Keep Your Hands Still! (!)

Although, it's really your 'seat.'  But we'll talk about the hands.

If your hands are flailing about like marlins at the end of the line, 'keep your hands still' is literally as useful as wagging the dog with its tail.  

The hands are unsteady when the seat is unsteady.  You cannot fix your seat by fixing your hands and you can't fix your hands without fixing your seat.  (Not that we ever fix anything, but that's a different topic!)

In the riding relationship, hands are your ears.   Quiet hands are how you hear your horse.  If you're 'doing things' with your hands, you're speaking rather than listening.  If you're doing a lot of things with your hands, you're shouting.  If you're pulling, you're being really rude and your horse is probably looking for a low tree limb somewhere. I like to contemplate the word 'anlehnung' -- from the dressage training pyramid which often gets translated into: connection (acceptance of the bit through acceptance of the aids).   In German, lehnen is to lean and anlehnen is to lean on, to rely on, to be dependent on.  (an == on, go figure.)   Once upon a time in a German dictionary from my distant past, investigating 'Anlehnung,' I found the concept of BUTTRESS. What is a buttress?  It's something useful.  It provides stability and allows things to stand up.   As a rider, am I useful?  am I providing stability?  Am I allowing my horse to stand up? Or am I a freaking mess?

Original pic is at https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu

But what about keeping my hands still?!

If your hands are flying all over without your consent, there is a spot where you can park your hands that is relatively okay.  It's usually very close to the buckles at the front of the English style saddles.  Truth in advertising, there are times I will advise this because this is the lesser evil, but I also let folks know this is a cheat. 

So if you're going to do it, how best to do it?

You'll know it's okay if you don't feel tugging on the reins.  If you feel tugging on the reins, you've got the wrong place.  IE move your hands!  Check if tugging.  If you feel tugging you've got the wrong place.  Rinse repeat until there's no tugging.  

There's a bunch of down sides to this but if you're looking to leave the horse's mouth alone, it's a quick cheat.  Here's some of the downsides:

• you probably don't have a line between your elbow and the horse's mouth
• your arm is no longer oscillating; it's probably stiff
• you may be tipping forward (aka falling)
• you may now be leaning (buttressing?!) into the front of your saddle

All of which takes you out of your seat -- with is the opposite of what you need to quiet your hands for real.

Let's pretend my seat is quiet!  Then what will the hands do?

They oscillate.  

They oscillate because the horse's mouth is oscillating.

It's doing a little ellipse thing up there and, if the Gods are smiling, your elbow is doing the very same little ellipse thing back here at the end of your arm.  The distance between the horse's mouth and your elbow does not change.  

And so your hand looks still.  (!)

This has to do with relative motion.  And it's achieved by letting the bendy parts of your arm bend.  (Yes, ask yourself, "what are the bendy parts of my arm?")

As a concept, here's a spiffy video of a steam engine's mechanics.  There's a couple of rods -- the Union Link and Combination Link, that move a lot like an arm moves.  The steam engine's "Walschaerts Valve Gear" mechanism isn't quite exact but there are elements that are useful.

The links are not the bendy parts.

There is a joint at the top -- the shoulder, and a joint in the middle -- the elbow.   As the shoulder joint articulates, the 'upper arm' (aka Combination Link) moves through the positions of vertical, ahead of vertical, vertical, behind vertical, etc.  When the 'upper arm' is ahead of vertical, the 'elbow' (aka the joint between the Combination Link and Union Link) is open.  The 'arm' is unbent.   When the 'upper arm' is behind vertical, the 'elbow' (aka the joint between the Combination Link and Union Link) is closed.  The 'arm' is most bent the further back the 'elbow' is.   This is the salient piece here: the 'elbow' and the 'shoulder' are free to move.   They both open and close.    

In Centered Riding, a useful image for this is to pretend there is a rubber band connected from your elbow to some imaginary place back by your horse's rump.  This rubber band is also a bit magical.  When the reins take your hands forward, the rubber band disappears so you hands fly forward.  But as soon as there's no forward movement through space, the rubber band brings your elbows back.

Cryptically I will mention that the movement of the bones in space is forward and back while the movement within the bones is forward to the hands and horse's mouth.  And just for fun, I'll sound totally contradictory and mention that in Centered Riding, this ties into the concept of the unbendable arm.  (Which, okay, that sounds like it's totally not the thing to talk about when the whole point here is to bend your arm!  But it's riding, right?) 

In this example, the 'hand' slides back and forth on a line.  In riding, this line would be the line connecting your elbow to the horse's mouth, and because neither your elbow nor the horse's mouth is stationary, your hand doesn't move in a line but in an incredibly shallow ellipse.   I am thinking this is the topic for another day!  But for the purposes of this discussion, it can useful to think of it as a table top and you're moving your arm away from and towards yourself while keeping it on the table top.  This will give you an idea of which joints work how.  

And it also usefully helps to maintain a straight line along the ulna, which is compatible with how the forearm works. 

 You can experiment with this by comparing two ways of rotating the forearm.

1. hold your arm level along the pinky side and rotating the thumb side around the pinky side.
2. hold your arm level along the thumb side and rotating the pinky side around the thumb side.

Can you discern which one moves more freely?

Notice, the wrist and the fingers haven't even gotten mentioned yet!  Here's a spiffy blerb about that!

Behind the vertical 

Yeah ... did one of your past instructors leap out from behind the bushes and start screeching about that?

Here's an experiment for that: 

1. oscillate so your elbow never comes behind the vertical
2. oscillate so your elbow moves equally ahead of and behind vertical
3. oscillate so your elbow stays behind the vertical

Cycle through these different motions noticing the tension between your shoulder blades, then again noticing the tension  somewhere around C7, then again noticing your breathing, and, depending upon whether you're sitting or standing or on a horse, what happened to the vertical alignment of your body?

In conclusion  

So now you've probably figured out why 'keep the hands still' doesn't work but it's also accurate.  

Everything is moving.  If you stop the movement in your hands, you stiffen your body and lose connection with the horse -- both in the reins and your seat.  And riding just gets a thousand times harder.

But if you move your hands in exactly the same ellipse as the horse's mouth, the hands are 'still' and your horse loves you.

Lynn

8/27/21

And that seat thing ... stay tuned!