Connection Starts with Good Posture

Peggy Cummings
My definition of connection is sinking up horse and rider in motion and in order to do that, I have to start out with the rider on the ground. Without a horse getting them aware of what their pattern is of tightening or what their what posture they're using when they're riding that they think is helping them affect the horse.
And if it is affecting the horse in a good way, I show them and get them to understand why it's affecting the horse in a good way. And if it's not, I show them how to change it. And for me, unless I start with a human posture, I can get the horse to soften and I can teach them how to soften the horse.
But when they get hard in their bodies, they will. The horse will equally respond by going back to its bracing patterns. Well, posture is so important because what a horse loses when a rider is stiff on top. And all of us stiffen, even sometimes learning if we really had a great feeling at some point with the horse if we're trying to learn something new, we get stiff.
So when we get stiff, the first thing that goes away from the horses is suspension. And that makes his legs work harder. It makes his back not be able to move the way it should. It prevents accessing the energy of the hind legs and it it prevents the horse from releasing its head and neck and working equally in both directions.
But I thought.
Karen
Bracing was just with your hands. Can you be bracing with your seat and with your upper body?
If you sit in a car, in the car, all of a sudden goes 0 to 60 and you're not ready for it, I guarantee you that you're going to push on the floor of the car with your feet and lean back into the seat. And that's bracing. So what happens.
Karen
When you put your heels down and you're trying to squeeze and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze to go forward?
Peggy
Yeah, The horse doesn't go forward. That's just like a vise grip. He cannot go forward. A £60 child can make £1,000 horse crooked.
Karen
When it's stuck by sort of because don't try not to hit the table.
Peggy
Because that's.
Yeah, there's horses when they feel like they can't move their feet freely or use their back freely or release their head and neck, they will stop moving. You know, they'll be sluggish. And the more they get pushed, the duller sometimes they get or it takes half an hour to warm them up or you can't do them until they let go.
And then you say, Oh, it's ready to ride now. But that's basically not the way to go about it. Other horses, what they do is they rush, they get too speedy because they can't move freely. You know, that's another type of horse and another type of horse turns into what I call a Gumby. You know, they're they're just totally overly flexible through their body.
Very often you see that in gated horses because they get pulled in from the front and shoved forward from behind. And then they they don't they can't really use their thoracic sling, lift their back and release their neck. But every single discipline has their bylaws and is going to call it by laws or things that they've gone through that are traditional or that they think that's going to make the performance in that discipline be the best.
But every horse that I know has four legs, meaning the tail, and they've got to release the head, and neck, be able to equally arc their whole body in both directions, and where one-sided the horse is one-sided. So there'll be a side that they don't do it quite as well. But if there's any pressure added onto their head or onto their hard girth area, in other words, pressure means pull or push.
It limits their ability to free themselves and free their motion.