Keeping Hands Still

[NoviceNic]

Does anyone have good advise and excericises on how to keep my hands still please? I am stopping Captain from cantering because I am unconcientiously drawing my hands up his reins and pulling his head up and raising my hands. I think the reason why I am lifting my hands is to stop him from lowering his head. I have to admit I dont like the idea of riding a headless horse. Although I may have to for a while to get us back in to the habit of cantering with confidence. :o

Any good pictures of the position of a horse and its outline during collected and extended canter would be great. :D

[keep the faith]

try hooking your small finger on each hand under a neck strap. it will stop your hands rising to far and easy to remove when you want to slow down.

[Nimbus65]

Poppy drops her head when she works b/c she's an ex-driving horse and I do find it quite disconcerting to (as you say) ride a headless horse. I've found though, that keeping my hands about three inches above her withers, 8 inches or so apart, holding with my calves and my wrists soft actually helps Poppy to drop onto the bit rather than just drop her head b/c it helps her lift up through her shoulders and use her back/get off her forehand . . . and being on her forehand is what causes her to drop her head when she works.

Also, are you sure you're not balancing on your hands? I used to do that . . . and sometimes still do. I also have a tendency to creep up the reins and "fix" my hands.

To cure me of all of these heinous habits (;)), my instructor had me warm up Rocky (VERY forward horse) in walk, trot, canter, with NO reins. Then she had me leg yield him in and out of a circle with NO reins. Working with no hands meant that I realized that I didn't NEED to balance on my hands and that I could rely on my legs and seat to steer and control the pace (and stop).

One other thing that may be related . . . I'm constantly being told to look UP as I have a tendence to look at the horse's head/ears. When I focus on looking where we're going (sounds simple enough, but it's hard), I'm much less concerned with where the horse's head is . . .

Hope some of that rambling helped.

N

[Skyhuntress]

Actually something that really helped me was being lunged, where I dropped the reins and had to maintain the proper hand position without them. You can really get the feel of how dependent you are on your hands when you do tihs, because you aren't worrying about the horse. Once I saw what I was doing (in my case, my hands were moving up and down as I posted) it was much easier to focus on stoping when I didn't have a horse underneath me. Evetaully I transfered it to the reins while I was riding and just told myself to ride like I had without reins; with steady hands

[xxxkristinaxxx]

When i had a few riding lessons last year on a horse i was sharing, i found it very difficult to keep my hands still. So my riding instructor tied 2 peices of string to the front D rings. The strings were the same length
(The peices of string had knots at the end so they didnt slips completely through my hands)
The idea was for me to hold on to these whilst holding onto the reins aswell. When you pulled up, the string would be tight and I could hold my hands would be still. When the string was slacking my hands would be all over the place.
It took about 2 lessons trotting alot to get the hang of it but it improved my hand position 100%

[Izod1360]

my old RI told me to keep my pinkies on the horses neck and i could feel just how much my hands moved it trot. it helped me to keep the in one spot.

[Bay Mare]

try hooking your small finger on each hand under a neck strap. it will stop your hands rising to far and easy to remove when you want to slow down.

A balance strap (attached to the D rings) is even better because you don't have to stretch forward to reach it and you can keep your hands in a 'correct' position :)

[Retty]

Couple of tips that might help:

When riding pretend you are holding a tea tray and you are trying not to drop any of the cups (sounds daft but helped me!)

When I first started to canter I tried a neck strap but found that it tipped me too far forwards which unbalanced me a bit, so I put a spare leather strap from D ring to D ring and held onto that and the reins which kept me upright, gave me a bit of confidence (another thing to hold onto!) and stopped me grabbing the reins and slowing the horse up.

Hope this helps :)