# The Novice Seat - how to ride a horse



## Divus (Sep 7, 2010)

*THE NOVICE SEAT*​
INTRO
This series of three articles have been written for curious adults who might fancy learning to ride a horse. I admit that many of the newcomers to the sport of horse riding would find this series boring but that is a real problem which the sport must overcome. A rider can’t learn the correct way to sit a horse, unless he knows the theory. In horse riding, practice doesn’t make perfect - it makes permanent.

For this reason it is extremely important to practice correctly because the horse will learn most new things within three attempts, be it the right way or the wrong way It takes much longer for the horse to unlearn the wrong way. It will take the average human rider longer to learn than it will the horse to respond. Some riders take a lifetime.




*Part One*​ 
As an experienced long term rider I am occasionally asked by another adult as to how to learn to ride. The first thing I always have to explain is that I am not a good teacher, immediately followed by a declaration that my own horse is not suitable for teaching a novice to ride. To be honest, I and my horse Joe are both highly strung neurotics. But somehow as a lover of horses it is beholden upon me to suggest how an adult, perhaps one past the prime of life can learn to sit a horse safely. 

My first suggestion is always to say that the real teacher of any human is the horse and one must seek out an amiable equine which is invariably to be found in a riding centre. The riding instructor is obviously an important link between horse and rider but nothing replaces in the teaching arena a calm, confident, mature, placid, forgiving, school master. 


Horse riding is undoubtedly a dangerous sport and even in the schooling ring serious accidents do happen with monotonous regularity. Every attempt should be made to reduce the risk of injury to rider (and horse) but it is a fact that the rider may easily fall four feet onto solid earth, an act which can give rise to considerable discomfort. It is also a fact that any one of a horse’s four shod feet can project through a steel horseshoe a powerful force of 3cwts - 336 lbs - say approximately 150kgs. Falling off in an arena and being trampled on by a frightened horse will most likely lead to a visit to the hospital. 

In summary in the XXIst century the teaching of riding should be left to the professionally qualified riding instructor who should operate from a licensed riding school utilising a horse which has been carefully selected for the job and which is insured to perform the role. The best riding centres need not spend fortunes on advertising, they should have a good reputation amongst locals. It is not a good idea to learn to ride from a casual friend who keeps a pony at grass livery in a field on the edge of the village.


However what is sometimes lacking in the tuition process is the theory of riding. Even in the specialist book shop there are few books to be found which cope for the needs of the novice adult. Youngsters are mostly taught to ride by placing them on the back of a quiet pony and sending them off in circles around the arena. A quick readjustment of the leg, a realignment of the hands on the reins and a gentle pressure of the hand over the lower spine is often all that is necessary to direct the child’s uncontaminated brain and body in the right direction. The pony will walk off rhythmically and move up into trot at the appropriate time. It all seems to be so easy. But, generally speaking, young folks have to learn fear whereas the older folks have to learn to live with fear. There is nothing quite like the fear of losing one’s balance to make one lose one‘s balance and fall off. The fundamental problem, of course, lies in Newton’s Laws of Motion and Gravity.


The key thing to remember is that every force generated must be dissipated by an equal but opposite force of resistance. Standing four square at halt, a 50-100kg human biped sits upon a 500-700 kg equine quadruped. The horse supports approximately 60% of the rider’s weight on the two front legs and the remaining 40% on the hind legs. The centre of gravity of the horse at rest is to be found forwards somewhere near the buckle of the girth. Once the horse moves forwards, then this centre of gravity will shift forwards proportionately with the speed of movement. The power of the horse incidentally comes largely from the hind quarters but the horse has first to lift its weight off the front legs onto the hind legs in order to enable the horse to move any foot forwards.


Whilst standing at a halt, any slight change of the rider’s position will give rise to a compensatory move by the horse who has to rebalance itself to take up the realignment of the load of the rider. As a result of the physics of weight, motion and gravity it quickly becomes apparent that there is an optimum position for the rider to adopt when sitting a horse. The rider should sit completely upright in the saddle, on the three skeletal bones which form the triangle of the rider’s posterior. The weight of the rider, sitting at rest, should flow vertically downwards to the ground evenly around both flanks. 
The legs should hang down around the barrel of the horse’s chest and the feet and toes should stay aligned forwards and parallel to the line of the horse’s body. The feet should tilt slightly upwards towards the toes. Any theoretical pressure pad fitted onto the saddle ought to indicate an even spread, side to side, fore and back, of the rider’s weight. 
Both of the rider’s toes should rest, repeat rest, on the bars of the stirrups - with the heels dropping down. at a slight angle. It should not be necessary for the rider to push the heels down so long as the legs have found the correct alignment. The inside of the knees of the rider should come to lie alongside the flanks of the horse but they should not be gripping the saddle. 
The arms should be bent at the elbows so that the forearm follows the reins along a straight line to the bit in the horse’s mouth. There are numerous and readily available drawings which illustrate the correct sitting position. 

