From what I’ve seen, horse riders come in 2 types: people who just sit and let the horse take them where he may and people who actually ride a horse. What distinguishes these 2 classes of riders is their usage or non-usage of their seat.

I might be mistaken, but I get the impression the science of proper horse seats has begun to go extinct. In too many shows for comfort, I’ve seen riders sitting tensely way back at the extreme rear end of the saddle, making them hump forward with their legs distressingly positioned to the front. Also , I’ve seen riders with hollow backs, with their rear ends jutting out, in a large amount of English shows.

I feel a bit like screaming at these riders, “You aren’t doing it right!”

You can accomplish the proper seat simply by following the “shoulders, the hips and the heels in a line” guiding principle. What this suggests is from a lateral perspective, you can draw a straight line down from the rider’s shoulders thru his hips down to his heels.

If you master the right seat, you really can afford to ignore all of the buzz that keeps going around about “centred” or “balanced” horse riding. When I figure out just what this term means (an exercise I’ve been engaged in for years now, off and on) I’m going to let you know, if you remain interested. Otherwise, just know one thing right now: the correct seat looks after all the centring and balancing wanted to ride a horse. The correct seat does just what is critical to achieve perfect synchronization between pony and rider: it gets the rider’s centre of gravity to combine ideally with the horse’s centre of gravity. The proper seat is not some stiff oldschool rule that was created simply to guarantee conformance or discipline. It is in truth the only right way to ride a pony.

Somewhere else, I had written articles on the 11 movements horses can make, and how riders can produce them. It can be done just when the riders are seated correctly.

When you sit with your knees jutting out to the front, you’ll not be able to give your horse cues about its rump or its hindquarters. You have got your legs much too far away from the best position to really be able to do that. You are in a situation where you can control only the forward part of your horse. To put it in blunt language: you can’t give your pony a leg clue to the back of the girth when your legs are to the front of the girth.

The weakest parts of a horse’s backbone are to the rear, and when you sit way back, you will have shifted your centre of gravity too far behind. This results in strain and eventually back problems to your pony because he has to adapt to a joint centre of gravity that’s out of kilter and he also has to deal with weight on his spine’s weakest part.

When you hump over with your butt jutting way out, you are making it just about impossible for you to position your arms and hands right.

I had the privilege of getting the correct seat correctly hammered into my skull by some instructors from Germany “folk known for politeness” a normal comment when I ventured too far back on the horse was “you sit on this pony like a chimpanzee on a wet rock” while the meaning of the comment is still confusing to me after all of these years, I do know that it was terribly humbling to be forced to receive it in front of a bunch of chuckling fellow trainees. Of course, there had been some consolation when it was my turn to chuckle.

Talking about coaching, how precisely can you achieve the correct seat? One way is to take lessons. Another easier way is to have some photos taken of yourself when you are riding. It’s going to be easy for you to make out whether you are forming a straight line from shoulder to heel or looking like the stamp of Zorro. When you know where you are going badly wrong, you can practice the right position until you are perfect.

Horses are Heather Toms passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100s of articles with other horse lovers, like all things about horse show cloths