I struggle with feeling the footfall. Which books or videos did you find useful?[/QUOTE
I had awful problems even understanding what the feet did in each gait. After riding about 2 years, I even wrote to one author of a well known teaching book because I didnt understand her language, and asked her. Got nowhere. So there are two questions here. Yes, it is probably a good idea to look on line and get the theory straight of which foot moves when in walk and in trot. I am so old and scatty that I can never remember walk anyway without looking it up again. So tho I agree with carthorse in some ways, I dont think a new rider like me can remember stuff from each lesson without making notes afterwards and I may well remember it wrong. A lot is written about people's failure to remember and understand instructions from their doctor, because of the stress. And the same may well apply to riding lessons.
But for feeling footfall - It is so simple that you dont need books or vids. I have typed this out so often on NR. But here goes again.
Rashid's theory is that a horse doesnt understand the words halt, walk trot etc. A horse perceives movement in times of the beat of the footfall. The walk is a four beat gait. If you sit on a horse in walk and breathe deeply and slowly, you should feel your seat dip first to one side and then to the other. Your hip bones will dip and rise alternate beats and you should be able to count the rhythm of the walk 1,2, 3,4.
Your seat bones are dipping and rising in time with the movement of the horse's hind legs under you.
Now it is easy for a beginner to think that when your hip rises, that is when the horse is lifting that hind leg. But that isnt so. Imagine the horse is a table supported by four legs, one at each corner. If you remove a leg from one corner of a table, that corner of the table will dip. And when the horse lifts one of its hind legs, that is what happens. That corner of the horse will dip a tiny bit under your seat bone on that side.
Spend a lot of time feeling this movement in walk. Because if you are new to sitting trot and are bouncing a bit, it is harder to feel in trot. But the good news is that the movement in trot is the same as in walk. In trot - a 2 beat gait - the horse moves its front left leg and its back right leg together, and then the other diagonal pair move together. But what you feel under your seat as the hind legs move is the same as you feel in walk. But now in trot it is a two beat side to side movement under your seat.
Jane Shilling who learned to ride as a grown up wrote that her first ride, it felt like an earthquake moving under her. The problem is that our senses adapt and we stop feeling the movement of the horse when we ride. Perhaps we need to forget in order to balance! But it is a good idea to take some time and think the beat of walk and feel the dip and rise of your seat bones. Because that is your key to understanding footfall. Notice I dont use the word footfall very much. Mark Rashid teaches one to feel for the beat of the gait. I never picture where the hooves are hitting the ground. My mind is on the forward movement.
You may well find that if you get used to breathing deep and slow and counting the beat, your horse will go forward more easilly for you. And when you come to do lateral work (moving to one side) it does help if you learn to use your leg to cue a hind leg that is off the ground.
