Are your hands still or should they move?

How often have you been told "keep your hand still"  "your hands are moving too much!"?  Well, come to a lesson with me, and you are more likely to hear, "move your hands, MORE!"  my students will attest to that.

Even more you will hear "MOVE your ELBOWS, open and close your elbows, MORE! - I want you to open and close your elbows so much it feel silly, exaggerate it so much you think I am going to tell you to stop.  Then you are probably doing it enough!"

Why is this so?  Why am I telling you to move your hands and elbows?

I want you to think about what your hands are attached to.  They are connected to the bit in the horses mouth.  The bit in the mouth moves with the horse's head.  Does the horse's head stay still or move?

Walk - allow your reins to go fairly loose (safely) and just let your horse walk out naturally.  Make sure it is a fairly forward active walk.  Think about how his feet are hitting the ground.  See if you can count the beats.  1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4.  Count it out loud, sing a song, row row row your boat, keep in time with his feet.  

Now look at his mane, notice how it is flopping as his head goes up and down?  Which foot is hitting the ground when his head goes up?  

Each time his front feet hits the ground, his head comes up and back.  So what is happening to the bit?  So what should your hands be doing?  Your hands should be moving back and forward in time with his head, this may take some practice, some people can just do it, some people it takes a bit of work.  Please make sure you persist with it, and please make sure it is coming from your elbows, not your shoulders.  Keep your chest up and elbows by your sides.

The easiest way to learn how to let your hands move with his mouth, is to start on a long rein, hardly touching his mouth.  Look up, chest up, relax, allow your hips to follow his movement, and allow your hands to move back and forward.  As you get the rhythm, slowly start to shorten your reins.  If you lose it, lengthen them out and start again.  

There is a time when you want to stop moving your hands, so experiment with it, get the nice forward rhythm, hands moving, steady contact, then make your movement smaller.  What happens?  What is this called?  No I am not going to tell you! go get on your horse and try it! then come and tell me :)

Trot  At trot, what does the horse's head do?  Does it move or stay still?  That's right, it stays still! so what should your hands do? Thats right, stay still!  The reason this is difficult, is that most of the time, we are in rising trot, so we are going up and down, not staying still.  

So the hard thing at trot is to keep our hands still while we go up and down.  Again, think about making your hands stay with his mouth, rather than moving with your body.  

This is not the easiest thing to get the hang of, but there are a few exercises you can do to help make it easier.  

1. Practice off the horse - get a dressage whip, hold it so the handle is touching the ground, you hold the tail, then rise up and down, keeping the handle on the ground and not letting the whip bend and flex.  You need to change the muscle memory, so if you are serious about developing great hands, do this exercise three times a day for five minutes, for two weeks.  Then you wont have to think about it, you will just do it naturally.
2. The next level of the same exercise is to take the whip, and get on a trampoline.  Keep it going at 150 bpm.  This is one of the best exercises I ever learnt from Colleen Kelly.
3. When you are riding -  touch your little fingers down and touch the horse's wither.  Be careful to keep your thumbs on top, your chest up, and don't tilt forward.  Now try and keep your fingers touching lightly as you rise up and down.  You cannot do it without opening and closing your elbows.  Once you have got it, lift your hands to normal position, and keep the elbow movement happening.  I will often have students do half a circle fingers down, half fingers up, half down, half up, till they can keep their elbows going without thinking about it too much.

Canter At Canter, your hands will move the same as in walk.  Think about how your horse's head moves, he has a big head nod at canter right?  So if I restrict it by keeping my hands still, what happens to his canter?

Again, you can use a similar tactic to what you did in walk.  Please make sure you are safe to canter, and please make sure if you are going to try this, you are in an enclosed area.  I started out in a round yard, on a long rein going into canter.  Sitting up straight, eyes up, chest up, and allow my hands to move in time with his head.  Then, just like at walk, slowly shorten your reins keeping your arms pumping back and forward.  

When you can confidently canter in the arena, your hands pumping back and forward, you can start using this to lengthen and shorten the stride.  That is for another day though, but I hope this helps you with the dilemma of "should my hands be still or moving?" question.