How to Ride a Horse Bareback

If you're looking for a new challenge with riding, you might want to explore riding bareback -- that is, riding without a saddle. It's a great exercise in learning how to maintain your balance, and with proper safety precautions, can be both fun and exciting!

Steps

1. Seek the guidance of an experienced rider or instructor to supervise your foray into bareback riding.
   
   
2. Understand that it is important to try this on the right horse. Some horses throw you up higher than others. A smooth-gaited horse is best -- like a Peruvian Paso. Also, learning to ride bareback can be made a lot less painful by riding a horse with a broad back and low withers.
   
   
3. Focus on where you want to go with your eyes. Do not look down at your horse or you may become unbalanced.
   
   
4. Look, leg, rein. Before you use the reins to ask for a turn, turn your head to look where you want to go, a horse can feel the slightest shifts in your balance. Once you have looked, use your legs to reinforce the balance-shift signal you've already given the horse. After following this step, use the rein. (An experienced horse feeling you look and/or use your leg will likely start the motions before you've even moved the reins!)
   
   
5. Learn to sink your heels deep! It will help you maintain your balance on horseback with or without a saddle. You may need to use this simple exercise to gain the needed flexibility: Place the balls of your feet on the edge of a step and slowly force your heels down below the balls of your feet. Repeat daily as needed until keeping your heels low while riding feels natural.
   
   
6. Learn to ride balanced at a walk, trot and canter in a saddle but without the stirrups. Have your instructor walk or lunge with you at first so that you can focus on balancing. Start at a walk and stay there for several days before trying anything faster. Practice for short periods of 15 minutes or less.
   
   
7. Make sure to use a bareback pad, but choose one without stirrups. A regular saddle has a rigid frame that keeps it from sliding under the horses belly when you put pressure in a stirrup, but a bareback pad is too flexible...if you start to fall and try to right yourself by using the stirrups on a bareback pad, you could slide under the horse and be injured. Using a bareback pad will still help get you used to riding without a saddle, because it gives you a better grip than the horses bare back would. Choose a bareback pad that you're comfortable with, as long as it doesn't have stirrups.
   
   
8. Learn that if you ride for any length of time, you should be prepared to sit down when you get off the horse. The muscles in your thighs will not support you. You will have used those muscles you have not used before. Ouch!
   
   
9. Get in the habit of riding so that your calves don't even touch the horse's sides. This will force you to gain your balance and not depend on your legs to keep you upright.
   
   
10. Use a stirrup leather without the stirrups, strapped around the base of the horse's neck, to hold onto if you feel you may lose your balance. Alternatively, you can rely on the horse's mane, which will not hurt it. Whatever you do, do not use the reins to regain your balance, as that will upset and/or confuse the horse.

Tips

• Go by your instinct. Don't lean over too far; judge your own abilities.
  
  
• Try to move with the horse, because if you try to move against it you will fall off.
  
  
• If you fall off, try to roll so you can get away from the horse's feet. Rolling will also reduce the impact of the fall.
  
  
• When going downhill, lean back as far as you think necessary, and when going up, lean forward a bit.
  
  
• Start out in a place the horse is familiar with. Don't go out on the road or in the pasture the first few times. Try to stick with an arena, and when you do eventually expand your riding area, make sure someone knows where you are going to be riding.
  
  
• If you seem to be slipping a lot on your horse's back or if your horse has very high, uncomfortable withers, try riding with a bareback pad at first. It cinches on just like a western saddle, and can help you keep your balance while still feeling close to your horse.

Warnings

• Avoid the temptation to clench your heels or calves into the horse's sides in an attempt to keep your balance, because that will just encourage your horse to speed up.
  
  
• Don't ride up or down very steep hills because you'll be surprised how easy it is to slip.
  
  
• Don't try riding bareback at the trot or lope until you have very good balance and tons of riding experience.
  
  
• Your horse may be alarmed at first when you climb on without a saddle.
  
  
• Some horses will start trotting if you let them get too fast going downhill, so keep the reins tight (but don't yank on the horse's mouth).
  
  
• Wear a helmet.