The Seat

Riding the horse requires that the rider learns to balance him/herself on the horse’s back.  The best way to do this is to ride bareback for years, but for most of us that that is not an option.  This balance is referred to as the rider’s seat.  You either have a good seat or a bad seat, no in between.  A rider’s seat is in two parts, the heave and the light seat.

    

    The heave seat is also called the deep seat, and it is when the rider’s butt does not leave the saddle or the horses back.  The best way to learn the deep seat is by riding bareback, the next best way is to remove your feet from the stirrups and ride that way.  Start by just putting no weight into the stirrups, and move to taking them out completely.  This takes a lot of practice but the reward is great.

Example of the heave seat, no stirrups.

  As you become more comfortable riding without your stirrups you can start putting your feet back into them but only let the weight of your legs rest in them, do not lift your body out of the saddle with your legs.  Nor do you try to squeeze in with your knees to keep your seat; the rest of your weight should be on your butt in the saddle.  Spend as much time as you can riding like this at all gaits and you will develop your deep/heavy seat.  The heavy seat should be practiced over and over throughout your riding career and it should become your second nature.

  It is a sad fact for horsemanship that few riding instructors today teach the deep seat and go straight to what they call the two point and the three point seat. It is not the instructors fault as much as it is the parents who want their children competing as soon as possible instead of taking the time that is required to obtain a good seat.  The instructors want to make a living, so they turn out what the customer wants.  I know that they are adults who also take riding lessons  but the instructors have their routine and it is hard for them to break their habits.  I will explain the Light Seat after I discuss what is being taught by many riding instructors today.

The two point seat:

  Many of our modern designed saddles, especially English, automatically position riders in the chair seat. A rider sitting on his butt near the rear of the saddle with his legs forward and with the knees bent downward is said to be acquiring a chair seat.  This is a bad seat for two reasons, first the rider’s balance is off because his feet are way in front of his shoulder.  Secondly it puts the rider’s weight back on the horse’s loins throwing its collection off; by the way, collection is just another word for balance. Collection is the word we give to the need for the horse to find its new center of balance when a rider gets on its back.  Without a rider a horse is always collected.   So in the chair seat both the rider and the horse are out of balance.  The chair seat is what riding instructors today call the two point seat; it is not a deep seat.

The Three Point Seat:

  Some instructors also teach what they call a three point seat, which is when the pelvic bones and the crotch are brought into contact with the saddle.  It is trying to use the three point seat that makes some riders seem to be humping their horses as they ride.  It can look rather bizarre at times.

  Both of these seats will get you from here to there, and you will see a lot of riders that use them, but mostly ones who have been taught by English Riding instructors.  Almost all of these instructors will place great emphasis on having the rider push his/her heels down.  How many of you understand the reasoning behind having the heels down?  I never have.  It is best to adjust the fenders such that our feet, when resting in the stirrups, the heels will naturally point down.  This “heels down” stuff is only at the walk for me for at the trot, canter, and gallop my feet have a tendency to slip out of the stirrups..

  For the horse’s collection and well being the rider should sit as far forward as they can while riding.  Adjust the length of your fenders, or straps,  such that you have a slight bend in your knees, and be able to lift yourself out of the saddle.  If you are going to do a lot of jumping the fenders should be adjusted a little shorter than if you are just going to be doing some leisure trail riding.

Now on to the Light Seat:

  It was the Mongols that are considered to be the riders that first utilized the use of the stirrups to their full potential.  The lifting of the body from the saddle frees the horse’s back and thus enables it more freedom of movement, especially in fast gallops and jumping.  Now the knees come into play for they are key element in a solid and well-balanced light seat. But not to squeeze on the horse for balance, but to work your body up and down to keep your head even with the ground.  If the stirrups are too short the knee will be above the saddle, and your seat becomes very unsecured and unbalanced.  In the light seat you do not put your butt on the saddle; your entire weight is supported by the stirrups. 

  You use the light seat when running going over or around obstacles; you do not use it in casual riding.  Just like the deep seat the light seat requires practice to gain confidence.

Example of the Light Seat.

  The correct seat issue has been here about as long as men have been riding.  Xenophon, who lived from 430 to 355 BC, recommend to the Greek riders, that they should not sit on the horse, as they sit on a chair, but rather as if they would be standing with spread legs.  He also recommended that they should not ride very much in the limited spaces of a riding ring, but train their horses in the open fields, something most riders fail to grasp yet, especially in dressage.

