new rider

[Vanessa]

I am a new rider..I only started lessons a few weeks ago..I was ok walking and now we are into trotting and its seems like all I can do is BOUNCE and lose control of the horse..my instructor says to relax..I try..but I still bounce nearly off of the horse..what should I do?

[Medalia]

Well, there are two types of riding trot, there is the sitting trot-obvously where you sit the trot- and the posting trot, where you move up and down to every other beat- the outside leg of the horse moving forward is when you rise out of the saddle slightly. It is way easier to do when the horse has a nice even gait.

There are a few questions you need to ask your self before preparing to trot...
1) Am I balanced?
2) Do I have even pressure with both my legs and reins?
3) Are my legs back?
4) Am I slouching or sitting up right?
5) Am I relaxed?

I had ridden a Tennessee Walker before I started with my new horse so I had no ide about how to trot. Right now, who cares about if you don't look beautiful? My legs flopped all over the place. You have to be calm and when you post: Push out of the saddle with your knees (not easy, but eventually you can), and move up and down with the motion of the horse.

Does that help? You won't have to sitting trot for a while, but be prepared!
Join up with the Junior riders Mailing List @ www.expage.com/page/JRML/

[Tara]

Well, after a while, you will find it easier to trot... But until then, when you ask your horse to trot, squeeze with you're thigh and calf muscles.(On the sitting trot) I know, this is easier said than done. Also, try and sit deep into the saddle. This will also help you when you start to canter. If you are doing the posting trot, try not to use your reins too much and try to rely on your legs and body posture. I hope that I have helped you at least a little. If you would like to talk some more, or have any other questions, you can e-mail me at bells5@poncacity.net I hope all goes well! :)

[Mike]

The page Sarah is referring to is here:

http://www.newrider.com/html/first_lessons.html

I still bounce around on some horses. Work without stirrups can help a lot with improving your seat but it's probably the last thing you think you want to do if you feel insecure.

[Sarah]

Firstly, don't worry, that happens to all of us! Some horses have a really bouncy trot and you can end up sitting there like a sack of potatoes. The trick to staying on (and having a semblance of control) is to try to push your legs down, keeping your weight in your heels. Do not try to grip onto the horse with your legs - this has the opposite effect and actually raises you out of the saddle - elsewhere on this site is a good picture to show this. Gripping on can also make the horse go faster which certainly won't help! Keeping relaxed through your body is definitely a help too.

You don't ned to worry about whether the trot you are doing is posting (or rising in Britain) or sitting trot, just go with what the teacher says and try not to worry about it. It will come with time.

Good luck!

[Tina]

Working on the lunge line, with and without stirrups will help develope balance and a secure lower leg. Use a neck strap to hold onto with one hand when you feel the need to grip with your leg and let your legs feel like wet noodles. Allow your seat to melt into the deepest part of the saddle and your legs to be long. Relaxation and balance is the key. When you work with stirrups, don't brace against them, it will only make you bounce more. Practice!!!!

[Heather]

The most important thing that you can teach any beginner is how to stay on.This is not achieved by saying 'Sit deeper', or 'Relax your lower back' or 'Go with the movement'. You might as wel recite the Lord's Prayer in Outer Mongolian, for all it means to the average novice.

It is perfectly possible to teach a beginner to sit to the trot, and rise to the trot in balance, in less than an hour, not by meaningless standard statements, but by showing them, hands on, exactly HOW to synchronise their movements with those of the horse.

In order to sit to the trot, try sitting on a stool for this exercise. Firstly, flex in your back so that your spine hollows in. Then straighten your spine again,so that it is flattened, not rounded out, just straight. This is the range of movement which allows the rider to absorb the movement of the horse.

The trot is a two time rhythm, so the back must be flexed in and out in the one, two rhythm of the trot.Essentially, by doing this, you are shortening your spine by flexing it in, the same amount that the horse's back rises, and by straightening it again, you are lengthening the spine again,by the same amount that the horse's back is falling- result? This is only part of the movement. Remember that the horse's back does not move as one piece, but in two halves. Your seatbones need to rise and fall individually with the two halves of the horse's back, just allowing them to do so, not making a conscious effort, which will result in you moving more than the horse.

