Contact With Your Horse

I was asked this question by a fellow coach recently and thought I'd share the answer with everyone.

"If you had to describe "Contact" to a new rider and riders looking to improve what would you say?" 

 A couple of thoughts first:

 You can have pressure without contact (imagine standing in a dark alley with a large stranger).

 You can not have contact without pressure.

 To me contact is using as little pressure as you can to communicate your message clearly.  

Clearly is a key point.

No matter what the end goal is whether to ride english on full contact or western on loose reins, the communication has to be clear.

 

 In the beginning training if the contact between riders hands and horses mouth is inconsistent it's like talking on the phone with static or a loose connection.

Remember the game telephone when you were kids.  One person would whisper a sentence to the next person who would pass it on to the next person and so on down the line. The end result was a sentence that bore no resemblance to the original communication. Inconsistent contact between the riders hands (first person) and the horses mouth (last person) has the same results.

 The same could be said of too much contact (I don't mean a strong consistent block but rather contact/more contact which is common in rising trot or non-following hands as opposed to the previous contact/slack which can also be caused by non-following hands). Imagine this time an army sergeant yells a sentence. The next person yells what they think they  heard and so on...

Even though each person could hear because the communication was loud (strong) there is still misunderstanding.  We all handle being yelled at differently and it's no different with horses. Some try and guess what we want, some try and ignore us, some get upset, some get mad and so on.

Here are a few ideas to teach contact and its importance to riders.

First would be the telephone game cause it's usually funny.

Second find a friend and ride each other (standing up).

One person is the "horse", the second person stands behind and puts a hand on each shoulder and steers them around. After a few turns the "rider" takes away their outside hand on a turn. The "horse" will drift out if it was staying 

between the hands. This clearly demonstrates necessity of outside rein contact in turns. Even more so than inside rein.

Another way to help riders feel consistent contact is for one person to hold the bit and move it like a horse while the other hold the reins and tries to follow the contact.  The "horse" can offer feedback. The "horse" can also become difficult. The "rider" can also work on squats while following movement to simulate rising trot. These get a person relaxing their elbows and following movement without the tension of being on a horse.  You can practice with anyone. You can also have the rider who's following well try things like tensing their toes and their "horse" will probably tell them they felt a difference in the bit.

Hope this helps.

Let me know if you need any clarification.

Trish