What are our top 5 things you can learn on our equine riding simulator, mechanical Millie. This is just the tip of the ice berg but oh so fun.
- How to keep your lower leg still
This is a really common horse rider issues but I find it can be easily solved with one of these thoughts. You don’t have any weight in your foot, this means you have nothing to stand on and remind me again how your going to do rising trot = sitting down to standing up unless you stand on something. Your leg is going to swing about everywhere as you lean forward to stand up, legs swings backwards and as you sit down again leg comes forward. Stand on your foot the ball of your foot and squat not trot. Another possibility is all the weight is in your heel. Really commonly taught but it encourages your foot to swing forward. With a foot in front of you it will swing again as your rise up and down depending on where the weight is being directed. Flat feet all the weight in the ball of your foot and you have a solid foundation to rise of.
- The fine tuning of rising trot
If you where sat on a chair right now. What muscles do you need to stand up and what muscles do you need to sit back down again. If you where sat on a horse you might tell me that the horse pushes you up and lowers you down but that’s not a independent seat, that’s not you setting the pace and that’s not very light when you sit we all know the sit phase if you don’t control it is more a slap, bump and bop phase.
- The 2 key ingredients to canter.
Your lower back pushes under and through encouraging the hind legs to come under.
Your core and pelvic floor lift up lifting the front end of the horse up.
- Where each one of the horses legs are in walk.
Your butt feet match the horses feet, in walk when your left seat bone is forward that’s the front left hoof, when it moves backwards and the belly swings away that’s the hind leg on the same side. Switch to the right side and you know where these hooves are to without looking. It helps our simulator doesn’t have legs so you can look down all you want you wont see a thing.
- How to feel your trot diagonals not look.
Very similar to above as your left seat bones moves forward that’s the horses left front moving forward if this is the outside we know we should be rising. You just felt your trot diagonals!!