hi it's josie and today i thought i would share with you
how i warm up the very beginning of my rides with my horses so i have literally just gotten
on spider and we have just walked half the arena and a half circle i always do 10 minutes of walk
on my horse in the first five minutes of that 10 minutes i work on myself to help me be a little
bit looser because i'm not getting any younger and i stiffen up a little bit i would like my
horse to be supple so i need to do my best to be supple for him so i let him walk no contact
nice walk just walking whilst he's doing this at the moment he's actually lubricating his
joints within the joints the joint fluid is starting to move around and that will help
him stay sound for longer and i can then work on myself so you only do this obviously guys if your
horses are safe to do it on so one of the first things i do i often feel very tight through here
so what i will do whilst he's walking is i'll just get this leg up here and i'm going to
stretch my driver it's a little bit like what a um runner does after before and after run so i'm
trying to stretch this bit here and my thigh that helps me get a long leg i do both sides
and today i can actually feel that my left driver feels a little bit tighter than my right
and when i let my leg down i can actually feel that my legs feel a lot longer
i do that a few times depending on how stiff i am the other one i do which i love to try and
help to um get my ball and socket joint nice and loose so that i can move with my horse as i ride
towards the camera is i take my legs away from the saddle you can do one at a time if you like if it
if it's too hard to do two but i do two and i want you to notice that i take it away from
right up the top i don't just kick my legs out and let my thighs and knees flat on the saddle
spider's blowing out there that means he's relaxing mentally
doing this one really helps me feel like i settle my pelvis right down into the saddle
and i can feel my seat bones i'll see if i can do it going away from the camera for you a different
angle might help some of you realize what i'm doing so i'm taking them away it actually woahl
move sideways mate it actually i want to use the word hurts but it doesn't hurt hurt but
it's actually uncomfortable here when i do this i can feel it right here right in my joint there i
also tend to be quite stiff in my ankles so i will do some ankle circles to loosen my ankles up left
and right what i do one side i do the other you can do them both together good boy this way mate
and the other thing i will do to try and rotate my thigh so it doesn't sit like this because that's
not right is when i take it off i'll turn my knee in and bring my thigh down do that this
side take it off turn my knee in and drop my thigh because i really should be with my knees pointing
forward not out like that so if you find yourself riding like that you need to do this exercise
i'm letting you in on all my secrets now i also tend to collapse through the right side of my body
so i will just reach up and stretch and what i'm actually trying to stretch
is between my hip and my rib cage here so i tend to do this sorry i'm going to exaggerate it i tend
to do this so i'm trying to stretch up nicely here good boy walk on and i do obviously when the horse
is walking this all helps with your balance i will do my left one as well and my right one
and like without going like that i just stretch nicely as if somebody's got a little bungee cord
around my wrist and they're just pulling it up to the sky so i do that for the first five
minutes that my horse is walking and then for the next five minutes i'll pick up my stirrups
and i start to work on my horse's suppleness in the walk so how do i do that i pick up a
nice soft contact with his mouth just a soft contact so if i had a cotton thread it and
he lent against it or i pulled it would break once i've got him nicely into the contact like
that i'm going to do some head to the wall leg yield good boy good boy and then walk him on
and tip his nose to the wall and then ask him off my right leg good boy this is all suppling
exercises for him what you do one way you do the other you work both sides of your horse
nose to the wall and get off my left leg whoops
now what happened there i'm quite happy to tell you is i had no right rein so he
well it's not that i had no right rein i had i didn't have enough right rein and so he moved
out through his right shoulder what i should have done is got him to the left and then asked him off
my left leg that's it and now he's staying on the track good boy i don't expect these to be perfect
firstly because he's warming up and that's the purpose of these exercises is to help him
warm up become supple and become on the aids and start listening to the aids so nose to the wall
and ask him off my left leg good boy good boy good boy and then walk him on straight good boy
what i will do then is i will usually pick a point and on my arena i pick a footprint or a
colored piece of something and i will just do a turn on the forehand in motion around it i don't
expect my horse to be perfect but i just like to know that he's going to move off that leg
and then what i do one way remember we do the other so i pick something i've got a little
mound in my vision and here we go i'm going to go around that little mound of soft fall good boy so
i can feel he's a bit stiffer off of my left leg than he is on my right leg and that showed up in
the leg yield nose to the wall as well hop off my left leg please spider oh the flies are friendly
here today guys so we do a few of those off just big soft circles i don't mind as long as he's
listening to my aids good boy straight ahead turn him this way and ask him off of this leg
once i feel he's comfortable with that i pick that i pick another spot
and then i'll ask him to go around his haunches good boy a few steps and ride straight on
a few steps and ride straight on good boy
i'm going to walk away from you and i'm going to do one on the other side i've got my little
spot in my eyeball which i know we're going to go around and as we get there i slow him
with the outside rein ask him to step around it good boy good boy and he can go straight ahead
i will throw in a halt good and i walk on good boy and then
when we're getting towards the end of his five minutes of loosening up i will actually start
to go go around the haunches now let's turn on the forehand good let's go straight ahead
let's change this let's go around turn on the forehand good boy let's go around your haunches
good i hope that helps you out and i hope that gives you some ideas of things you can do with
your horse we always walk our horses when we first get on them to warm them up and allow
all of their joints and muscles to get ready to work i work on myself for the first five minutes
working on my suppleness and then i work on my horse's suppleness for the last five minutes and
that is ten minutes of walk work done and we've both got something out of it thanks for watching