Seat Aids

The aids of the seat are often misconstrued by instructors, who for some completely illogical reason, seem to think that trying to push or drive the horse forwards with your seat, that it will make him go faster. The very opposite is the case, and why so many riding school horses end up very lazy and hard to get moving. When the rider pushes the seat into the saddle, from back to front is usual, it prevents the horse's back from working freely, and slows or stops him from going forward.

On a very fizzy, forward going horse, not likely to be given to a novice rider for a lesson in any case, it may well have the effect of making him go faster, as he tries to scoot out from under the rider's driving seat which the horse finds very uncomfortable. Either way, it is a daft thing to teach the rider to do, as it makes life difficult for both the horse and himself.

Instead, if we use the seat as a slowing aid, not a driving one, we have at our disposal a very useful tool, which the horse does not object to in any way, because he doesn't find it uncomfortable. In order for the aid to work, the rider must be sitting correctly in the ear/shoulder/ hip/heel line, shown on the left, and not have the stirrups too short.

Ideally to start with, it is best to try it without stirrups from walk to halt, as the stirrup bars on saddles are generally too far to the front of the saddle, as I brought to attention in one of the earlier pages, and pull the thighs forward and upwards as a result. This makes it less easy for the horse to feel, so drop the thigh and knee well down.

Have the horse on a normal contact with the reins, and walk on for a few steps. Then, just close your fingers around the reins, as if squeezing water out of a sponge. I find that a couple of squeezes on the left rein followed by two on the right in succession works best. Make sure that you do not snap your fingers open and shut which is a common misinterpretation, and produces a jerk on the rein, which is painful for the horse. It should be a smooth squeezing action, so that the reins feel as if they are made of elastic being slightly stretched.

At the same time as you close your fingers, squeeze the muscles of your buttocks and upper thighs together, and lightly close your lower legs around the horse. The horse should stop very easily. If you practise it a few times, you should be able to use the fingers less and less, until you hardly have to use more than the gentlest of squeezes on the reins, the seat action being predominant.

As you close your buttocks and upper thighs together, with the lower leg wrapping around the horse, the first thing that you will notice, is that it lightens your seat in the saddle. This is because the action lifts your skeleton upwards, so that you 'grow taller', but your seat muscles remain on the saddle. The horse also feels the difference between you allowing your seat to move with his back in the walk, and stopping that movement by tightening your seat muscles, and responds by slowing or stopping.

Next try the same experiment from sitting trot to walk. Use as strong a squeeze as you find necessary with your seat muscles in order to get the horse to respond. Very few do not respond to this aid, even though they have not been taught it. It is a biomechanical response which nearly all horses listen to. Occasionally you will come across a horse that does not listen to this aid, and that is nearly always one which has had a rider, or riders in the case of a school horse, who grip hard to stay on board. The horse gets used to having his back gripped onto all of the time, and no longer listens. Such horses can nearly always be re-educated in my experience though.

When horses are properly trained, they become more and more sensitised to this aid. My Arabian will go from canter to halt with a strong squeeze of my seat, canter to walk with less squeeze, and canter to trot with slightly less still. In other words, you can teach the horse to recognise the graduation of the squeeze, according to which pace you wish him to return to.

Try it out on your riding school horses. Even if your instructor does not teach you this, which I can almost guarantee that most will not, it is something that you can still try out, because the instructor will not see you doing it! They will be surprised at how little you have to do to slow or stop your horse!

Next, details of seminars run by Heather for New Rider readers.