Today I went to horse riding class and did a bunch of trotting, of course trotting. So, what’s so special for today if I do trotting every week? Because, I did NO stirrups trotting.
Are you wondering what stirrups are? Stirrups are a part of tack (saddle) where you place your foot. It’s a half oval shape cause it’s a little longer than a semicircle. If you have no stirrups, you might be fall off when the horse is cantering or lose your balance.
So, I was trotting as usual in the beginning of any lesson but a few minutes later… My teacher told me to cross my stirrups over each other and do trotting. If your wondering what that looks like, here is a picture.
So, of course it is a little dangerous to ride like this but guess what, I did this while doing posting trot, what’s posting trot? Posting is when you go up and down with the horse’s rhythm and if you’re on the wrong rhythm then you sit for 2 beats. So we kept doing this for a while.
What’s so hard then? You have to use your thighs and core muscles to keep yourself up. With stirrups, it’s way easier cause your foot has something to push all the weight down. Without stirrups, you have nothing to help yourself go up.
A few hours later….
My mom took me and my sister to a equestrian store called GREENHAWK. We were looking for some riding pants and so asked someone in the store. They gave me two pairs which were so tight and it was too uncomfortable to move my leg around. Then they gave me three more pairs. One was way too tight and the other was too long and the last black pair fitted perfectly. We tried some other pairs to see if any of them fit better.
While my mom was looking, I walked around and looked at the other products. There were brushes that were super soft and smooth. There were big balls and buckets for the horses, and a lot of head pieces (for horses and humans). And gloves, saddles, everything was there! Even teddy bears, books, toys for sure. They weren’t missing a single product, even treats were there, what else… Even horse shampoo and paintings, oh… right, to be sure, the paintings can go up to 55 dollars, so really keep that in mind!
So, at last I chose the black pair of pants and after that, I went to the books section and took out a book written by Charlotte Dujardin, the best rider in the world. I looked at the cover and I knew it was a good book. The cover had Charlotte Dujardin’s horse and obviously, she was there in a showing jacket with white gloves. If you want to see it too, here you go.
I decided to buy it but mom thought it had so many words. But at last we did.
The end.
JKJKJKJKJKJK🤣
First, if you want to try this, (No stirrups trotting) Don’t ask your teacher to do this right away. Because 97% chance you will get off balanced and fall off if you’re a new rider. If you have mastered dressage or jumping, you’ve probably mastered this and get bored of it, if your like me, learning, it’s always cool to try.