One of my biggest pet peeves is a rider with what I call “piano hands”. That is when the rider’s wrists are folded down as if they are playing a piano. The ide- al situation is having a straight line from our elbows through the reins to the horse’s mouth. This hand position allows our horse to feel contact with the slight- est movement back of our elbows or better yet our horse can feel contact and release just from closing and opening our hands. With our elbows in and our thumbs up, we lever ourselves down into the saddle. This helps balance our horse by moving our weight back where it should be.
I’m no Liberace... I
by JEFF COOK
n my business, I get lots of questions about body positioning and how it affects the horse. Pretty much every movement we make affects our horse one way or another. Horses are acutely sensitive to our body move- ments and the way our weight shifts on their back.
When we go piano hands, our elbows tend to move out away from our body and we start to lean forward causing the horse to get out of balance. Horses carry around 65% of their weight over their front feet so to move with collection, they must shift some of their weight back. If we are leaning forward, our horse has to deal with our imbalance as well.
Also when our elbows are tucked into our sides and our seat is down, we are much more secure and able to handle a jump or buck.
Often riders will assume the piano hands position in an attempt to shorten their reins. My suggestion is to shorten your reins enough so that you can easily make contact and release contact immediately. Horses don’t learn from pressure but from the release of pressure.
So, let’s leave the piano hands to the musicians.
Jeff Cook and his wife Kelsey own Dream Horse Az in Tucson https://
www.facebook.com/DreamHorseAZ/
The drawing of “piano hands” is from a friend; Michael Slotwinski and his website is:
http://www.slotsartstudio.com/
HORSE & AG MAGAZINE I OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2019 5
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