So, on your stool, flex your lower back in (not too far) and at the same time, think of pushing your right hip bone a little more forward than the left. YOu will feel your seatbone rock onto it's front edge (your seatbones are shaped like the rockers of a rocking chair). Now straighten your spine again, allowing your hipbone to return to upright. Flex your back in again, and allow the left hipbone to advance a little. Then straighten the spine again. Now put it all together in sequence- do this counting , one. two, three four, repeatedly, flex in your spine, advance right hipbone, straighten spine, advance left hipbone, straighten spine, etc. etc. Throughout, make sure that your ribcage is supported upwards, so that your upper torso remains completely still. I do borrow Sally Swift's analogy of imagining that you have a bungee rope attached to your head, so that you are stretched tall, but elasctically, not stiffly.
In the way described above,you will be mirroring the horse's walk. If you imagine your legs attached to your seatbones, it will feel as if youare walking on your own two feet. Now move on to sitting trot. Same thing basically, only twice the speed. Count one, two instead, this time, and flex and straighten the spine and advance and level the hips in two time, not four.

When you go to try it on the horse, be aware of the feeling of your seatbones walking with the two halves of his back. Try sitting trot, but do only a few strides, probably no more than five or six at a time, before returning to walk. A beginner will not have the musculature or balance to maintain sitting trot for longer than this. Gradually build up to a couple more strides, and then a few more. The frequent transitions will improve the quality of the horse's trot, so that you will not in any casefind it difficuolt to sit to. when the rider starts to bounce, the horse 'boards up his back in self defence' so that he will feel a bit like an animated ironing board!

In this way, you will learn to sit to the trot so that you are moving elegantly and imperceptibly as one unit with the horse.
When riders are not taught the correct way to absorb the movement, they try to do various wriggles with the pelvis or whatever to enable them to stick on. if you are not in sync with the horse, it is like canoeing up a river against the current- with one big difference, it doesn't hurt the river, but it can damage the horse's back.

Hope this helps.

[Marlena]

Thank you, Heather,

for this practice tip. After a few private lessons, I thought I was beginning to manage the sitting trot reasonably well but on Saturday my spirits were dampened when the instructor told me that the horse I had been riding up till then had a very steady and easy trot & that next time I would be riding a 'normal' horse.

I have been trying out your exercise a few times on a stool now and I must say it makes a lot of sense. I also realise that I had only been working with my hip so far -- instead of hollowing my back I had, I guess, sort of leaned back. I'm really looking forward to trying it out on a horse.

It is true what Heather said about the basic instructions being incomprehensible to a novice rider. And even if I understand what the instructor is asking me to do, I often find that the movements / positions feel so unnatural and my muscles so stiff that it just puts me off.

It was during the fourth lesson, four example, that I finally had some idea of what "sitting deep in the saddle" meant. By that time I had developed my own way of staying put and when I tried to correct myself, I found myself back in square one. (And the following morning I was aching so much I could hardly walk, which to me meant that I had been using a completely different set of muscles...)

I do love the challenge, though!

[Heather]

Be very careful, Vanessa, that the words 'sitting deep' do not get misconstrued as 'sitting heavily'. This is often the case. Think of wrapping your lower leg lightly around the horse, so that the seat feels light in the saddle. We want to enable the horse to carry us with the minimum disturbance to his way of going, and if we sit heavily, wewill impede his back from being able to raise and 'work through' from behind.

Bty wrapping the lower leg around- the Germans say it should cling like wet cloth- you will be spreading your weight around the whole sides of the horse, and giving yourself a much deeper seatrather than concentrating your weight right on his sensitive back.If you went to pick up a drinks can lying on it's side, you would not just pinch the top of the can, you would place your fingers down and around the whole cylinder. This is what you are doing with your legs, wrapping them around the eliptical cylinder shape of the horse.

