Hey guys, it’s Krista with SaddleBox and today I’m going to be giving you three tips for riding bareback.
So the first tip I would have to give for riding bareback is to try and engage your core. If you don’t engage your core and you’re kind of just too relaxed and loose up here, it can kind of cause you to fall back or forward easily, like that. So really try to focus on engaging your core, sit up straight.
So the next tip I have, tip number two, would be to try focusing on squeezing with your thighs instead of your calf and leg. A lot of times what happens is if you start riding bareback, you start going faster and you want to start squeezing here, which you don’t want to do because then you’re squeezing your horse and encouraging them to go even faster and you fall forward and then that’s how you could slip off really easily.
So focus on engaging your core, number one. Number two, holding on with your thighs up here and not your legs and your calves like this. So everything down from your knee should just kind of hang and be relaxed but then your thighs and your core should be nice and tight.
So one thing you can also do to kind of help balance when you’re first starting out is to kind of grab a bit of mane right here. Then you can kind of use your arm to keep you balanced and nice and centered. Obviously you don’t want to grab a little bit of mane and pull really hard, you want to get enough to where it’s not going to hurt your horse and you can kind of squeeze your fingers in-between it like this.
This is going to be what you don’t want to do. So I’m leaning forward, I’m squeezing with my legs, and as you can see, I’m not really engaging my core, so then I could easily slide off like that.
Alright, that’s it for this one. I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye guys!