Working On Your Seat | RES 063

Ride Every Stride | Horsemanship and Personal Growth with Van Hargis

There is a student of mine who has been taking lessons from me for years, and before that, her grandparents plopped her down in a saddle at the age of six. She can ride well. She doesn’t bob around in the saddle and flail her arms. She has good posture as well. But something I noticed time and time again is that after riding a horse a few times, the horse starts resisting her commands. She may want to move up to a trot but the horse wants to grind down to a walk. What I realized through observing her is that she needed to work on her seat—meaning to work with the horse rather than have the horse do all the work. Working on your seat means working on being a leader.

Key Takeaways

The student I just mentioned suffered from a condition I call Dead Butt. This means that you aren’t setting the rhythm for your horse, you are literally just riding along, letting the horse do all the work for you. You need to lead your horse, not just sit dead up on them.

Laura’s husband is a musical genius—you can bet that whatever song he is listening to he has all the details playing out in his head. So imagine this—you’re dancing and you have a dance partner. Internally you are hearing music, feeling the rhythm, then turning that feeling into motion—not only for yourself, but for your partner. When you do this well the dancing is great, if you can’t translate that rhythm though things turn south. This same principle applies to riding.

The rhythms we establish with our horses are fairly simple. Walk, trot, and canter are all 2 beat, 3 beat, and 4 beat gait. As a rider, you need to establish that rhythm, know what you’re expecting from your horse and use your body accordingly.

It’s okay if you want to ride along casually and be a passenger. But if you want to be a better “dance partner” for your horse, you have to keep pushing the bar. Learn how to communicate more subtly through your body language and commands.