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Flying Dismounts
I was taught to fall via flying dismount. Because I have a mortal fear of being sued, a disclaimer: there’s still a chance you could get injured, and you should only do this under a qualified instructor’s supervision and if something goes wrong (or bystanders laugh at you), I’m not responsible. Try this at your own risk.
Whew. I feel better. Although I have no idea what people think they would get if they sued me. My grad student loan debt?
Flying dismount–kick your stirrups free and jump off as fast as you can. Start at the halt, then try it at the walk, then trot. If you’re exceptionally balanced, you can try at the canter but there’s even more risk there of, say, landing badly and breaking an ankle. If you aren’t sure, just practice at the halt and walk. These days, I don’t ever do this at the canter–I leave that for super-atheletic teens.
The point of the flying dismount is that you push yourself off the horse with more momentum and, at the walk and trot, you also have forward momentum to deal with. The goal is NOT to stick your landing like a gymnast. It’s to figure out how to use up that momentum safely.
At the halt, this tends to mean sinking even deeper with your knees, and maybe taking a step or two away from the horse. At the walk, this tends to mean taking a step or three forward with the horse, until you can both stop safely. At the trot, you may have to run with the horse. Don’t ask me about the canter; I don’t do it anymore.
And the chances are you won’t be able to stay on your feet anyway–you’ll come down on your bum. That’s fine. Concentrate on keeping your arms in against your body and rolling away from the horse. This is not about your dignity or the state of your wardrobe; this is about learning how to use momentum and training yourself to tuck and roll.
I have heard there are people who learn the flying dismount and then use it to bail off their horse every time they get the least bit worried. DON’T. That’s not the point. If you keep bailing off, eventually you’re going to get hurt. Your horse is going to learn that if he acts up, you’ll get off. And you’re going to learn that you can’t deal with your horse’s misbehavior. That’s a miserable situation all around. In almost all cases, you are safer on the horse than off him (because you can hope to regain control, which you can’t do if you are sitting in the dirt with a wrenched knee because you landed badly in the fall).
I find that this builds rider confidence–I learned I could come off the horse while he was moving forward and I was fine. I also gained some muscle memory–I knew what a good fall (arms tucked, rolling away from the horse) felt like, so when I was having actual, unplanned falls, I was more likely to tuck and roll and not attempt to catch myself.
But despite knowing this, I still managed to get hairline cracks in all my knuckles one fall, when I stuck my arm out like an idiot. So, even when you know how to fall, sometimes… you still get hurt. But I can think back on all the times I came off and didn’t get hurt, and I think the flying dismounts helped there.
And believe me, I had lots of falls. The Super Saint had a round, crack-his-back arch over fences, and until I learned to stick it, I came off after every single fence. Tuck and roll, people, tuck and roll.
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