What Can a Horse Simulator Tell You About Your Riding?

Most riders know the feeling.

Your coach tells you that you're sitting a little heavier to the left. Or that one hand is doing more than the other. Or that your lower leg gets busy in the canter.

You make a correction.

It feels strange.

And then comes the inevitable question:

“Is that better?”

One of the things that makes riding so challenging is that what we feel we're doing and what we're actually doing aren't always the same thing.

That's where riding Will-oh!, our horse simulator at Willow & Withers Stables, gets really interesting.

Will-oh! doesn't replace a coach, and he certainly doesn't replace riding a real horse. What he can do is give us another source of information — one that stays remarkably consistent while we experiment with how you ride.

And sometimes what we discover is surprising.

It starts with a baseline

A typical session on Will-oh! doesn't begin with us looking for everything that's “wrong” with your riding.

Quite the opposite.

We want to see what happens when you simply ride normally.

Once you've had some time to get comfortable with the simulator, we can complete a short assessment at walk, trot and canter.

Will-oh!'s sensors give us information about several aspects of your riding, including your seat and balance, rein pressure and leg use.

That gives us a baseline.

And from there, we can start asking much more interesting questions.

What is your seat doing?

One of the most useful things we can explore is how you're distributing your weight in the saddle.

Are you consistently sitting a little more heavily to one side?

Are you centred?

Does your balance change between walk, trot and canter?

Are you tending to sit forward or back?

These aren't necessarily things a rider can easily feel — particularly if you've been sitting that way for years.

Something can feel perfectly straight simply because it's your normal.

Seeing the information on the screen gives us another perspective.

But that's only the beginning.

The data doesn't tell the whole story

This is an important distinction.

If the simulator shows that you're consistently carrying more weight on one side, that doesn't automatically tell us why.

And we're certainly not interested in announcing:

“Aha! You're crooked!”

Instead, it gives us somewhere to start exploring.

Can you feel the difference once you're aware of it?

What happens if we make a small adjustment?

Does the reading change?

Does your position feel different?

Can you reproduce the change?

That's where the combination of rider + coach + simulator feedback becomes so valuable.

The numbers aren't the lesson.

They're information we can use during the lesson.

What are your hands doing?

Rein contact is another area that's fascinating to explore.

Many of us have a hand we think is stronger — but is it?

Are you carrying similar contact in both reins?

Does one rein suddenly become heavier during a transition?

What happens to your hands when you concentrate on something else?

Again, Will-oh! gives us the opportunity to experiment.

Because the simulator isn't changing its behaviour underneath you, we can alter one thing at a time and see what happens.

Sometimes a very small adjustment produces a surprisingly noticeable change.

And what about your legs?

Will-oh! also responds to leg aids, which gives us another opportunity to look at how quietly and consistently you're using your legs.

This can be particularly interesting when we combine it with what we're seeing elsewhere.

A rider's seat, hands and legs don't operate independently. Change one thing and something else may change with it.

That's one of the reasons we don't see the simulator assessment as a scorecard.

We're looking at the whole rider.

Sometimes the best news is that you're doing better than you think

This might be one of my favourite things about Will-oh!.

Riders can be incredibly hard on themselves.

Someone may arrive convinced that they're terribly crooked, that their hands are wildly uneven or that a particular habit is ruining their riding.

And sometimes the information tells us:

It's really not as bad as you think.

That's useful information too.

The purpose of riding the simulator isn't to uncover a secret list of faults you didn't know you had.

It's to help you understand your riding a little better.

Sometimes that means identifying something worth working on.

Sometimes it means confirming something you've already suspected.

And sometimes it means letting go of something you've been worrying about unnecessarily.

Then we get to experiment

This is where a simulator session becomes very different from simply receiving an assessment.

Once we've identified something interesting, we have time to work with it.

We might change your position.

Try a different way of thinking about an aid.

Adjust a stirrup.

Work without stirrups.

Change the pace.

Try the transition again.

Then we can see — and feel — what happens.

Because Will-oh! can maintain a consistent rhythm, you're able to concentrate on yourself without also having to manage all the variables that come with riding a real horse.

It's a little like a modern version of a lunge-line lesson: someone else takes care of the horse while you concentrate on the rider.

Except in this case, we also have sensors providing another layer of feedback.

The goal isn't perfection

There's no perfect graph we're trying to achieve.

There isn't one ideal rider we're trying to turn everyone into.

Bodies are different. Riding backgrounds are different. Disciplines are different. Horses are certainly different.

What we're interested in is awareness.

If you understand what your body is doing, you have more choices about what you do next.

And when you can make a change, feel the difference and perhaps even see that change reflected in the simulator's feedback, it can make something that once seemed quite abstract suddenly much easier to understand.

That's ultimately what we want Will-oh! to provide.

Not a list of faults.

Not a riding report card.

Information.

Because once you have better information about your riding, you have something really useful to work with.

Curious about what Will-oh! might show you about your riding?

Will-oh! is located at Willow & Withers Stables in Sheffield Mills, Nova Scotia. Riders from different disciplines and experience levels are welcome.

Learn more about riding Will-oh! →