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Holding the reins requires strong posture and a consistent grip to avoid agitating the horse's bit. Hold the reins properly for riding with help from a riding instructor in this series on horseback riding.
Hi, my name is Lisa. I'm an instructor here at Enterprise Farms, and today I'm going to be talking about how to properly hold your reins. You want to make sure that your wrists aren't too far out or too far in. So, you want to have a nice straight line down your forearm from the rein to the bit. The other thing you want to do is you don't want to hang on the horse's mouth, ever. Sometimes, insecure riders tend to use the reins as another, as a way to maintain their seat instead of using strong legs and strong seat. You don't want to hang on the horse's mouth and agitate them or pull too much. Let's see, the other thing you're going to want to be able to do is shorten and lengthen your reins easily. If you don't have to shorten them that much, you could just crawl down the rein a little bit, and if you wanted to lengthen them, you could just let them slide through your fingers. Or if you need to like, if you need to shorten your reins a lot, you could just, you could hold the top by the buckle, slide down, get a hold and then return to your two handed position and this would be good for like jumping and then to lengthen you could just go back down. Some other things to consider, you want to make sure that your hands are always even. Most reins have this braiding here so I usually count the braids and try to keep them even that way so that when I do give rein cues, they're very clear and specific for the horse. If you have a lot of trouble using, with like, holding your reins properly and you're a very visual person, they actually do have colored reins. So, like there would be little colored bands, and that would be like a really good way for somebody who is having a lot of trouble with that to work on making sure that their reins are even, and that is how you would properly hold the reins.
