As riders, we tend to spend a lot of time focusing on what our horses are doing and what we’re doing becomes secondary. But really, we can better communicate with our horses if we pay more attention to ourselves to understand how our body position is influencing them. 

Working on your position takes a lot of concentration. You’re not just sitting still like when you’re driving a car. Instead, you are traveling on a moving animal, so you must constantly check and tweak your position, which isn’t easy. When I teach, I always try to find what words and visualizations make sense to my students and what translates into improvement.

Here are some of my favorite tips that I’ve found resonate with a lot of riders. While we’re demonstrating them for dressage in this article, you’ll find them applicable for hunters, jumpers and equitation riders. I hope they help you perfect any weaker areas of your position and you notice an improvement in your horse’s way of going. 

1. Your Seat Is More Than Just Your Seat

Imagine that your seat is also your knees, thighs, back, core, chest, upper arms, head and eyes. From the elbows down are your arms. And from the knees down are legs. Thinking about it this way changes your view of using your seat in the saddle. If you keep your actual seat stable and these other “seat” body parts steady, the horse can stay consistent and hear your cues more easily. 

2. Use Your Thighs

If you feel like you’re pushing in your seat and using the back of your body more than the front, you may need to work on the position of your thighs. If you don’t consistently stabilize through your thighs, the torso must take on some of the stabilization, which often causes riders to pull on the reins and lean back to compensate. 

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about the proper use of the thighs. Envision your thighs as the seat belt of your seat. Your thighs have four sides: the outside, inside, front and back. You must learn how to access the four sides of your thigh as needed. The outside of the thigh attaches you to the saddle, but the inside draws the horse up into collection.

At the halt, rotate your thighs in so you can see the full-seat part of your breeches in the back, not the front. If you need to, hold your reins in one hand and use your other hand to grab your hamstrings to pull the bulk of the muscle out from underneath your thigh bones. Then, think about adducting, or bringing your thighs toward your midline, or center of your body, so you don’t get heavy in your seat or squeeze your glutes.

To maintain a proper bend behind your knees, think about making an arrowhead shape with the backs of your knees. To feel how much weight you should have in your thighs versus your feet, stand in your stirrups with 100% of your weight in your feet. Then, sit in the saddle, rotate your thighs in and lift your feet in your stirrups so that the stirrups are dangling and 100% of your weight is in your thighs. Then, put 50% of your weight back in your feet. To do this, imagine the stirrups coming up to meet your feet as much, if not more, than your feet are pushing into the stirrups. The weight in your stirrups will likely feel significantly lighter than what you’re used to feeling.   

3. Trampoline Stirrups

The stirrups are to the rider’s balance what the bit is to the horse’s balance. You should use your stirrups to rebalance without bracing into them. Riders are usually taught to exaggerate pushing their heels down. When riding, your ankle, knee and hip joints should absorb the movement of the horse so your torso can remain still. If you put too much downward pressure in the stirrups, they become big pendulums at the end of your stirrup leathers, moving forward and back. When this happens, you’re no longer in charge of your balance. 

Imagine your stirrups are more like a trampoline and less like a floor. If you bend and flex your joints, you’ll stay upright on a trampoline. But if you lock your joints against a trampoline, you’re going to fall over. 

To better understand this feeling, you can also ask a friend to put her hand under your foot and on top of the stirrup base. Try to lift your foot until you can just barely feel her fingers. Then, think about lifting your toes and when you lift your foot, think about bringing your foot up to your thigh.

4. Align the Seat

As riders, we’ve historically been taught that we’re in proper alignment when you can draw an imaginary vertical line from your shoulder, through the side of the hip to the back of the heel. My mentor and coach Mary Wanless views the rider’s alignment a bit differently. In her mind, the imaginary vertical line should go through the rider’s shoulder, the front point of the hip and the outside of the ankle bone. 

Riders typically have incredibly strong backs, but they usually have an untapped group of muscles in the front of their bodies that can help them balance over the horse’s center of gravity. Here are a few visualizations to help align your seat and torso so you can ride more equally in the front and back of your body.

Stack the Boxes: A lot of dressage riders tend to be more in the back of their bodies rather than in front in terms of their seat position. But if you ride a little more forward over the horse’s center of gravity, it will positively impact the horse’s way of going. 

Imagine your body is made of three boxes that connect four parts of your body. The collarbone is the top edge of the top box; the sternum is the bottom of the top box and the top of the middle box; the belly button is the bottom of the middle box and the top of the bottom box; and the pubic bone is the bottom of the bottom box. The idea is to stack each of these four parts of your body on top of one another. Generally, one of these four areas causes a problem, and this visualization can help the rider find it. 

