with such a deeply ingrained auto-cluck that they start making the sound when they ask their horse to do anything, including halting! Our horses usually respond by creeping along uncertainly, side-eying their rider as if to say, “Just PICK a gait already.”
Drawing attention to the clashing aids only helps if the rider realizes they’re doing it in time to respond. We’ve found the best strategy for eliminating the “GO – wait, WHOA!” cluck is to replace it with a new habit.
We teach riders to breathe out a soft, audible “Whoa,” in their quietest “lullaby voice,” as part of the cue for a halt. This encourages correct breathing patterns and improves communication between horse and rider. Later, if students intend to compete in disciplines that forbid voice commands, we practice breathing a “silent whoa,” exhaling through the mouth without actually saying the word.
The Fly Catcher
We’ve yet to meet an equestrian with a truly photogenic concentration face.
But some students, especially children, take this to the extreme by riding with their tongue sticking out or clamped between their teeth.
If the horse stumbles, or spooks, or the rider misses a beat of posting trot – that tongue is getting chomped on. Ouch!
Save yourself some blood and tears by encouraging students to keep their tongues tucked neatly behind their teeth. Explain that tongues catch flies, and there is no shortage of flies around the riding arena!
This habit sometimes goes hand in hand with tension or mouth breathing, so if you have a student that makes faces regularly, consider devoting some lesson time to conscious breathwork technique and relaxation exercises.
The Tea Drinker
One of the biggest challenges in teaching people to ride is teaching them not to rely on their hands. Humans are programmed to use their hands for everything, so it’s not surprising that when the going gets tough, new riders want to grab and pull.
An odd manifestation of this occurs when riders try to balance on a single extended finger.
Some students point their index finger and press it against the horse’s neck, while others extend their pinkie and ring figure as though exaggerating holding a tea cup.
This most often occurs while practicing rising trot and two-point position, and if you’re not careful, it can become a hard habit to break.
And break it we must, before the finger breaks instead. If things go south on a horse and you try to catch yourself on single jammed finger, you’re going to regret it! (She said, typing with a thumb that was fractured from trying to play hero over a jump.)
The problem is, most Tea Drinkers have no idea what their fingers are doing when they ride. These students often need lessons focusing on wrist and hand position, with exercises designed to develop the correct sensation in the fingers.
Our personal favorite? Ask students to carry small, round horse cookies in each hand. Place the cookie directly under the most troublesome finger. If they drop a cookie, they have to answer to their horse!
The Directionally Challenged
Over the years, we’ve taught an uncountable number of beginner coursework lessons, and offered ground pole and crossrail classes in every in-house schooling show.
Inevitably, there is always a student that walks the course twice, recites it flawlessly, discusses how she’ll approach every fence, and then… circles the wrong way to line up for the first jump.
This student is often the same one that turns left when we say right, and is easily confused by posting diagonals and leads.
She might be self-aware, and laugh ruefully every time it happens, but it never seems to improve her ability to turn the right direction!
Many people are directionally challenged, regardless of age. According to a study by the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, approximately 15% of the general population experience difficulty in identifying left and right, and more than 40% rely on visual cues such as their hands to confirm direction.
Chastising these students for turning the wrong way won’t help! Instead, try to help them come up with effective coping strategies.
You can’t exactly tattoo LEFT and RIGHT on the horse’s ears, but you can place different colored ribbons on each side of the horse’s browband. We try to use color-coding whenever possible with stripes of colored or patterned tape on the horse’s shoulders, or different-colored cones marking left and right turns in an equitation pattern.
Draw attention to the side of the neck the horse’s mane falls on, and frequently practice identifying “Inside” and “Outside,” which can be more reliable vocal cues than “Left” and “Right.”
If you do have to use left and right to give directions, try to add some additional landmarks. For example, we give each side of our arena a name: House, Field, Road, Barn. This allows us to ask our students to ride down centerline and turn left toward the road, or canter on the right lead toward the barn.
Baffled By Buckles
How many times have you unbuckled a leather crownpiece or stirrup leather by now?
Experienced horsepeople know that most of the time, unless the leather is buttery soft, that buckle’s not going anywhere unless you pull down on the upper piece of leather and slide the buckle up.
The physics involved in this maneuver may seem straightforward to you. But the vast majority of children we introduce to tack – and a few adults! – have to be taught how to buckle and unbuckle each strap smoothly.
We’ve found it necessary to repeat this lesson with every new fastener we introduce, especially since a few work a little differently. (Think girths with roller buckles, bull snaps and the hooks on horse blankets.)
This project doesn’t end once they’re in the saddle, either.
Many students in Yellow Level and beyond have a hard time figuring out which way to move their leg when adjusting their stirrups or girth. “I’ll never remember this,” they lament, struggling to pull down a stirrup leather or to lift a saddle flap trapped under the weight of their thigh.
The solution: focused off-the-horse practice on buckling and fastening. Build this into your beginner curriculum or devote an entire rainy day horsemanship lesson to the project. Students can work their way through a buckle board or buckle wall and race through stirrup adjusting challenges while you explain the importance of smooth equipment handling for the horse’s sake.
Every riding habit we practice should have a solid reason behind it, based on safety awareness and rational thinking
You know, of course, that there are no arbitrary rules to anything we do with horses.
Are you teaching your students the reasons for the rules? Do you tell them, “Leg forward to tighten the girth,” or help them puzzle through the logic behind their leg placement?
If your students understand the how and why, but continue to do the wrong thing, you might just be dealing with an unconscious habit.
Gently draw attention to it without shaming your student, saying, “I’ve noticed you are doing X when you mean to do Y. Are you aware that this is happening?”
Reassure them that all equestrians have to overcome unhelpful habits in the saddle – we know you have some, too!
Then get down to the important work: helping your student reprogram their minds and bodies to form new habits and unconscious behaviors. It may be a long-term project, but your students will be happier and safer in the long run – and it will keep you and your school horses sane!
One of the best ways to help students overcome bad habits is through motivational mounted games. If you’d like a book with over 100 student-approved games designed to develop feel and improve riding skills, THE BIG BOOK OF GAMES ON HORSEBACK is available in paperback through Amazon, or you can purchase a PDF version directly from us!
Amazon reviewers say it’s an “amazing resource,” “an absolutely brilliant book” and “a 10 out of 10,” among other really nice things.