Having the human’s various body parts in the correct position is key but so is the rider’s state of relaxation - the rider must feel able to hold this posture for the length of the ride without undue stress. Only movement should call for effort. However if the rider were sitting on a full sized and static model of the horse it would quickly be realized that there is a tendency for the human skeleton to relax, even slump, downwards. The shoulders will drop, the spine will curve, the belly will protrude, the head will tilt. If the rider does relax and slouch then the weight distribution of the rider will change and not for the better comfort of the horse. The rider may well discover that the key to maintaining the correct posture is to first balance the head on the neck and then hold the head high - as well Dr Alexander might describe in his books. 


Merely thinking about the principles involved in sitting correctly will, in due course, help educate the subconscious part of the brain so that this riding position becomes the norm when sitting on the stationary horse. Nevertheless the correct seat posture is the fall back position to which the rider must revert constantly during any ride. Sadly few novice riders have the muscular strength to maintain the correct position for any length of time - especially if they came to the hobby later in life.


The, as yet, unstated problem develops when the horse even from a standstill makes the slightest movement. Should the horse merely relax one of its hind legs so as to support itself on three legs - as it is prone to do, especially when dozing or when it is bored, gravity will give cause for the rider to drop down unevenly. Instantly the rider will find that he/she has to adjust his/her position to maintain correct posture and balance. Either the rider provokes the horse into standing again four square, or the rider accepts the laziness of the horse and readjusts the angle of his/her pelvis to ensure that the rider’s weight is again equally balanced. In such circumstances it will become a strain for the rider to sit in a crooked outline. 

It is a very useful exercise for a novice merely to sit still for an extended period on a well schooled stationary horse. A stationary mounted guardsman on duty in Whitehall is indeed an athlete. Being seated on a stationary horse whilst standing on sloping ground can be torture.


To be continued/.


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## The Backward OX (Sep 8, 2010)

as it is won’t to do = as it is _wont_ to do

But in any event the word is archaic at worst, formal at best; do you think the average reader might understand better if it were to be replaced with "accustomed"?


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## Divus (Sep 8, 2010)

Ox - how about 'prone' ?   

B G

PS Remember I am an ancient Brit.


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## garza (Sep 8, 2010)

I still use 'wont' in that sense in everyday speech.


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## The Backward OX (Sep 8, 2010)

You me and him are all wrinklies. You me and he are all wrinklies? We three are all wrinklies. How about the younger readership? They are wont to use more up to date language.


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## Divus (Sep 8, 2010)

Ox, that is a magnificent drawing - where did you find it?


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## granty1 (Sep 8, 2010)

I'll back you up Divus - I use the term 'wont to do' and i'm only 27.. So there.

You certainly know your horses. I was persuaded to try horse riding by my girlfriend whilst on holiday in Australia. It hurt. The main problem was that I didn't get the hang of the movement in the saddle, and so when the horse began to trot, I ended up bouncing out of sync with it and repeatedly hammering my pelvic area against the saddle. I'm still not sure if I'll be able to have children....

On second thoughts, the 'wont' thing might be a British quirk...


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## The Backward OX (Sep 8, 2010)

Divus, that is a very good question.

I read your 'ancient Brit' comment and went looking for something appropriate. I thought, 'Okay, ancient Brits painted themselves with woad.' I googled something, I forget the exact term - woad paint or woad faces - and then went to the Images icon, top left of the window, and began clicking. After wading through countless pics of Mel Gibson, I found our pair of worthies, clicked to open, clicked 'See full size image', copied, pasted, and bingo!

Couldn't find it again, but here they are going in the opposite direction:


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## The Backward OX (Sep 8, 2010)

AND,I just discovered, if you click on the first pic, it enlarges to a full window. You could then set it as background on your desktop.


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## Divus (Sep 9, 2010)

Granty

Well you don't have to go to the land of Oz to ride a horse - there are loads up your way.    It is lucky you were sitting in an Aussie saddle - on a standard Brit you'd have been on the floor.

If you are thinking of going again - and that's a good idea - just go down for a lesson or two.
First forget the trotting  - go straight from walk to slow canter

Remember you have to absorb the upward thrust arising from the horse's action.

Go to a local Pilates group and learn to stretch your calves  and hamstrings.
Then stand on the foot of a staircase balancing on the balls of your feet and gently , repeat gently bounce up and down.

The thrusts are absorbed by the balls of the feet, the ankles, the knees and the glutes.
To ride safely you need to cultivate the muscles.

Then read my article - I'll post Part 2 when the readership slows down.


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## garza (Sep 9, 2010)

Where were you when I was slowly figuring all this out by painful trial and error?


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## Divus (Sep 9, 2010)

Well Garza -seems as though you got on quite well without any help.

