Hey everyone, it’s Krista with SaddleBox, and for today’s video I’m going to be showing you the proper way to hold split reins.
Alright, so I’ve got a big fluffy pair of split reins here, just so you can see a little bit better what my hands are doing, but it’s all the same leather no matter what you’re using. So if you are somebody that ties your split reins in a knot, stop doing that. It is inefficient and it is incorrect and it just looks funny. So I’m going to show you the correct way to hold split reins whether you’re riding one hand or two hands.
So first of all, with two hands, you’re going to kind of cross them. So I have my two split reins like this, I’m just going to cross them like so to where the ends are on the opposite side of the horse, and this way you can tighten, loosen as much as you want, and you have a little bit in-between like you’re riding your hands in a box so you have ultimate control of the horse and you can pick up wherever you have to.
So the proper way to hold split reins one handed is you take them like so, if you can see, they’re both on the correct side of the horse, whether it be left or right, both of the ends are on the same side, and you take your index finger and you put it in-between the reins like this and you close your hand to where your thumb is on top like so. That way, you steer like this, go forwards, backwards, and you have pretty much all of the control you need in one hand.
So as you can see, I’ve got both ends on opposite sides, they’re crossed right here, so basically the reins are making an X but I’m holding them like so with two hands, just like this. So that way, again, I have ultimate control and I can tighten or loosen them as much as I want.
Then, the other way I showed was with one hand, basically it’s the same thing as two hands except I’m holding with one hand. So I like to put my pinky in the middle for this position, but of course you don’t have to. And it’s a really easy way to switch from two to one just like that. And then the traditional way to hold split reins with one hand is you have both of the ends on one side, I have them in my right, and as you can see, they come apart like this, both on the same side, and I put one over the other usually and then I take my index finger and put that like so in-between, that way your thumb is on top and it looks something like this.
Alright you guys, that’s it for this one. I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll see y’all in the next video. Bye guys!