Moving too much at rising trot

[Keket]

My instructor keeps telling me that I'm overextending my movement at the rising trot. I don't think I am. I'm just doing what comes naturally to me, but she thinks I'm working too hard. Anyone else have this problem?

[mustang fan]

thats what my instructor used to tell me but i dont know because now I am being told I need to rise more :rolleyes: . So I dont know if it is just the instructors prefrence or what

[SupaTania]

What she may mean is your are pushing yourself beyond the horses natural bounce. With the rising trot, you are suppose to allow the horses back to push you out of the saddle, and then cotrol your fall back into the saddle in beat to his trot. Rather then pushing yourself up, allow the horse to do it, and just control the way you come back down. You should not be rising more then a couple of inches.

[kedwards]

Sally Swift writes that you should imagine yourself "rolling forward on your thighs" rather than lifting up, as such. Sometimes that image has been helpful to me. The idea is that, you let the horse bounce you up and you bring your hips a little forward then lower yourself into the front of the saddle, but you keep contact with your thighs throughout.

Learning to post trot without stirrups can be good for teaching you to keep your legs on the horse and let him bounce you up, as it is impossibly difficult to do otherwise. The only caveat is that you want to be careful not to let the exercise encourage you to pinch with your knees.

[fimonkey]

Hi.

I also have this problem, but I know when I trot correctly cos it really hurts my inner thigh (which is controlling my 'fall' back into the saddle so it;s not such a 'bump' onto her back).

I also seem to use my stirrups as a 'platform' for my rise, is I put all my weight onto them. How can I get round this? Should I be trynig a rising trot without stirrups? (Is a posting trot the same as a rising trot)?

Sorry not meaning to steal your thread, just thought it was relevant to put my experience here rather than start a new thread.

Cheers

f

[galadriel]

Some discussion of this very topic here:
http://lorienstable.com/articles/riding/400-trotting/

[cvb]

fimonkey

The posting trot is similar to getting in and out of a chair - only the chair os moving forwards ;)

So you can play with this a bit just by getting into and out of a chair.

If you are sitting in a chair, your feet are normally ahead of you. Then your first move (if you analyse it) is actually to move your weight forward over your feet before you can then move up. This involves you "leaning" into your feet first.

Its similar in a saddle - only if the saddle is sitting your correctly your weight should already be over your feet. So your first check is whether you have that alignment every one always talks about - shoulder, hip, heel.

Try this out on a chair - get up from sitting "back" in the chair, and then repeat but from the edge where you are already over your feet - explore the difference a bit...

Now what we all tend to do when we sit or stand from a chair is to use speed to help us - this is a little lazy and tends to mean we don't have much fine control. Try standing and sitting but without the speed - observe how you need to move your weight, what muscles it uses and so on.

When you "over-rise" on a horse you are often also using speed of rise to help you. It does use muscles - but different ones. So the ache you get when you control the rise is those unfamiliar muscles kicking in ;)