Equestlife – Everything Equestrian

Your earliest memory of riding bareback was probably you as a kid at the fair, riding on the back of a pony without a saddle. These types of fond memories are fun and enjoyable and may have re-sparked your interest in riding bareback now. While having a saddled horse is the most common way to ride, many people wonder how you can ride a horse without a saddle? The answer is with bareback riding, and a lot of skills in balance, strength, coordination, and communication. If you can get these skills down and have a horse that is comfortable with having you without a saddle, then riding bareback can offer you and your horse a sense of adventure and freedom. What Are the Benefits of Riding Bareback? While a lot of us have grown accustomed to seeing a saddle on a horse, there are some major benefits to going without one. Of course, not having to spend the time in saddling up is nice but riding bareback offers so much more than this. Not only will it help you become a better rider in terms of strength and balance, but it will develop almost every other area that is essential to the relationship you have with your horse. ⦁ You will improve your balancing capabilities. When you ride bareback, there is less gripping involved and if you usually have an uneven (which is bad) posture in the saddle, it will become apparent. This means you will have to work on sitting square on your horse’s back without leaning to one side or the other; balancing yourself in the exact center. The consequences of not balancing correctly means you will be hitting the ground swiftly and hard. ⦁ You will develop a greater awareness of your horse. Without a saddle, you are going to feel your horse’s every move. How their muscles shift, how their hooves hit the ground, and how their shoulders work to drive them forward. You will develop a very keen awareness of how your horse moves, giving you a much better feel for them as a whole. ⦁ You will have much better communication with your horse. When you ride bareback, you are going to actually feel your horse’s intentions and they are going to feel every single movement from you. A simple shift in your weight, a little pressure from your thighs, and a squeeze of the calves are all going to go much further without the saddle in the way. Your horse will eventually respond to these subtle touches without heavy aids. ⦁ Your strength will improve greatly. It takes a lot of work to ride bareback as you need to keep your positioning correct, you will need to constantly sit up straight, and stay on the horse with sheer balance. All of this will make use of various muscles in your core and your legs. Riding bareback for a long period of time is going to strengthen these muscles and make riding easier. ⦁ Your confidence will skyrocket. As you develop better trust in your riding capabilities and in your horse, your confidence levels are going to rise. If you can ride without a saddle, riding with one is going to be very easy. This is because you’ve been able to fine-tune the skills that are needed with horse riding without the barrier of the saddle in the way. While saddles are great for assisting the rider in learning how to distribute weight and use leg and hand cues to steer, signal, and stop the horse, riding bareback will help you become a better rider in numerous skills that are vital to horse riding. Is It Bad to Ride a Horse Without a Saddle? While bareback riding is a fantastic addition to your training as a rider, it isn’t necessarily suitable for every horse and can be bad for ones that are not trained in bareback riding, meaning that they haven’t been trained in a pen and exposed to this style of riding. Here is a general guideline of when it is okay and when it is not okay to ride bareback. ⦁ If you have a slender horse, their back is going to have no protection from you. ⦁ If you are slender as well, your seat bones are going to dig into your horse pretty hard and end up hurting them regardless of how well you ride. ⦁ If your horse has an under-muscled or underdeveloped back, it can be really uncomfortable for the rider and the horse will find the rider’s weight and bone pressure hard to cope with. ⦁ If you have a “plumper” bottom and your horse is physically built and wider, you can get away with riding bareback for short rides that are done on occasion. ⦁ You have access to bareback pads which provide cushioning to you and your horse. This may allow you to take your horse out on small jaunts without any pain or injury. The main reason that riding bareback or without a saddle is considered “bad” is because of how physics works with your body and the horse’s movement. With a saddle, your body weight is evenly distributed across the entire backside of your horse, but without it, your seat bones are instead concentrated on a very small area on the horse’s spine. If the pressure is high enough, you can cause pain and tissue damage to your horse’s muscle fibers. The pressure can also crush capillaries and interrupt circulation which results in bruising. The key takeaway here is that if you have good experience with riding bareback and have a trained horse that has the physical composition to carry you, it is possible to ride bareback without any injury to your horse. However, it is recommended that you limit the number and duration of bareback rides and always monitor your horse for soreness when you do take them out. How Do You Get on a Horse Without a Saddle? It is recommended that if you are planning on getting on a horse without a saddle, that you have someone nearby spotting you. It can be very difficult to get onto your horse without a saddle if you are new to it. ⦁ Make sure that you have a sturdy mounting block or someone who can lift your leg up for you. There will be no stirrups, so you will need a lift. ⦁ You will need to bring your leg all the way up and over the horse. If you do not have a mounting block or someone else to help you with this, you will need to do a skip motion to gain momentum. Here is how this works. ⦁ Place your left leg in front of your right while facing towards your horse’s bottom. ⦁ Grab a tuft of mane right before their withers with your left hand. ⦁ Do a skip motion towards the back of your horse. ⦁ In the middle of the skip motion, throw your right leg up towards the horse’s bottom. ⦁ Use the momentum of your leg to swing the lower half of your body up onto the horse. ⦁ Next, use your right hand to grab your horse’s withers and use it to pull your upper body onto the horse. The above steps should be done in one fluid motion. Once you are up on your horse, you will need to square off your body and position it in the center of the horse’s back where the saddle would normally be. You can check our alignment by looking at your shoulders, hips, heels, and ears. Then drape your legs down naturally against your horse’s sides without clamping them down as you will need to use balance to stay upright. If you ever feel like you are losing your balance, do not clench your legs inward as this will cause your horse to move forward. Also, do not lean back as your legs get pushed forward, as this can cause you to fall off your horse if your horse tries to move at a faster speed.

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