It had always perplexed me - why do some people have so little trouble with riding but some struggle making frustratingly slow progress or, worse still, never ‘get it’ and resort to gadgets or give up after one too many falls. The ones who ‘get it’ and find it easy are called talented or a natural but what part of the mind or body made the job so easy?

I knew balance, good balance, must play a part but why did some people have ‘it’ and not others. I have spent the last 20 years slowly unravelling the components that make a good rider. Its an ongoing process and I would like to share everything that I discover with other riders for the benefit of their horses.

Its how you sit - doh!

It turns out the answer to the secret of riding is...(drum roll)... how you sit on your horse or your ‘position’. The word ‘position’ is often used as a shorthand to describe the complex subtleties involved in how our bodies interact with the horse when we ride. Yet many riders find that following the conventional instructions on position (often repeated by an instructor at an ever increased volume) to lower heels, sit up, keep hands still, look forward, use leg, keep elbows soft, give inside rein, SIT UP FOR PETE’S SAKE doesn’t help them. Yes, the secret to riding is ‘position’ but that doesn’t really begin to describe what is actually going on.

Rider’s faults a symptom of trouble elsewhere

The trainer, not being blessed with x-ray vision, is unable to see what intricate and very personal mechanical problems you have in your body and can often only try and make adjustments to the superficial overall impression. Usually the obvious fault, let us say heels coming up or toes turning out will be greeted with an instruction to lower heels or turn toes in.  This rarely works for long because the problem does not originate in the feet - they are merely a symptom of a fault elsewhere, often in the torso and pelvis. Things get even more difficult because we are all constructed so differently, have had different life experiences and whilst we all have the same muscles, some are longer, shorter, weaker, stronger, mismatched, never used or over used. Any combination of them could be causing a major positional and balance problem.  And that’s before we even get in the mind zone and consider fears, tension, unrealistic expectations, lack of knowledge, over trying etc.

Even minor positional faults affect  your horse

Great advances have been made with new methods of teaching such as those by Mary Wanless, Joni Bentley and Sally Swift. All these authors help to give the rider useful insight and the knowledge needed to analyse why their particular combination of body parts doesn’t produce the result they want.  But, before you can even make use of their teachings, you have to take on board and wholeheartedly accept a major ‘biggy’.  That is that even minor faults in your position and therefore balance matter hugely to your horse. They matter beyond your wildest imaginings and it is something many riders never understand.

The Catch 22 situation

Some riders are lucky to own perfectly balanced and conformationally correct horses which makes the job of riding so much easier.  Expensive warmbloods bred specifically for their rideability or Iberian horses bred generation after generation to be light in front and carry a rider means at least one half of the combination has natural balance.  But many of us, for economic or myriad other reasons, own and train horses who are less than the perfect equine athlete.  They may be on the forehand, stiff on one side, less supple in hock joints, tight in the shoulder, slack in muscle tone and so on.  Each one of these faults will make the horse and rider’s job much harder and often put the rider into a Catch 22 situation - they cannot get the horse to go better because they cannot sit better because the horse is not going correctly.  How does the unbalanced rider improve the unbalanced horse particularly when the horse is often adding to the struggle of the rider to keep a balanced and effective position!

Learn to develop ‘body feel’

Clearly the rider is the only person in the partnership who can help get them out of this dilemma.  To do this the rider needs to develop a sixth sense. Not intuition, although that is always handy, but ‘body feel’.  We absolutely have to be able to detect what it is that we are actually doing now to have any chance of changing it to something that works better.  The great advantage with riding horses is that they immediately give you feedback if you do make a change to your position for the better (or worse).  Again, with heightened body feel attenae you can pick up this improvement in the horse’s carriage and get an instant reward for your efforts. You then know what you need to repeat and what is not working.  This body feel is remarkably difficult to develop and may be another aspect of the talented rider - they have it naturally.  I have found  that once you have developed this ability to observe in a detached way which part of your body is doing what at a certain point (say on a circle in left canter), the correction to a long held fault often pops into your mind as if by magic. You start to have a feel for what is out of alignment but also what is working well. It is as if your subconscious really does know how to make things feel better but our brains block much of it out.  Perhaps this is why children often find riding so easy!

Lack of tone in postural muscles affect inside hand

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of riding, and being trained, is that the body part that is often identified as a problem, is not the problem at all.  How many riders are sent down the wrong track on the issue of the inside rein for instance.  I used to be told repeatedly to give the inside rein and I have seen many, many trainers tell different riders to do the same, even at the highest level.  The instruction seems doomed to failure because the problem does not originate in the hand, arm, shoulder, wrist, rein or any other of the obvious places.  The cause of the inside hand drawing back and causing problems (horse’s outside shoulder falling out, jack-knifing of neck, ribcage on inside disappearing from rider’s seat bone and thigh and lower leg etc) is often lack of tone in the rider’s torso, or postural muscles, and inability to stop the rider’s body twisting in an exact copy of the horse.  Merely letting go of the inside rein does not automatically result in the rest of the rider’s body making the subtle alterations to alignment, muscle tone, engaging postural muscle and breathing that all go towards providing the rider with sufficient independent balance that the rider does not need to even consider the rein contact.

Quality of sitting is the answer to contact issues

On the subject of rein contact, most riders are thrown completely off the scent of correct riding by discussions and instructions on ‘how much contact should you have?”  All sorts of mathematical figures are bandied about  - 6lbs of pressure in each rein, no loops, a strong contact, a soft contact.  This diverts the rider’s attention from the area that actually affects the ‘contact’ and that is the horse’s back.  Only when the rider’s precise and deft use of body control allows the horse to bring up his back under the saddle will the contact issues go away.  When the horse is able, because of the quality of the rider’s sitting, to round up his back and engage his own postural muscles (a prerequisite of carrying a rider correctly) there is no need to ask about contact for the truth is revealed - the horse dictates the contact, all you have to do is take up enough slack in the rein to be able to make polite and subtle requests through to the bit.  If he hasn’t offered up his back, all you are doing is hauling his head in and ultimately restricting engagement.

How to sit in such a way that the horse feels able and confident to bring up, round and expand his back muscles, i.e. go correctly when carrying a rider, is the major job of the rider.  When that is cracked, everything is so much easier for horse.  In fact his potential is then ready to be unleashed.

If you would like to improve your riding and make inroads into long held riding faults that might be holding you and your horse back, start today with the first phase of the process:

Find out what you are actually doing now.

Spend time focussing on feedback from your horse.  Spend at least three sessions only in walk or at least 50% of your ride in walk.  This can be done on a hack or in the school but circle and ride halt walk transitions.  Focus on what the horse feels like as it moves and how it moves you - you are feeding this data into your memory bank for later. Crucially, start to narrow your focus onto your seat bones, pelvis and torso and away from your hands and eyes. Start to notice differences between one side of your own body and the other. (You can do this off the horse when standing at the sink, driving or sitting in the chair watching tv. You are trying to develop a skill that will give you an internal set of eyes that can ‘see’ what no one else can - the internal workings of your riding muscles and tendons.  Don’t limit practising to the small amount of time you are on the horse). If you have already noticed that on one rein he doesn’t go as well, try to put into words what it feels like i.e. on the right he flows, on the left he’s clunky then focus on yourself - does your body act one way for left but another for right.  The fact is that it almost definitely does but I bet to date you have had no idea what is actually happening within your body.  Until you can read the clues from your horse and connect them to the feels from your body, riding competence will be hard to improve.