When you become insecure, scared, or startled, your body’s automatic reaction to protect its vital organs is to curl into a ball. When you are panicked in the saddle because your horse has spooked or is bolting, for example, this means that you bend forward, curl up, and pull your arms and legs in toward your body. Otherwise a useful mechanism of protection, this behavior has negative effects when riding: bending forward and curling into a ball causes you to lose your balance and potentially propels you forward over your horse’s neck. Suddenly jerking your arms back toward your body causes great discomfort and even pain to your horse’s mouth, and latching on to your horse’s barrel with your legs does not make it more likely for you to stay in the saddle, but most certainly does accelerate your horse’s speed to a great degree. All three factors just named—curling into a ball, pulling your arms back, and clasping with your legs—have fatal effects on a horse that is already bolting.

The most important thing to do when your horse bolts is keep calm! Easy to say, yet difficult to put into practice during an actual emergency. It can be useful to concentrate on one specific thought—that is, give yourself a point of focus to prevent slipping into a state of blind panic.

Reflex training can also increase riding safety. Once you understand the reactions of your body when you are scared, you can practice countermovements. It needs to become automatic to lean backward instead of forward, to stretch your arms forward instead of pulling them back, and to push your feet forward-and-downward into the stirrups, rather than clamping them tightly around the horse.

Leaning backward helps you better maintain a deep and stable position in the saddle. Stretching your arms forward loosens the reins, preventing a tug of war with your horse. Keeping your legs away from your horse’s body prevents you from involuntarily telling him he should go even faster.

We teach our students to do countermovements when they hear a specific signal—for example, hands clapping or a certain cue word. In this way, you are able to immediately assume a safe position in the saddle at the first sign of a bolt or buck. And the stable position might give you those few seconds you need to keep calm.

Excerpted from the new book Riding Free, Bitless, Brideless, Bareback by Andrea & Markus Eschbach