I have difficulty keeping my shoulders back during transitions & spooks. What exercises do you suggest?

Question

I have difficulty keeping my shoulders back during transitions & spooks. What exercises do you suggest?

Answer 1

It just takes a lot of practice and it will get better with every day that you ride.  Think about keeping your posture straight up and down over the horse... you should have a straight line from your ear through your shoulder to your hip to your heel.  To do that, not only do you need to keep your shoulders back and heels down, you need to get comfortable with your seat.  If you have ever seen dressage, those riders have a very secure seat and use seat aids for everything.  Practice keeping a really deep seat... that means doing a lot of sitting trot and a lot of deep seated canter.  So much of hunt seat is two point and half seat that a lot of beginner hunt seat riders have trouble with doing the full seat stuff.  And it's natural to lean forward when you want your horse to go forward, so it's easy to develop the bad habit of letting your shoulders come forward as you ask your horse to transitition up to a trot or canter.  Instead of bringing your body forward when you ask for a transition, try to bring your seat forward using your butt in your saddle to push the horse forward.  When your butt goes forward, your shoulders will naturally go back.  It's sort of like using a half halt with every stride to encourage your horse forward... that doesn't make much sense, but it's sort of the same motion.  You can practice keeping your seat in your saddle by putting a piece of paper between your butt and your saddle and trying to keep it pinned there during the sitting trot and canter.

If someone can watch you ride, they'll be able to give you good pointers on what you're doing well and what you're doing wrong.  It's sometimes hard to explain things well on the internet since I can't see you ride.  Just keep working at it!

Answer 2

Keep your heels down and think of leaning back.  It just takes practice.  You probably lean forward when you ride, which is typical of hunt seat trained riders (in the US), and of beginners, in general.