To ride your best, you must put your mind over mechanics. By that I mean, rather than obsessing over the mechanics of cueing, use your brainpower to develop three essentials of good horsemanship: balance, decision-making, and consistency.
I’ve done a little of everything, including reining, jumping, all-around, and more. Each discipline has its own way of asking a horse to do something. In reining you take your leg off to stop. In Western pleasure, you put your leg on. Ultimately, you can whistle Dixie to get a horse to stop—as long as you’re consistent in doing so.
Riders often confuse themselves by continually changing their mechanics based on what they most recently learned from a clinic or an article. I tell my youths and non-pros, you don’t have to ride…