But it does help to learn if someone gives you some tips because falling off is a mug's game and the horse doesn't like it.


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## garza (Sep 9, 2010)

That was later, when I was 17, 18 years old. By then I had been around enough horses and enough people who knew about horses to be able to ride fairly well. When I was ten or 11 it was just me and a friend my same age spending time at his grandmother's house in the country trying to learn to ride the one old horse she had. We finally figured out things like sitting flat down on our bottoms was wrong, that our leg muscles had to be used more, and that we needed to move with the same rhythm as the horse, whether at a walk or at a full gallop. A good instructor probably could have taught us that pretty quickly. It took us most of two Summers to figure it all out.


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## The Backward OX (Sep 9, 2010)

No doubt Probably there are people to whom riding comes naturally. I live in an area where horses are part of life both socially and work-wise. If I think of it, I'll ask around. My betting is that most here are natural riders.


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## Divus (Sep 9, 2010)

Ox,   If they learn to ride as youngsters and they have a liking for horses, then they will develop naturally an ability to ride.

You can spot such riders a mile off and folks like me who did not get to ride until I was in my late thirties are just so jealous.
It doesn't matter that I know how to do it - I'll never be as good as those natural riders.  Which is what my horse is always telling me.

I spent too many years of my youth poking my nose into ship wrecks.

B  G


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## garza (Sep 9, 2010)

We will become 'naturals' at whatever we find to do as youngsters that we like to do. Until school started a 13-year-old from the village roared past my house on a big John Deere tractor in top gear twice a day - early morning headed out to the cane fields, late evening coming home. There are three of them that work as a team, the boy on the tractor, his uncle on a cane loader, and the boy's father in an articulated lorry to haul the cane to the factory. From what I've heard he handles that big tractor like a grown man and has no intention of ever spending his life doing anything else but farm work. He's a natural.


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## Divus (Sep 10, 2010)

THE NOVICE SEAT​*
PART 2 - movement ​*
Now we come to movement - the aid/instruction to the horse for which would be a slight squeeze of the thigh against the horse‘s flank, accompanied by a slight reduction of the tension of the reins and perhaps a slight tilt of the rump on the rear part of the seat of the saddle. (School master horses should be so lucky that the aid to move from halt to walk were always so gentle). Sometimes perhaps just a low pitched command of: “ walk on” might suffice. The problems for the rider start with the changes provoked by the forces of motion. The horse to move forwards must first shift its weight backwards off either of the front legs so that the leg can then be moved forwards. However the difficulty lies in the fact that the rider is not attached to the horse by straps, screws or bars. Newton’s Laws will impact upon two separate bodies: that of the horse and the rider and the forces involved will act slightly differently on each body. 

When standing still all that was keeping the horse and rider in balance was gravity, a force which emanates at the rider’s head and projects down through the rider’s rump to the saddle and thence through the horse to the earth. The rider’s legs should hang down and help pull the weight of the rider’s upper body deeper into the saddle. The legs act as flexible clothes pegs. The rider’s feet, when riding English dressage style should be merely resting in the stirrups. If the rider is riding Western or English forward style, then some of the rider’s weight will have been positively directed down through into the stirrups which have been suspended from bars screwed into the tree of the saddle. The rider will be using foot pressure to help balance him/herself on the saddle which remember, is not a flat horizontal surface. There are distinct advantages in using the stirrups to disperse or redirect weight in that each foot is supported by shock absorbing dampers in the form of the flexibility of the foot, the ankle, the knee and the hips. The rider who merely sits held by gravity in the saddle has only the under thigh muscles and the glutes to resist any force which might tend to disturb the rider’s position. Whilst every rider should be able to ride without the help of stirrups, it takes a lot of practice for the rider to achieve a secure seat without them.


Of course, it is all very well to discuss and illustrate the theory behind riding and the dispersion of weight but the fact remains that the human brain doesn’t always follow what the rider perceives to be the correct method. The human sitting in the saddle doesn’t have time to think before it reacts - the part of the brain which controls any muscular movement reacts first and the conscious part of the human brain might catch up with what went on seconds later. Indeed at the first minimal movement of the horse from a stationary position, it is quite probable that the rider will instinctively grip the flanks of the horse with the knees so as to resist the unbalancing forces. The Western Rider would at that same moment have pushed both feet down into the enormous leather stirrups of a cowboy saddle.. The English Forward style rider would have moved the upper body off the vertical position and leant slightly into the direction of the horse’s movement so as to stay over the horse‘s centre of gravity. The classical rider relies largely on gravity.


