looking for practical advice on how to stay out of your horses way, in particular their face, during a run. i'm patterning my older gelding & he tends to want to do things on his own, and i'm used to riding 2 handed for the sake of keeping him correct. i loped him through today, using just my legs and hardly touching the reins (just guiding where needed) and he worked much better. bc i'm used to riding green horses i find it challenging to ride 1 handed around the barrel - just a habit on my part. sitting there and doing "nothing" is challenging, although im not OCD ?? i have a tendency to want to keep him correct all the time instead of letting him figure it out. for this book i'm writing ?? if you could kindly share with me how exactly you mannage to ride like a jockey insead of a trainer lol if ya know what i mean, hand positioning etc. and anythig y'all think would be helpful - i would be greatful. thank you ???? ??

also, for reference; this horse is seasoned, as mentioned and has a reining & team roping background, so he's very broke with a good handle. if his jockey can just mannage to give him his head and let him work like she taught him, we'll be good ??

The hardest thing to do is teaching the rider how to ride. 

Horses have been perfecting how to run and turn since they have been born. 

You need to get out of trainer mode and let your horse work. Then you can see where he needs to improve.

With one of my horses, I'm constantly telling myself during my run "keep your **** hands down".

My bad habit is to have my hand position too high, and with this horse, she'll stick her nose in the air and tattle on me when I do it. If I keep my hand down where it belongs, then she's fine.

It's a constant mental focus for the rider to maintain good position. So there's not way to "exactly tell you" how to do it. You just gotta do it.

Figure 8 two rubber bands 1 end to your spot on each side of the rein, the other end hold in your hands. 

Go fast enough you HAVE to hold on? Ok, I don't know - BUT what was eye opening to me was I put someone else (my 8 year old daughter) on my horse and my mare took her thru the pattern more beautifully than she had ever done with me "helping" her.  Made me realize she KNOWS what to do and I just needed to trust her to turn. Easeier said than done sometimes and some days I still struggle with helping her, but I am doing so much better.

The best thing for me to do is that when I am approaching a barrel in a run, I tell myself "Drop your hand and let him work."  I have the sweetest, workiest horse around, but I really need to trust him and literally drop my hand on his neck.

Have some one walk the pasture/arena/driveway , whatever it takes and yell, scream, scold, beg, plead (again,whatever it takes) to use your seat and legs to go around the barrel, the dirt clod, the rock, the clump of grass until you wear out the calves of your favorite riding jeans....then walk and trot the pattern working on  muscle memory of hand on the neck maybe to really teach your body what you want it to do...

This was our first run together before the "add more leg!!" sessions. Poor guy wanted to go back to OK!!!

2nd pic after about 2 months of Add More Leg bootcamp, me crying and swearing I was going to quit during most of it and 3rd photo after feeling what he could do if I didn't quit and in fact ADDED MORE LEG, LOL!!!  And finding the bit that you trust him in and that doesn't snatch his face when you maybe fall back into old habits