Heather

[Marlena]

Thanks again, Heather,

Yes, recently I kind of understood that the idea was to wrap the lower leg around the horse (it also helped, by the way, to actually have the instructor show me what the middle part of the saddle was -- I always thought I had to sit further back than was the case, and finding out that I needed to move forward did wonders to my posture).

I also discovered that when I wrap my legs around the horse, I tend to lose the stirrup of the INNER leg. Perhaps my grip is too heavy (?) Do you (or anybody else) have any practical tip for avoiding this? Any idea why it's always the inner leg? Somehow it would seem more logical to me to lose the stirrup of the OUTER leg...

Thanks,
Marlena

[Heather]

Most of the problems that I find with the rider, actually have little to do with the rider at all. The problem lise with saddles, most of which are an abomination, and positively hinder the correct ear/shoulder/hip/heel/line, which is the only position of balance on a horse.

Look at any saddle and a) you will see that the stirrup bar is too far forward, for reasons I will explain in a minute, and b) the central dip of the seat is not central in relation to the position and width of the saddle flap. This is why so many riders find it easier to stay in position without stirrups than with.

I used to winder why I rode better without stirrups than with, until one day, some years ago now, I realised as I passed the mirrors in my indoor school, having quitted my stirrups but not crossed them over, that the whole leather was hanging in front of my thigh. In other words, to replace my foot in the stirrup, I had to move my whole leg forward, which then pushed my seat further back.

In order to regain my ear/shoulder/hip/heel line, I had to hold the wretched stirrup leather back at an angle the whole time. Now, I am a very experienced professional rider and teacher, and I always felt that I was struggling against the saddle- how much more then did it affect beginners and novices?

I also noticed that when I sat in the correct balance, with my hip and heel in line, that my thigh came off the back of most saddles- there was oodles of flap in front and nothing behind, even on the average dressage saddle. The whole of the upper leg was lacking in support of any kind. Bear in mind folks, that most saddlers live and work in Walsall, and whilst they are excellent craftsmen, they seldom go near a horse, let alone ride one. They mostly design the saddles that they produce, which are instruments of contortion, if not torture, for the majority of riders.

I overcame the problem by designing my own saddlefor use here in my school. The stirrup bar is probably three inches further back than the average saddle, so that the leather hangs perpendicularly under the thigh. The flap is cut so that the thigh is not off the back of it, and the seat is made from a special foam developed by NASA to withstand the shock of seat ejection. It sinks under pressure, but doesn't spring back, moulding to the shape of your bum. There are no horrible seams to dent your seatbones and italso has very large thigh blocks on the front of the saddle flap, which keep your knees down and stop you from gripping up.

In conventional saddles, the seat is filled with Plastizote foam, whch is a closed cell foam whichis resilient and spring. Drop a hammer on to a piece of it and it will 'boing' straight off it. Drop it onto my NASA stuff and it goes thud, because it absorbs shock, not adds to it! Stretch a nice drum tight piece of leather over the Plastizote, place a couple of totally unnecessary seams under the seatbones, and we have got the equivalent of a reverberating drumskin under the rider. Logical? conducive to ease of absorbing the movement? I think not!

Students cannot believe how easy it is to sit in my saddles here, in fact I have had one or two say that it feels like cheating! I always say that I doubt if you went to play a round of golf, you would select a set of clubs that were wrongly weighted, so that it made it difficult to hit the ball! Likewise, I can't imagine that a carpenter would deliberately use a blunt saw to saw a piece of wood. Having tools designed to help you can hardly be construed as 'cheating'!

When the saddle helps the rider to stay in the correct balance, riding becomes easy. The lower leg stays in position without struggling. Wrapping the lower leg around will soon come, as the hip joints have to be sufficiently open to permit this to happen.

If riders are made aware that the saddles that they are riding on are the major cause of their riding problems, they may feel frustrated, but at least they know that it is not ineptitude on their part that is the root of the problem.