HOW TO RIDE A HORSE FOR BEGINNERS (STEP BY STEP) 🐎

So you want to start riding horses. Riding horses can be a wonderful experience when done safely and correctly. They're beautiful and they're powerful. There's so much to know about them and a lot that is involved in owning and working with horses, but today I'm going to give you just a basic overview to help you get started if you're interested in riding. So whether you've bought your first horse or you're looking to just get started riding, the first thing that you want to do is look for a professional that you trust that's qualified in the discipline that you're interested in going into. Now this may be something you're already researching right now, but finding that professional is not only going to help you to stop, you know, prevent you from developing bad habits, they're also going to help to keep you safer and make your riding experience more enjoyable. So when you look for an instructor that is the right suit for you, you want to find someone that you really connect with their teaching style, that you can understand them, you feel like they're really approachable, because there's someone that's going to help you out in the ups and downs that you're inevitably going to run into in your riding experience. Legend. Hi buddy. Good boy. So this is Legend and Legend is a really laid-back guy. I've had him for many years and he's a horse that I teach a lot of beginners on because he's very forgiving and he's got more woe than go, which means he'd much prefer to slow down over speed up when you're riding him, and he's forgiving for that beginner. If they accidentally bump him or make a mistake, he tends to just go along and be really relaxed and tolerant. So when we're first getting started riding, we love all our horses, they're beautiful, but we want to be riding a horse that's really calm and really tolerant of mistakes, as we're all going to make mistakes when we're first learning. So I'm here with Sonic, who's a really relaxed guy, and I'm going to get started in showing you the steps of how to ride your horse. So we're going to start off with brushing our horse off. This is going to prevent any saddle sores from occurring and is a great way to connect with our horse before our ride. So now our horse is all brushed and we're ready to saddle. So first I'm going to put my saddle pad on and I'm going to put it on too far up the neck and slide it down in the direction of the hair until I get to around the middle of the shoulder here. Next I'm going to put my saddle on, which is a nice custom fit for Sonic, so it's nice and comfortable for him. And I want to put it on right behind the shoulder blade here, right where it locks into place. And then lastly, I'm going to secure my girth to my billets so that my saddle stays on nice and secure. Next we're going to put the bridle on our horse. So to put the bridle on, we're going to start by putting the reins over the head. And this just helps me to be able to hold my horse if he were to go to leave. And then I'm going to take my halter off. Now, if you want a more in-depth view on how to put the bridle on, you can check out my video that I'll leave linked up here, and I talk in more detail about how to put the bridle on. But I'm going to take my nose band here and my throat latch, move them out of the way. I'm going to put my thumb and my pinky through the bit, like so. Feel for my horse's teeth. And I'm going to be putting my bit up here where there's no teeth in the mouth. And then I'm going to gently put my horse's ears forward, lower my nose band down. And then whatever bridle you're riding in, whatever discipline you're riding in, you want to make sure that you always have a throat latch here. The throat latch helps to prevent the bridle from going over your horse's head. So it's very important so you don't end up riding without a bridle. So you want it to be tight enough that you can't pull it over your horse's head, but loose enough you can easily fit your hand in there so your horse can swallow easily. So we're out in the outdoor arena, which is a wonderful place to start off riding when you're just learning. It's a closed space, and we've got good footing for our horse to make it a little easier. Now, when you get started riding, you want to make sure you're wearing the right equipment. So the first thing, the most important thing to wear is a helmet, which is going to protect you if you fall. And you want to wear pants to keep you from your legs from getting rubbed or chafed. You want to wear some nice boots that have got a good heel on them so your foot doesn't slide through the stirrup. They're closed toed, and they're above your ankle. So now I'm going to adjust Sonic's stirrups, and we're going to get started. So now we're ready to mount our horse. Got my stirrups adjusted. I like to mount using a mounting block because it is the healthiest for my horse's back. So when I go to mount my horse, I'm going to line him up to the block, and then I'm going to walk you through the steps of how to get on. So I'm going to lead Sonic around, and I'm going to step up onto my block. As I step up on my block, I'm going to switch hands. I'm going to take my left hand and send him forward here, and I'm just going to walk him up to where he lines up nice, and then stop him with my outside rein. Then I'm going to hold my rein in my mane, right hand in the middle of the saddle, push off with my right hand, step up with my left foot, swing over, and then I'm just going to use my ankle, wiggle my ankle, and catch my stirrup on my right foot. So now let's talk about how to hold the reins. You're going to pick up your reins, slide down, separate the reins, holding in between your thumb and your pointer finger. You want to keep your thumbs up, just like you're holding an ice cream cone. Now that you've got your reins organized and ready to go, let's talk about the correct position to ride in in order to stay on your horse, not fall off, which is important, and work with the motion of the horse as opposed to against it. So the correct position is ear, shoulder, hip, heel alignment, which you can see here. And if your horse were to suddenly disappear out underneath you, you should land on your feet like this in a kneeled position. Now that we've talked about good position, let's talk about how to ride our horse forward and stop him. When we go to walk our horse off, we want to start off by looking ahead where we want to go. We're going to stretch up nice and tall, and we're going to squeeze starting with our butt, then our thigh, and then our calf. When our horse walks forward, we're going to relax our leg and just follow the motion with our seat. So I'm going to stretch up, squeeze. When he walks off, I'm going to relax and just allow him to walk. When I want to stop him, I'm going to quit riding, so I relax, then I engage my core a little bit and sit back, and then if he still doesn't stop, I squeeze my reins. Now that we've talked about how to have our horse move forward and how to stop, let's talk about steering. We steer our horses using our seat, which is our core, then our legs, and lastly, our reins. So when we go to steer our horse, one thing that may help you as you start steering is you always think about closing the door you don't want the horse to go through and opening the door you want the horse to go through. So if I want the horse to turn left, I'm going to close my right leg and my right hand and open my left hand. Now when you close your leg, what I mean by that is here my leg is relaxed and it's not, it's kind of off the horse, there's not a lot of contact there. Closing the leg means that your leg comes against the horse, so you're bringing it in like this. So here it's off, there it's on. So now I'm going to walk Sonic up and I'm going to make a turn to the left off of my right side. So we're going to walk forward, so I'm going to turn my shoulders over my hips, close my right leg, and open my left hand to allow Sonic to make that turn. Now if I wanted to turn him to the right, I would close my left leg, turn my shoulders a little bit to the right, and open my right hand. So riding horses and improving your horsemanship is a wonderful journey to take with a lot of ups and downs along the way. If you're on that journey right now, you can subscribe. I release a new video every week on different horse topics. I hope that this video was a help to you, and I hope that you enjoy your riding.