  A good way to start developing your deep seat is to take a blanket and fold it several times. Like a bareback pad, and strap it to your horse’s back with an over-girth, then without a bridle let someone lunge your horse first at the walk, the trot, and then the canter.  Your job will be to concentrate strictly on your seat and feeling it in your body, as well as feeling the horse as it moves at the same time.  The reason you teach new riders without reins is that way too often it gives a false sense of security and they often learn to hang onto them for balance.

The legs are not a part of your seat, let them dangle naturally.   At the trot you will bounce, ignore your bouncing as it has nothing to do with your seat, but is a reflection of the unbalance of your horse, the bouncing on the horse is caused by not knowing how to sit not the other way around.  Do not use your legs to stay on the horse by squeezing your knees or pulling up your toes.  With your legs dropping straight down you will feel your knees relatively tight against the horse, without doing any squeezing.  You will learn to use the movement of the horse and the bouncing of your body, to get back into the center position over the horse’s spine.  Search for the spot that give you the least bounce and you will find your seat as your spine lines up with the horse’s, and your hips are in the same parallel with the horse and aligned with the horse’s hips.  Then you are sitting straight on the horse, and you should be right behind where the withers meet the back of the horse..

  As you ride with your legs dangling you will feel it in the thigh and hip area, this is to be expected, but as you ride correctly the muscles will start to strengthen and the pain will go away.  As with everything practice makes perfect but not if you are practicing the wrong thing.

Which brings us to the half seat or hunt seat:

  Before I go on I wish to remind you again that the reins are not part of your balance. They should never be pulled upon, yanked upon, and in any way used to keep you on the horse’s back.  To do that you shift your weight in the saddle, use the stirrups to lift or push up or down with one leg or the other, lean to one side or the other, forward or backwards, but do not use the reins for anything other than to direct the horse.

  The half seat is where a rider partially sits in the saddle near the pommel and partially stands in the irons, it is not posting, it is sometime called the light seat.

  When you have become adept in both the heavy and light seat you are ready to move on to posting.  If you skip the first two steps you will never develop a real good seat.  Without the foundations of the heavy seat and the light seat one cannot possibly develop a correct half seat like posting or the forward seat.  Remember this; the time that someone spends riding horses does not by itself determine the quality of the rider, and you will always find a horse that will remind you of your incompetence if you ride enough horses.

Example of the Half Seat

  When posting let the horse's motion push you up and out of the saddle with support from your thigh and calf muscles, at the same time, when your horse's outside leg goes forward, you sit up. This is called being on the correct diagonal. Sit back down in the saddle when your horse's outside leg comes back.  In the arena the outside leg is the leg away from the rail, and the inside leg is the leg next to the rail.  Obviously “correct diagonal” is referring to when you are showing and has no relevancy while trail riding as they are on inside or outside legs on the trail.

The posting trot is all about the comfort of the rider rather than about the comfort of the horse especially in the western saddle.  The half-seat differs from the posting trot in the fact that in the half-seat one is partially off the horses back, as opposed to the posting where one actually sits down into the back on every other step.   With a heavy riders this become much harder on the horse, especially if the rider is landing on the cantle and not as far forward as they should.  Having the saddle is too far back also makes it harder on the horse, as in the case of western saddle, hence most reasonable western riders do not post very much in the western saddles.  If you have an 18 inch western saddles make sure that you come down right behind the horn if you do decide to post.   You should never sit down on the horses with your full weight while posting so as not to make your horse sore to the point of not wanting to be ridden.  He may become what we call tenderback lf you do, and try bucking when you ride him next.

“If the better rider calls me a “good rider” he mocks me.

If a rider of equal ability calls me a “good rider” he merely praises himself.

If the lesser rider calls me a “good rider” it is because he is unable to see my faults.” 

Ludvik K Stanek

Example of all three seats.

This charge was made just after the completion of a 38 mile force march the night before.  For a first hand account go here.

This is a good time to talk about riding your horse up and down steep hills.  Way too many people think that  you should lean way forwards going up hill and way backward when going down.  If it was only the rider's comfort we were concerned with this would be correct.  However, if you are concerned with the horse's comfort and balance and you should be, it is just the opposite.   When climbing the rider should either sit strait or leaning slightly backwards, and when going downhill the rider should be leaning way forward.  Go to minute 1:15 in the video below and see how the US Calvary trained their troopers to ride, at the gallop, down a very steep bank, steeper than anything you are likely to ride down: 

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