What is the way for the novice rider round this problem? The response system in the brain controlling the muscular functions of the body have to be developed perhaps by rote - (constant repetition) so that the subconscious part of the brain learns an instinctive muscular response to any problem presented when riding. And that is exactly where the good tutor comes in - because it is of extreme importance at the beginning of learning to ride for the correct muscle groups to be brought into use. If the mature novice is left for his/herself to choose how to ride then it is highly likely that he/she will not develop the optimum riding posture. In the training arena the experienced tutor of horse and rider can make a judgement from what he/she is watching as to whether the rider is responding by the appropriate method. Being secure in the saddle is not the same as being stylish. The youngster whose body is as yet not fully mature will naturally take up a posture which his/her brain thinks to be secure and they with the elixir of youth will feel confident even when riding bareback. The brain of the adult knows better the dangers in life and falling four feet off a horse’s back is on of them. The young person relaxes onto the horse, the adult must often learn to relax.


One must read the books written by Dr Alexander to understand the principles involved in his Technique which revolves around repetitive movements learned by rote. Be aware that the Spanish Riding school prefers to accept trainee riders who have had little previous riding experience rather than young men who have learned in earlier life an “incorrect” system of riding. Any practitioner of Pilates, an exercise regime which concentrates on the human’s core muscles, will stress that when exercising it is of major importance that the correct rhythm of breathing is mandatory along with the proscribed use of the pelvic floor muscles. The athlete loses much of the benefit of exercising if the wrong breathing pattern is adopted and especially when the wrong muscles are used to obtain a body position. Suffice it to say that if once the riders starts to use the wrong muscles in the wrong sequence it is a devil of a job later to learn to use the body’s muscles correctly, or rather as is proscribed to be in the correct manner. Which is exactly why it is easier for the “uncontaminated” youngster to learn to ride than the adult. 
                                                                                                                        - -----------------to be continued


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## Taxiday (Sep 10, 2010)

I grew up in the American southwest [I'm guessing this piece is about riding in Britain] and can remember being around my uncle's Paliminos when I was six or seven. I never feared them and climbing up on the huge [to me] animals was natural.
When I lived on a ranch, we had several horses, one a big Morgan/Quarter crossbreed and another Arab mare. The mare was skittish and one had to be good to keep up with her little tricks. Tom, on the other hand, was an easy ride. But, when you cinched him up, you'd better look where your feet were as he tended to think it funny to see how his big hoof matched your much smaller hoof.

As we Yanks ride civilized saddles with big pommels and cantels making far more sense than those teensy things you Brits use. Why not just ride with a horse blanket?


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## garza (Sep 10, 2010)

You call a roping saddle _civilised_? They are barbaric and just get in the way. I understand their working use, but for pleasure riding they are terrible.


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## Divus (Sep 10, 2010)

Taxi.
Western style riding and English style riding are two very different systems based on fundamentally different needs.
Western riding probably developed from the Spanish Doma Vaquera  (trans: The way of the Cowboy) method.   The saddle is a working man's saddle to carry him, his possessions and his tools especially the rope for hours at a time.   The heavy roping saddle gives the cowboy a horn to use as a restraint or a lever.

The English saddle descends from the military way of riding (the US military McLellan saddle is nothing more than a well padded English type saddle tree).  English saddles are designed to enable the rider to  play with horses (as against work with them).    The English are not taught to use the lariat - they used the whip instead.   The British do not roundup cattle using horses as  nearly all cattle grazing land is fenced.

It is expected that all English horses should jump -  to 4 feet or more high over wooden fences, gates or hedges.  The rider is taught to jump his/her horse.  A horn would get in the way.
There are signficant differences in the two riding techniques.  The horse can be schooled to either method.

Yes it is easier for the inexperienced rider to sit into a Western saddle but the lighter English saddle with its smaller footprint gives more 'feel' for the horse. 

In answer to your questions - blankets give little except a relief from friction.
and
The English way of  riding is becoming very popular with American riders particularly in the NE of US. 

Come over and try for yourself.

BG


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## The Backward OX (Sep 10, 2010)

On an associated note, I recall the invasion of Britain by Australian jockeys in the late fifties-early sixties. Up until that time, if I remember correctly, British flat-racing jockeys rode using a bums-on-saddles, semi-upright stance. Australian jockeys, in what we call the gallops, on the other hand, crouched forward over the horses’ withers and neck with their bums in the air. For some reason, we began winning all your races. Your jockeys put two and two together, and now the Australian way of riding a flat-racing horse is all you see in Britain.

I dunno about your steeple-chasing. Maybe they still ride the old way.

Tally-ho!


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## Divus (Sep 11, 2010)

I rarely watch horse racing.
The flat jockeys certainly use the crouched racing seat - a precarious perch if you ask me.

For steeple chasing I can't work out any option to the way they ride.  Whenever I watch the Grand National and see some of those guys tumble off in front of a mass of charging horses I wonder how they survive - but somehow they do.   Apparently  the horses can be very adept at placing their feet to avoid the fallen rider.

I write about riding horses not hari kari missions.


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