Heels Down!!!!!!

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claireelizabeth

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We all remember being told to keep our heels down in many a lesson. Now it's my daughters turn. She rides quite nicely and does have lessons but the heels just don't stay down and I'm sure she's fed up with my voice saying heels down every 5 mins. Anyone got any clever techniques to help her or is it just a case of keep doing it until it's habit.
 
Lots of riding without stirrups and getting her to sit with shoulders back & chest out so she doesn't tip forward and grip with her lower leg. But mostly just whip her saddle away, that'll sort the legs out
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apparently i had the same problem when i was learing all those years ago and my mum just took the saddle off and i had to learn to ride without one first i still dont quite get how it worked but it did
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My sister used to have the same problem and our instructor used to tell her that there were toe crocodiles and that they would bite her toes if the pointed down towards them - seemed to do the trick
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Toes up LOL that will give us some variation at least!!

I shall remove her stirrups, she quite enjoyed bareback riding when we've have done it before so that might be a good one.
 
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Tell her to keep her toes up!
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and lunge lessons without stirrups
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Definetley toes up works better than heals down, its the way the muscles in the body work
 
make sure she's not gripping with her knees, this is usually the reason for heels coming up. pull her knees gently away from saddle (doesn't matter if toes point out to begin with) and then "toes up" works better than "heels down" imho!
 
Oh I like the ideas on here about this.

I myself do the without stirrups thing when I feel that I am forgetting to put my heels down and totally agree that they are your safety belt.

love Bessiesboo (sitting at work with her heels down!)
 
I agree with Kerilli, check her position. The feet normally echo what the Hips & knees are doing. I would be doing loads of things to increase the flexability of the hips this would help the knees also. Just simple things like taking the legs off & then back help supple the hips.

I don't like saying heels down to anyone as it's normally a by product of something else wrong within the position, but unfortunately it is said a lot to people by Instructors
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