Heel Fly said:
If I'm understanding you RAB it doesn't matter. There are a couple of reasons, other then personal pref. , that trainers use the romal reins. One is that you can cheat a little more with them, another is that it is custom for bridle horses to be ridden with them. But either way your hands should neither be way up in the air or down by your knees. Try sometime to really pay attention to what happens to your body when you move your hands way down. Most of the time your shoulders will drop and roll forward, your eyes focus on your horses head instead of where you're going and your hips roll foreward causing you to lose all contact with your seat therefore causing you to just be riding with your hands. Now do the same for up to high you end up leaning back and kicking your feet forward. The older I get the more I realize how much of what is wrong with my horse is caused by the way I ride. :???:
No your not understanding me. Sorry Im not very slick when it comes to putting stuff into words and writing them down.
When I start colts I keep my hands lower for the most part than I do on a finished horse. Your right about how really low hands throws your weight forward and puts you out of position. Im not riding with my hands by my knees but I do keep them lower at first because I find it helps the colts with his head position.
Example I bit up my colts at Like Ed Connell. My reins are tied low about where the cinch rings are or where my knees would be if I was riding the colt.
Now I do it a little different than Ed Connel because by this time my colt is pretty good as far as groundwork goes. So when I bit them up I also have a halter and lead rope on them. I get the horse to walk circles around me while he is bited up.
This way if he gets over the bit or starts to hollow out his back and pull his hindquarters along with his front I can cause him to speed up his walk a little bit and engage his hindquarters more so he doesnt get all strung out.
But in general I find its easier for the colts to learn this if the reins are tied low instead of high, say tied to the saddle horn.
But what im saying is that nothing is written in stone. I dont think I have ever used the exact same steps or techniques to train any two horses because there all a little different.
All I was saying was that I did not disagree with what others on here had wrote because I can think of circumstances where they would be right.
Plus its really hard to talk about training horses on this forum because unless you write a book its really easy for other people to take what you say the wrong way and I really think there was a cetain amount of that going on in this thread. Example maybe when I read their posts I was visualizing it different than you. It would be so much easier for us to all talk about horsemanship if we were all riding together and could just show the other person what we meant.
LOLs I dont like or use split reins because I rope and im not used to them and would probable be dropping them. The Romel is handy for me because its a solid rope rein and the quirt on the end comes in handy every now and then.