By Johnny Flores
How do we hold the two rein? I ride with my left hand but my right hand has a very important role to play, it helps me keep everything centered, it helps me suspend my reins, and keeps me extra quiet. I first make a loop with the mecate rein. Palm up, I drape it over my right hand’s middle, ring, and pinky finger…just under the index so if I were to make a fist it would be pinched between the index and middle finger. It is important to give yourself some extra slack when you tie the mecates to make it reach your right hand. Once I have that in place, I put the romals over all my fingers that way when I make a fist, my thumb and index finger pinch the reins. At this point I shake out the reins to about 40/60 (40% mecate, 60% rein) and see where I need to go from there, because the two rein is made to be a transfer of knowledge the mecates should be tighter from the getgo and gradually get looser than the bridle.
Now that you have your right hand in order, it should have the reins coming in through the top of the hand going into the bottom. Movement of the wrist up or down will help you adjust your reins, we will get back to that in a moment…
The left hand! This is where the magic happens! There are about 100 ways to hold this setup, here are my two most effective ways. The first way is to hold the left set of reins with your pinky, ring finger, and middle finger and hold the right set of reins with the index finger. By pinching the index finger and the middle finger and lifting you can make the right reins shorter to help the horse with a turn. This is called bubbling because you create a bubble in the reins. By either rotating your wrist or bubbling the left side, the same thing is achieved! The other way to hold the two rein is a bit harder and usually works on a more softened horse. This way has each romal rein on the outside and the mecates on the inside. So if you were to look at it the order would be romal, mecate, mecate, romal. Now put one finger on each rein, pinky on romal, ring finger on mecate, middle finger on mecate, and index finger on romal. Slowly grab each rein with each finger, it will feel like holding someone’s hand. This way of holding allows you to individually grab each rein independent of the other. This is harder, but certainly worth it to keep the bridle nice and quiet. The main goal of the two rein is to get as much as you can with as little as possible, that's the only goal of the bridle. By picking at one mecate and leaving everything else as quiet as possible, we can help the horse learn the correction without adding unnecessary bridle movement.
Now back to the right hand! The right hand is to be held CLOSE (I usually keep it between 6-12 inches at the most) to the left hand, its purpose is to hold the reins and let them hover over the horse’s neck. This helps make your left hand’s job easier, keeps the reins even, and if you drop your rein..the horse won't notice a thing! The right hand can also twist the wrist up to engage more of the bridle or tilt down and back to engage more of the mecates. In some cases I will let the romal reins slip through my right hand a bit to make the mecates the only thing causing direct contact. Another technique is to lightly hold the bridle reins in your left hand and pull up on the mecates while sliding on the romal with your right hand. Lots of fiddling will help make these cues easier for you and your horse.
The two rein is not linear. It is not something we ride in and progress everyday. The horse will get hard now and again on the bosalita, sometimes the best way to fix it is to go back to the hackamore. There is no honor in staying one handed if your horse is begging to be schooled. Every so often my horse will have a bad day and when that happens I just loop the romals around the horn and ride the bosalita with two hands. It is there for that reason, sometimes they just need a bit more. On other days, I may three-rein my horse. Three-reining is when you hold the romals and one mecate in one hand and the other mecate in the other hand. It helps a lot to tip the nose and really just clear up the signals. If I need it on the right I will just drop the slack in that hand, reach down and pick at my horse till I get what I desired. If it is to the left I will tighten the slack in my right hand, let go of the left hand, and reach down to pick at the horse to the left side. When it is all said and done I always try to return back to one hand, if the horse lets me.
Keep in mind all this is from a more traditionalist view, it does not encompass arbitrary rules on the distance from one hand to other or fingers in the reins. Be sure to check the rules of your respective association.
Video version of this post: https://youtu.be/osnA_Bmkp34
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