Many people consider when riding a horse the ultimate goal is to have a horse responding primarily from the feel of a rider’s seat and legs. It is believed by many that the seat and legs are a true test of the communication between a horse and rider.
During a lesson, I was coaching a student on how to use her legs to help her horse become more forward and more responsive. It’s a common issue that gets addressed at clinics. At the end of the lesson, I was asked about the role of a rider’s seat when asking a horse for more life in their feet or when slowing down or stopping. So this is my take on the role of the seat.
In my opinion, the most important function of a rider’s seat is to adjust a rider’s centre of gravity (COG). The COG is the point where the weight (or mass) of a body is located. If a person stands upright equally on both feet the COG is on the vertical axis. If a person leans forward the COG shifts forward of the vertical axis. If they lean back the COG shifts behind the vertical axis. If a person leans on their left leg the COG moves to the left of the vertical axis.
As a rider, one of our most important aims is to make ourselves as easy as possible for a horse to carry. This means that a rider’s COG should be as closely aligned as possible to a horse’s COG when moving in equilibrium with a horse’s movement. This helps to ensure the rider imposes the least amount of burden on a horse during movement.
Maybe it would help if I presented an easy example. Say you are going to give me a piggyback ride. As your passenger, it will be easiest to carry me if my COG were as closely aligned to your COG as possible. So when you walk forward your COG moves forward and it would make it easier to carry me if I leaned forward. But it would be harder to carry me if I leaned backward. Likewise, if you want to turn to the right your COG would move to the right I could make it easier if I leaned to the right and harder if I leaned to the left.
One of the most important ways we can make it easier for a horse to perform a movement is for the rider’s COG to shift in the direction of the horse’s COG during the movement. It makes it easier for a horse to carry us. Our seat makes it possible to alter our COG forward, backward, left, and right. A horse’s COG will change with every movement - going up a hill, going down a hill, trot to walk, extended to collected, backup to side pass. We should accommodate those changes in the horse’s COG with changes in our own COG.
If you want an obvious example of the role of the seat and COG the jumping seat easily comes to mind. Federico Caprilli (1868 - 1907) was an Italian cavalry officer who revolutionized the jumping world by coming up with the forward jumping seat. As a horse prepares to leap over a jump its COG shoots forward. The forward seat that Caprilli introduced allows the rider’s mass to go with the horse and not drag behind the horse’s COG, thereby reducing the burden of carrying a rider over a jump.
But for some people adjustment of a rider’s seat is more about applying an aid that a horse can follow. For example, they make a change to the angle of their pelvis to indicate to their horse it should go forward and another change to indicate it should slow down or stop. This approach of using the seat is often associated with adjustment of the rider’s leg position and pressure. The seat/leg combination takes on the role of asking for a change of a horse’s thought and not just to minimize the burden of carrying a rider.
Both functions of using the seat to ask a horse a question to elicit a change of thought AND to follow a horse’s COG are important skills to learn for any rider and any horse.
But I would argue that teaching a horse to work “from” the seat is not as important as teaching a rider to use their seat to “go with” a horse. Teaching my horse to turn from my seat is far less important than using my seat to stay out of his way during a turn. Both are possible. However, one is important and the other is nice.
In my opinion, a rider’s seat is a very crude and imprecise tool for influencing a horse’s thoughts and movement. The ability to micro-adjust the feel of the seat falls short of the ability to do the same using a rider’s legs and reins. For this reason, it confuses me that people will aim to have their horse directed from their seat (and leg) aids before their horse is brilliant at working from rein aids. It makes my beard grey a little more that people think their horse should work from seat (and leg) aids without spending the time to train the meaning of those aids as if a horse innately understands that when a rider tilts their pelvis it is to stop. Or that applying a feel in the rider’s right leg is an obvious signal to a horse to shift to the left or to bend around the leg that the horse learned before weaning.
I am not underestimating the importance of a rider’s seat in keeping the rider in balance with a horse’s COG. But I also believe I am not overestimating its importance in directing a horse’s thoughts.
Fedorica Caprilli riding Pouf. Notice the style of jumping saddle had not yet caught up with Caprilli’s revolutionary jumping seat.