Opening Your Hip Angle

  With riding, everyone is looking for the same basic end result, we want to ride well and have our horses go well. Instructors all teach differently and use different lingo. Sometimes you may hear something from an instructor that really strikes a cord with you. It may be the same basic thing you have heard over and over, but when said in a new/different way it all of a sudden makes sense to you.

I have had this happen many times, often when riding with instructors that have similar backgrounds or common basic riding theories. Sometimes it will happen when you ride with someone with totally different riding experience and knowledge than what you are used to. I think it is best to have a consistent instructor you get along with and who suits your learning style, then you can take the occasional clinic. I think this gets you a solid base to work from and then you can get more skills along the way.

I often have found that when I ride with new people I really focus on what they are telling me try to do what they want, all while forsaking what I know and how I normally ride. This is one reason I don't really like clinics, I don't ride well in them, I am not good at integrating what they are telling me into what I usually do. For me it's kind of all or nothing. However, several days later when I have had time to work on my own, I can incorporate things the instructor had been working on. My light bulb moments come days after the clinic or even after regular lessons, I recently had this experience in Vermont.

A friend, and former team mate of Denny's, Don Sachey, came up to the farm to visit with Denny. We were showing him the different horses we had and when I brought Union up, Denny suggested I get on so Don could see him. This was right after I had my fall at Plantation and we were trying to figure out how to get Union to be more rideable and more a part of the conversation. (He tends to be a little too bold and can take over).

It wasn't a clinic situation so I felt like we could have more of a conversation about what the problems were and some solutions. There was one small thing Don said that has made a big difference in my riding. When I was coming to a small cross rail, I needed to slightly move up to the distance. Don said when I did that I slightly closed my hip angle and that I shouldn't change my hip angle coming to the fence. I didn't really think of this again during the ride, but a couple days later when I was riding with Denny, he said to think about what Don said about my hip angle. We both agreed that this is something I probably do that we hadn't really noticed.

When you want to move up to the distance, you want the horse to lengthen its stride, but not get on its forehand. The horse needs to stay up and push off more from behind. Also, when you need to shorten coming to the fence you want to sit up and ask the horse to essentially collect its stride, again keeping the balance uphill. The more you move your upper body the more it effects the horses balance, if your shoulders come forward the last few strides, you are changing the horses balance and putting more weight on their front end.

When I really though about this it made a ton of sense to me and I really believe when I was moving up to distances, I closed my hip. It isn't that I leaned or dropped the horse, I just went with the horse too much and this allowed him to get low with his front end and created a harder situation for the horse to jump out of. Instead of thinking, don't close your hip, I would think, open you hip. Not a huge difference, but Andrea Waldo told me it's better to give yourself something to do than to try and tell yourself what not to do. When I started thinking open my hip to move up to the distance, I could feel the horse move up and forward, even over tiny fences! Also, when I wanted to wait, opening my hip put my weight more on the hind end and helped the horse to sit and add. How cool is that? I have been thinking of it even while doing dressage, it is helping me sit up taller and  deeper in the saddle.

 It is so neat how a tiny phrase, that Don probably didn't even think twice about, made such a difference for me. It so often happens that if you aren't really getting something someone has been telling you over and over, when you hear the same thing in a different way it all of a sudden clicks. I usually think shoulders back coming to the fence, I hadn't ever thought about my hip angle when jumping. For whatever reason thinking about my hip angle opening is correcting many of my riding flaws (keeping your shoulders back, sitting tall, sitting deep in the saddle etc).