Riding horses is more than sitting atop a horse and having the horse move gracefully. Riding takes skill but having the horse understand one's cues is more important than your riding. Without the horse knowing what your legs and body are trying to tell them, one's communication with the horse will be useless as the horse will not follow your commands like one will be expecting them. Horsemanship is more than groundwork, but covers ground training all the way to training them to be responsive while ridden and one's ability to ride well.
Groundwork is essential to have mastered before sitting atop a horse. Working with a horse as if it were being taught this for the first time, tends to be an excellent way of re-enforcing the basics of horsemanship. For example, if a horse were to not be able to tie or stand in the cross-ties at it's home stable, it'll probably react to everything at the show ground and become rather agitated and unrideable. Ground training must be mastered in order to progress to being able ride let alone show.
Training the horse, once in the saddle, to respond properly to one's aids is important to be able to have a bond with them and succeed in the show ring. Every move one makes in the saddle to the way the hands and legs move sends signals to the horse to do certain things. Often mis-communication happens between horse and rider because the horse hasn't be trained to respond to one's aids properly. In the end the response one may be seeking may not happen because the horse is misunderstanding what their rider is trying to tell them.
Learning to ride well is also horsemanship. Not one person has mastered how to ride the horse because horses are creatures that tend to be unpredictable. If one did not know how to properly communicate with the horse without causing problems or injuries there would be issues with the riding which could lead to death. Every moment on and around a horse requires horsemanship, including petting a horse's body to leading a horse safely.
Without horsemanship and learning how to properly communicate to the horse what one wants issues would appear and put people in danger of injury and even death. Clear communication between both the rider and the horse is important to be able to ride at leisure or compete at a local schooling show. Horsemanship takes the level of communication to a higher and clearer level so horse and rider can reach their dreams.
Katie is an avid horseback rider that has had difficulties with her posture while riding in her couple years of horseback riding but found that taking lessons is not the most effective route to fixing the problem. She has a site on Pilate exercises and horsemanship for horseback riders called Pilate Rider. The site focuses on Pilates and horsemanship for horseback riders and how they will improve the rider.
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