Hey guys, it’s Krista with SaddleBox and in today’s video, I thought I’d give you a few tips for bridleless riding.
So being able to ride bridleless is a lot of our goals. I feel like that’s the ultimate goal for some people, is being able to ride their horse bridleless. So that’s kind of the first tip that I wanted to mention, is try to make it a set goal; don’t expect to do this overnight when it comes to setting goals with your horse. It takes time to be able to do things at such an advanced level.
Riding bridleless is not something that comes easily for any horse or anybody. So make it a set goal and don’t expect results overnight because like I said, it takes a very long time, even for very broke horses, to get used to it.
So my second tip is make sure your horse is ready. Don’t be trying this on a very, very green horse. I know that kind of goes without saying, but make sure your horse is ready for this kind of thing, they’re calm, level-headed.
You don’t want to be doing this with a horse that you can’t even control with a bridle and saddle. Don’t be trying this with an extremely green horse or one that’s not ready.
So my third tip is about your cue differentiation, and what I mean by that is being able to make your cues, how you ask your horse to do different things, very distinct and different from each other.
So this is why I highly recommend riding or learning to ride in spurs because there’s so much more you can do with a spur rather than just your heel. It can really make your cues stand out and be different from each other because when you’re riding bridleless, you don’t have your bridle to aid any of your cues, so you’re literally doing everything with your feet. So that’s why it’s very important to make sure your cues are very distinct and different.
Horses can get confused and you ask one thing of them and they ask the other, and it gets frustrating for both you and the horse and the horse won’t want to do it anymore, so it’s very important to make sure your cues are very different from each other.
So tip number four is how the basis of one thing you’re teaching a horse may be the basis to another. And what I mean by that is say your horse can very effectively pivot off of your leg.
Being able to do that is more up here and steering would be kind of right here, where it’s not as high up on the advanced level. So because you’ve taken your horse’s training to here, the steering part comes quite easily because if they can pivot off of your leg, or otherwise do a 360-degree spin off of your leg, then steering comes quite easily. So if you can, again, teach them to do things at this level, then everything else can just kind of fall into place.
So for training bridleless, your first level of cues is actually going to be with your legs because we want to incorporate that because eventually when we ride bridleless, we’re only going to have our legs. And then your second level of cues is going to be what they already know and what they’re already good at so they can anticipate this first level of cue right here, which would be your legs, and second would be the reins.
So a great example of this is how I teach a horse to back up. So backing up bridleless, everyone thinks it’s pretty cool but it’s actually quite simple. Basically what I do is I first ask with my legs. So when I first do this, obviously a horse is not going to know what it means, but my cue is I put my legs forward and kind of wave at them to back up, and they don’t know what that means so they’re just going to stand there. And then I pick up on my reins, which they do know what that means, and then they back up.
So my first level of cue was move my feet, second was to pick up on my reins and have them back up. So eventually, this takes a lot of repetition, I continue to do this, use my legs first, reins next, and eventually, like I said, you start to do this and they know oh, I need to back up because they know what comes next, which is the reins.
So once they get really good at that, you just put your legs forward and they go straight back. And eventually, they get so good that you can even make your whole level of cues be just with your legs because they know if you add more pressure here, the only way they can get out of it is to go backwards. So that is obviously the very advanced part where you’re able to ride completely tackless, but it definitely comes.
So I hope these tips were helpful. And again, remember this is not something that happens overnight. I don’t care how good of a trainer you are, you won’t turn a horse bridleless overnight.
So be patient, again, make it a set goal for you and your horse, cue differentiation, remember about the answer to one thing can be the basis of another, and how it’s important for you to define your level of cues.
So I hope this helps y’all and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye guys!