There’s this thing people say about certain riders: “She just has feel.”
They say it like it’s something you’re born with. Like some riders came out of the womb knowing exactly when to half-halt and which leg to close. Like the rest of us are just… missing that gene.
Here’s the truth: feel isn’t a gift. It’s compressed repetition. And when we call it a gift, we do a disservice to everyone who worked their entire life to develop it — and everyone who thinks they can’t because they weren’t “born with it.”
The Myth of Natural Talent
When you see a rider with incredible feel, you’re not seeing talent. You’re seeing thousands of hours of practice compressed into what looks like instinct.
Think about the riders you admire — the ones who seem to know exactly what their horse needs before the horse even asks. I’d bet most of them started riding somewhere between ages 3 and 18. They spent their childhoods at barns. Not just riding, but grooming, mucking, watching, absorbing. They were immersed.
That’s not talent. That’s time.
Their nervous systems were being wired for horses during the most plastic, adaptable years of their brain development. By the time they were adults, they’d logged enough hours that their responses became automatic. What looks like “natural feel” is actually pattern recognition running so fast and deep that it bypasses conscious thought.
The Adult Rider’s Different Path
So where does that leave those of us who came to horses later? Who started at 25, or 35, or 55?
Here’s the thing: you can absolutely develop feel as an adult. But you’re going to develop it differently than someone who grew up in a barn.
Childhood immersion creates feel through pure volume and repetition. You don’t have to think about it because you’re doing it constantly. Adult learning requires something different: intentional engineering.
As an adult, you need to understand what you’re trying to feel. You need to create frameworks. You need to deliberately practice the specific sensations and responses that a childhood rider absorbed without effort.
It’s harder. It takes longer. But it’s not impossible — and in some ways, it can actually be more complete because you understand the why, not just the what.
The Part Nobody Wants to Talk About
Here’s where I’m going to be real with you.
Developing feel as an adult rider requires a level of commitment that most people aren’t willing to give. Not because they’re lazy or untalented, but because they have lives. Jobs. Kids. Responsibilities that a barn kid doesn’t have.
The riders with exceptional feel? They’ve made horses their lifestyle, not their hobby.
That means riding multiple horses a day, not one lesson a week. That means spending time at the barn when you’re not riding — grooming, observing, just being around horses. That means doing the unsexy adjacent work that nobody posts about on Instagram: yoga to improve your body awareness. Gym sessions to build the strength and stability you need. Breathwork to regulate your nervous system so you can actually feel what your horse is telling you.
It means being around horses so much that your body starts speaking their language without translation.
I’m not saying you need to quit your job and move into a barn (though, for the record, I did move into a camper next to mine). But I am saying that feel scales with exposure. There’s no shortcut.
What You Can Actually Do
If you’re an adult rider who wants to develop better feel, here’s my honest advice:
Maximize your saddle time. This doesn’t mean grinding away in lessons. It means finding ways to ride more horses, more often. Catch ride. Exercise horses for friends. Audit clinics. Every horse teaches you something different.
Ride without stirrups and with your eyes closed. Not at the canter on your spooky thoroughbred — please use judgment. But at the walk, on a safe horse, close your eyes and feel. Where is each leg? When does the back lift? When does the ribcage swing?
Do the boring body work. Proprioception — your ability to sense where your body is in space — isn’t fixed. You can improve it. Yoga, Pilates, balance work, strength training. The more connected you are to your own body, the more you can feel what’s happening with your horse’s.
Study movement. Watch videos in slow motion. Watch other riders. Watch horses move on the lunge without a rider. Build a mental library of what correct movement looks like so you can recognize it when you feel it.
Get on as many different horses as possible. A hot horse teaches you different things than a lazy one. A stiff horse teaches you different things than a supple one. Every horse is a professor with a different curriculum.
The Question to Ask Yourself
Here’s the real question: How much do you actually want this?
Because developing feel requires treating riding as more than a pleasant hobby you do on weekends. It requires organizing your life around horses, at least to some degree.
That’s not a judgment. It’s a choice. There’s nothing wrong with riding for fun, for stress relief, for the joy of being around horses without chasing excellence. That’s valid and wonderful.
But if you want feel — real, refined, horse-whisperer-level feel — you have to be honest about what that actually costs in terms of time, energy, and lifestyle reorganization.
The riders you admire didn’t get that way by accident. And you won’t either.
The Good News
Feel isn’t a gift. Which means you weren’t born without it.
It’s a skill, like any other. It can be learned. It just takes longer and requires more intentional effort than most people realize — or want to admit.
The path looks different for adult learners. You might never develop the unconscious ease of someone who grew up in the saddle. But you can develop deep, refined, effective feel through dedicated practice and intentional body work.
You just have to want it badly enough to do what it actually takes.
And if that sounds like too much? That’s okay too. But at least now you know what “feel” actually is — and that it was never about magic.
Want to develop better body awareness and connection with your horse? Check out From Stiff to Supple in 28 Days — my course designed to help you feel more, not just do more.
