What if becoming a more effective rider started not with doing more, but with noticing more?
As riders, we're often told to sit taller, relax our hips, bring our shoulders back, or keep our legs still. These are familiar instructions, but knowing what we're supposed to do and understanding what our bodies are actually doing can be two very different things.
During a recent Train Your Seat course in the UK with Alysen Starko-Bowes, I was introduced to a deceptively simple exercise that really captured my attention: tapping.
Not tapping your horse. Tapping yourself!
And it opened up some interesting questions about how we learn to move.
Proprioception is your body's ability to sense its position and movement without having to look.
It's how you can touch your nose with your eyes closed, walk without watching your feet, or know roughly where your arms and legs are in space.
For riders, proprioception is especially important.
We need to recognize where our weight is distributed, how our pelvis moves, whether one shoulder is more elevated than the other, and what our legs and hands are doing — often while concentrating on the horse underneath us.
The challenge is that we aren't always aware of our own movement patterns.
Something can feel perfectly straight or balanced even when we're favouring one side.
The exercise we explored involved gently tapping areas of the body using textured Franklin Method balls.
The idea is to provide additional sensory information to the area being tapped, encouraging the rider to notice it more clearly.
Our skin contains sensory receptors that respond to touch, pressure, and vibration. This information contributes to the brain's understanding of the body, alongside signals from muscles, joints, and other sensory systems.
Tapping is one way of bringing attention to a particular area.
It's not about forcing a muscle to relax or physically correcting your position. Instead, it's an opportunity to explore whether changing sensory input influences how you perceive and move that part of your body.
One of the most memorable exercises during the course involved establishing a baseline, tapping one side of my body, and then checking my movement again.
Before the tapping, I took a moment to notice how my body felt and moved.
Then Alysen used Franklin balls to tap along one side of my body.
Afterward, I repeated the movement.
What fascinated me was the difference I noticed in my awareness and ease of movement on that side.
It wasn't something I had consciously tried to correct. I hadn't been told to move differently or to hold a particular position.
Instead, the exercise gave me an opportunity to experience movement in a different way.
Of course, one experience doesn't prove that tapping will produce the same result for everyone. But it was a compelling reminder that sometimes learning begins with better awareness, rather than more instructions.
Think about some of the things riders commonly struggle with:
Our instinct is often to correct these things by trying harder.
But what if the first step was simply to become more aware of what's happening?
Sensory exercises like tapping may give riders another way to explore their movement patterns.
That doesn't mean tapping replaces good coaching, physical conditioning, or practice. It's another tool that can support the learning process.
One of my biggest takeaways from Train Your Seat wasn't actually a particular exercise.
It was the importance of establishing a baseline.
Before trying something new, pause and notice.
How does your body feel? Is one side different from the other? What movements feel easy or restricted?
Then try the exercise.
And afterward, check again.
What changed? What stayed the same? Did anything feel easier, different, or more familiar?
Sometimes you'll notice a difference. Sometimes you won't. Both observations are useful.
This approach encourages riders to become active participants in their own learning rather than simply waiting for a coach to tell them whether they've improved.
At Will-oh!, our Racewood Dressage Pro horse simulator provides an interesting environment for exploring rider biomechanics and body awareness.
Because riders aren't managing a live horse at the same time, we can focus more closely on their movement, balance, and responses to different exercises.
We use a growing toolkit of balls, bands, wraps, and other sensory-awareness techniques to help riders experiment with how they sit and move.
Tapping is one of the techniques I'm excited to explore further.
And while our simulator provides objective information about certain aspects of riding, I'm equally interested in helping riders develop their own internal feedback.
Because ultimately, the goal isn't to become dependent on a coach, a screen, or a particular exercise.
It's to become a rider who can recognize what's happening, experiment thoughtfully, and make informed adjustments.
Perhaps. And perhaps the most interesting part is discovering what you notice.
That's what I love about continuing to learn as both a rider and a coach. Sometimes