Aim Your Sternum: If it seems like the middle box is your problem area that doesn’t stay aligned, imagine you have a flashlight coming out of your sternum and practice focusing it on the third vertebra in your horse’s neck. As you visualize this in the walk, trot and canter, notice if your sternum stays aimed at the same spot or if it changes depending on the different phases of the gait. Play around with it. If pointing your sternum at your horse’s third vertebra doesn’t work for you, aim it in front of the reins or at the bit.

Carousel Pole: The carousel pole provides a good visualization for riders who are already in good alignment but need to better engage their front core muscles. To stay forward and in the middle of your horse’s center of gravity, imagine you’re a carousel pole that attaches from the ceiling and goes behind your horse’s withers, through his heart girth and to the ground. If you lean back, you’ll tilt the whole carousel horse. Because your body is not accustomed to this feeling, it may seem like you’re folding forward in order to stay with the carousel pole, even though your body is actually in a good alignment. 

You can also think about expanding into your belt, then purse your lips as if you have a straw in your mouth and you are sucking in and then blowing out in it. That will give you a high-powered push out and you’ll feel your core engage.

5. Engage Your Core Through Breathwork

Breathwork is a way to get familiar with and engage your core muscles—your abdominals, back muscles, pelvic muscles and even somewhat the gluteal muscles—to stabilize your torso and gain more control of your seat in the saddle. Just as we want our horses to engage their barrels and lift their backs to carry us with greater ease and balance, we must also engage our cores.  

Wanless describes engaging the core as sucking your guts in and then pushing out against the wall you’ve created. What I’ve found is that people tend to do more of one or the other. Having more push or pull in one direction of engagement isn’t really engagement; it’s bracing. Imagine this inequality from the standpoint of left and right: if you put your left leg on way more than your right leg, would you expect your horse to stay straight?

Breathing exercises are a great way to gain control of your core engagement. Blowing up a balloon without using your hands will give you an idea of where your core is weaker and stronger. You can also use your fingertips to feel your abdominals to help your brain focus on that area. (Your brain doesn’t think about your abdominals all that much, it just assumes they’re there). Your fingers have many neural connections to your brain, so you can “loan” those to the less familiar areas of your core.  

You can also think about expanding into your belt, then purse your lips as if you have a straw in your mouth and you are sucking in and then blowing out in it. That will give you a high-powered push out and you’ll feel your core engage. 

6. Got it or Lost It?

I like to play a game with my students called “Got it or lost it?” This involves the riders holding certain positions, like in the tips we previously discussed, and determining how the positions affect their horses. 

Riding instructors don’t always remind students to pay attention to their bodies. So, you must take responsibility and constantly evaluate your position and what you’re noticing throughout your entire ride. How does one side feel compared to the other? Are you even? How does focusing on one area affect another? Was it better, worse or about the same as last time? If it was better, what was better about it? This game helps bring your attention to how quickly you can lose something, but also gives you the opportunity to fix it. 

 And if you’re not certain what right feels like, let it go very wrong for a few strides. You and your horse will be fine with this brief period of poor posture. Doing it wrong can help you compare and figure out the changes you need to make to be successful. 

7. Balance, Not Strength

Much of riding is trying to figure out how little muscle you can use to maintain your position. It’s like holding a yoga pose—you want to see what other parts of your body can relax while keeping a position. It’s better to stay organized in your own balance than use brute strength to affect the horse, because that will only create tension. 

The Pitfall of Proprioception

Proprioception refers to the brain’s awareness of the body in space. I like to tell people that proprioception is a big fat liar! Your body does what feels normal, but normal isn’t necessarily correct in riding. Mary Wanless has a phrase that encapsulates this: “Embrace the weird.” Riding in a correct position may feel very foreign to you at first.

To improve your position and your overall riding, it’s crucial to be curious, but not critical. Use mirrors to check your alignment. Work with a trainer and develop descriptors that help you understand how your body feels in certain positions. And focus on what your horse is doing—is he going better because you’re in a better balance?

For More:

• For hands-on training tips and live video demonstrations with Stephany Fish Crossman on EQUESTRIAN+, click here.
• For more position tips from top pros, click here.

About Stephany Fish Crossman

Stephany Fish Crossman began riding as a young girl in Maine and by 18, she discovered dressage and left college to join Michael Poulin as a working student. After a successful management career in Florida’s hospitality industry, working for large and small animal veterinarians and grooming for Jane Savoie, she attended the now defunct International Academy of Equestrian Studies in Warendorf, Germany, where she graduated with her National Trainer Certificate. She’s also a USDF bronze and silver medalist as well as one of only nine accredited coaches for Mary Wanless’ Ride With Your Mind Biomechanics System in the U.S. She is currently based in Brooksville, Florida.