Are you able to stay plugged in through your seatbones in the sitting trot, or do you tend to get tense and bounce? If you struggle with your own suppleness in the sitting trot, you aren’t alone. There are many other riders who feel your pain. Sitting the trot takes a solid understanding of how your horse is moving underneath you. Success also requires a great deal of body awareness – developing a feel for staying with this movement. Now, let’s take a look at some common struggles and solutions surrounding the sitting trot.
Riding a correct sitting trot is essential for success in competition as well as furthering the development of harmony and flow between you and your horse. In order for your horse to be able to trot in balance and with the best freedom of movement possible, it’s critical that we learn how to go with the motion of his back in sitting trot. Additionally, if we’re out of sync with our horse’s movements, it’ll be much more difficult to communicate with her and cue her correctly. This can lead to a lack of overall harmony and responsiveness in sitting trot.
One of the biggest issues with sitting trot is bouncing. If we get disconnected from the forward and down swinging motion of our horse’s back, we end up working against the horse as we seek harmony. Did you ever jump on a trampoline with a friend as a kid, and tried to sync your jump just right so that when you jump again, you’re using the propulsion from your friend landing on the trampoline to jump even higher the next time? Being out of sync in sitting trot can feel similar to this, and it’s exactly what we want to avoid with our horses. As the horse’s back comes down during the stance phase of the trot sequence, we need to move down with it by opening our hip joint to follow this motion. If we get left behind in the “drop” phase of the horse’s stride, this is where the trouble starts. Not only is bouncing uncomfortable for you and your horse, it also disrupts both of your balance as well.
Bouncing isn’t just a seat issue. In order for us to stay connected with our horse as the back rises and falls, we need to work on flexibility of the hip joint. Due to the diagonal motion of the trot (meaning the horse trots with diagonal pairs of legs – left front right hind together, then right front left hind together), trotting is actually closer to a pedaling motion than an up and down piston motion. Let’s start to break this down by taking a look at the bones and joints that make up our seat and upper leg. The more we understand about our own anatomy, the more we can learn how to use it to our advantage. First we have our spine, then our hip joint which is the ball and socket joint connecting our pelvis to our femur. Our femur bone is relatively straight and connects to our knee joint which is a hinge joint. Since the knee stays softly bent while you’re in your riding position, our hip joint is able to open and close which creates an arc, similar to that of a windshield wiper throwing the rain off your windshield. Think of your knee joint as the part of the wiper blade that’s fixed to your car, and your pelvis’ ability to swing as the arc motion of the wiper blade. This can be a helpful mental picture in posting trot, but this same motion is required for sitting trot as well, it’s just minimal. Every trot stride your horse makes needs to be matched with this opening and closing of your hip joint.
If you haven’t developed a feel for the swinging motion of your hips in the posting trot, this can present a problem that magnifies itself in the sitting trot. One helpful exercise is to kneel on the ground, and practice engaging your back and hips to “post” by swinging your pelvis forward from this kneeling position. This is also a great exercise for learning how to identify which muscles extend your hip joint.
Because we generally utilize our arms and shoulders instead of our legs to lift and move things, finding this suppleness, finesse, and connection in the seat and leg can be a real challenge. Many riders compensate for bouncing by sitting too far back behind their seat bones, forcing the hip angles to extend. However, this is an example of unhealthy biomechanics due to hyperextension of ligaments and muscles in the lower back and SI joint. Sitting like this also creates a situation where it’s difficult to effectively cue your horse. Because you’re not moving in balance with your horse, your horse will likely become unbalanced himself and potentially lose rhythm. Loss of rhythm then creates a loss of self carriage, and the horse will often fall onto his forehand as a result.
Solutions
In order to sit the trot effectively, it’s critical to find your neutral spine. This means your spine is aligned in a position where you feel most balanced. In this alignment, your hip joint will have more freedom of movement because you’re not “holding” through your torso creating a position that demands constant compensation from your hips and legs. Leaning too far back forces extension and if your horse magically disappeared out from underneath you, you’d land on your butt. Leaning too far forward forces flexion, and if your horse disappeared out from underneath you, you’d land on your nose. You want to be in a position where you’d land on your feet if your horse were to disappear out from underneath you. You can even practice this position on the ground by standing with your feet shoulder width apart and bending your knees until your ankle, hip, shoulder, and ear are in alignment. In addition, you’ll want to feel even weight in both seat bones and stirrups. This lateral balance is essential and helps prevent you from feeling as if you’re listing to one side or the other. Now that you’ve furthered your understanding of how your body needs to balance, you’ll then need to develop your feel for the moment of suspension in the trot. Each beat of trot (the stance phase) is the “down” cycle, and each moment between the beats is the flight phase, or moment of suspension. Think of taking away the action of your posting and instead of swinging up in that moment, you rebalance and keep your seat, staying down and connected like you did in the sitting phase of the prior stride sequence. This movement is quicker than most of us picture it. Sometimes, watching a horse trotting or watching others sit the trot will help you develop your feel. We all learn differently!
Remember, sitting the trot is an ab workout for even the most advanced riders. Once you develop feel and connection, don’t be discouraged if it still feels physically taxing.
Next, bring your focus to your upper body. It’s important to stay tall through your upper body without bracing your upper back and forcing this position. Think about bringing your shoulder blades together and dropping them down. Staying more open in the chest allows for increased elasticity through your spine, which helps keep your hips following the motion of your horse. Remember to keep your hands in front of the pommel of your saddle. Riding with your hands too far back is another positional fault that can cause you to perch through your upper body.
Moving on to your leg, it’s important to note that there are more muscles in your leg that will have a tendency to grip the saddle than release the leg from it. This makes gripping instinctive for many riders, especially beginners. Gripping can cause us to hover above the saddle on tense muscles instead of sink into it and use our muscles to properly align our skeleton. Allow your leg to hang, and don’t force your heel down! Think of engaging the front of your calf muscles or engaging the tendons in the back of your knee to lift your toe up.
Putting it all Together
Now that you’ve worked on proper positioning, it’s time to test your homework. Start by posting the trot, paying close attention to the swinging motion of the trot instead of an “up and down” feel. Remember to keep your knee soft and to swing through your posts instead of posting up and down. Pay close attention to how your hips are pivoting over the hinge joint of your knee. As you come back into the seated position from the swing of your post, keep your upper body engaged, and land softly into the saddle, ready to follow the rhythm and post forward with the next stride sequence again (this will be almost as soon as your weight comes into the saddle). It might be helpful to imagine your windshield wipers again during this awareness exercise. Next, come to the sitting trot for a few strides and focus on keeping your leg long and soft as you allow your seat bones and hips to follow the motion of the sitting trot. If you start feeling out of sync, post for a few strides and try again.
Developing this feel takes time, patience, and lots of body awareness, so be patient with yourself! Don’t force it. With practice, syncing your body to the movement of your horse’s back will become a movement pattern your mind and body will be comfortable with.
Thanks for reading. If you want an audio version of this post, head over to my podcast and have a listen. It might help to review this content in real time while you’re riding. Make your next ride your best ride, and take care.
–Kimberly