How to Hold the Reins & Steer a Horse (WESTERN BASICS)

You’ll see lasting results for one simple reason: It’s you that makes the change, not your horse. This is brilliant! Who wrote this? Oh, it was me… “What I’d Teach Your Horse,” my book. But seriously, folks… If you want to see lasting changes, huge changes, and you want to see those changes fast, you need to get better with your hands. 99.99999% of the folks out there need to get better with their hands… and this means you. So what follows is a bunch of tips and tricks that will teach you the muscle memory it takes to get better with your hands. You’ll learn how to pick them up and to drop them. You’ll learn your timing and your horse will thank you.

We are going to practice here a turn to the right, so everything we do during this video, during this exercise, is going to be a turn to the right. Obviously, all you want to do is reverse everything later when you then practice and build your muscle memory going to the left. Sometimes when you’re training your horse, you want to use one hand on the reins. Other times you want to use two hands on the reins. This particular exercise will help you develop the muscle memory that you need for a one rein exercise.

The first thing I want you to do is pretend that you’re sitting on your horse. You’ve got one hand on the outside seam of your pants, the other hand is loosely holding the reins. The reins are down on the horse’s neck. There’s a pronounced droop in the reins. Now I want you to walk around the room practicing that. Walk around like this. Okay, this hand holds the reins down on the horse’s neck. It does not move. This hand holds your outside seam. That’s the way you start and that’s the way you end. That’s the first step of this exercise and it’s the last step. You will begin like this; you will end like this. Okay, so you’ve got your right hand on your pants outside seam. You’ve got your left hand down on the reins on the horse’s neck.

When you’re ready to start your turn, the first thing you do is raise your left hand up off the horse’s neck high into the sky. Let’s practice that together: Left hand to the sky. Down, up, down, up, down. It goes straight to the sky. It doesn’t go to the left; it doesn’t go to the right; it doesn’t go forward; it doesn’t go backward. The left hand goes straight like an elevator to the sky. Okay, next step: You’ve got your left hand up in the air, your other hand is on your seam, right? Take your right hand and grasp the other side of the reins. The right side of the reins. Bring the reins directly back to your side. It’s just a choo-choo Charlie move. Okay, so practice that. Take it off the seam. Reach forward, grab the reins. Bring it back to your side, directly to your site. It’s just forward and backward. So now you’ve got two moves: You got “left hand goes straight to the sky”… right hand grabs the other rein and comes directly back. Like this. Now, walk around practicing that. Just like this. Just like this… So now you got one hand in the air and you got the other hand on the rein and you brought it back to your side.

The next step is to simply bring the left hand down, back towards the horse’s neck. Right hand holds pressure until the horse gives and then, when it’s time to let go, I want you to flutter your fingers away and push the rein down and away. Don’t drop it. If you drop it, the horse will learn to start jerking his head. Practice the steps again and again and again and again. It’s very simple: Left hand goes up; right hand goes forward, grabs the other rein, comes directly back against your side; left hand goes down; right hand releases when the horse gives to the bit. Relax. Reward your horse. Breathe. Think about the next step. Let’s practice those steps. You’ve got to do it a thousand times if not 10,000 times until you build the necessary muscle memory.

You begin and end exactly the same way: You begin with your left hand grasping the rein as it sits on the mane. The right hand grasps the outside seam of your pants and when you’re ready to initiate your turn, left hand goes directly up like an elevator. It doesn’t go to the right or to the left or forward or backwards. It goes straight up towards the sky. Your right hand grasps the right rein with your thumb in an upward position. You don’t bring it to the side. You don’t turn your hand at all, it just has to be exactly as you see with my thumb upwards. The right hand then comes directly back so that your elbow rests on your side. Left hand then goes down against the horse’s mane. Right hand relaxes and throws away the rein when the horse does what you want, when it gives to the bit. Then you’re back in the same position as you started. You’re back again with your right hand on the outside seam of your pants. Your left hand is on the rein on the mane.

Here’s what it would look like in real time. If I realize that I’m not close enough to the horse’s mouth with my grip, I want to keep the same amount of pressure the entire time. The way I do that is I use the other hand to take up that same amount of pressure, to take it away from the right hand in this case. The right hand slides forward, gets another grip closer to the horse’s mouth, and then the left hand relaxes, goes back to where it was, resting on the mane. Watch. Let’s say the hand’s back here. The left hand has to pick up that amount of pressure momentarily while the right hand slides forward. It then takes up that amount of pressure. The left hand goes back against the horse’s mane.

If I realize that my hand is too close to the horse’s mouth and I want to change the positioning of my hand on that rein, then I want to use the left hand to take up the pressure that the horse feels in his mouth momentarily as I allow the right hand to slide back and it takes up that same amount of pressure. Left hand goes back to where it was on the mane. When the horse finally gives to that bit pressure, I release entirely. Relax just long enough that you hear something, that you hear the traffic, that the horse is whinnying, or your friends chatter… Doing so will relax your body just long enough that the horse will feel that relaxation and know it’s the end of that particular exercise.

Once you drop the reins away, you want to count three steps out of your horse before you repeat the entire process. You don’t have to do that when you first start because you’re just learning this exercise and you’re going to fumble around naturally. But as you build your muscle memory, you want to try and do it every three steps out of the horse. So your left hand goes up, right hand grasps the right rein, comes back as the left hand goes down. The horse gives to the bit. You push the bit away. Hand back on the seam. Let your horse take three steps… one, two, three… then repeat the process.

At first this stuff’s going to look ugly as sin, but after a while you’ll get practiced at this and you’ll you’ll start to own it, okay? You’ll get muscle memory. You’ll understand how to make your moves more efficient, and this will start to look pretty to everybody. Don’t worry about how silly you look when you first start. Just make sure that you get the movements correct and the… the fluidity, the ballet, will come in time with practice.

When you let the rein go, make sure that you fan your fingers out like you’re reverse milking a cow. Push your pinky out and then your ring finger and then your middle finger and then your index finger and your thumb so that you go… you fan your fingers out as you let the reins go. Every time you release the reins, that’s your reward to the horse. You release the pressure on his mouth. That tells him he did a good job. That tells him that’s what you’re looking for. But remember, you need to see a pronounced droop in those reins as proof to you, the horse, and the rest of the world that you’re not applying any pressure to his mouth, that you’re not actually riding the brakes the whole time. So get in the habit of holding one hand on the outside seam, the other hand down around the horse’s neck. Once you get used to all these things, once you’ve built the muscle memory, then you can adapt as you see fit. But until then, take it from me, these tips will help you build the muscle memory that you need to build a better horse.