Many people believe the key to staying on their horse while riding is to prevent their horse from misbehaving or spooking.  In other words, their security depends on the emotional stability of a 1,000 lb animal that believes objects weighing mere ounces could kill him.

Living with and riding horses that will always spook, no matter how many experiences or how much formal “bomb proof” training they receive, I finally decided that I was the only one in the equation that had the ability to change drastically, not my horse.

If you want to learn how to stay on your horse, you can read and learn in many places about how to have a secure seat.  This term is a misnomer, I have discovered.  Sitting down on your bottom on a horse is only secure as long as your horse is doing what you think he is going to be doing.  If you plan to trot in a straight line along the arena wall and turn at the corner, you will be secure if your horse does this.  If you plan to do a canter to trot transition at a certain spot on the trail, you will be secure if you follow all the principles of a secure seat such as: ear, shoulder, hip and heel in alignment; weight equally distributed on seat bones; relaxed posture with following seat; etc.

The issue with this “secure” seat comes when your horse does the unexpected.  Instead of trotting in a straight line down the arena wall, your horse jumps to one side, bolts forward three steps and then turns to face the wall.  Or instead of the canter to trot transition on the trail, your horse stops dead and flips around 180 degrees before taking off at a canter in the other direction.  Now it would be very nice if you could prevent all of these things from happening.  Perhaps if you’d known in advance that a pop can was going to roll out of the bushes while glinting in the sun right at the spot where you planned to begin trotting, you could have spent the time training for that.  But real life on horseback is full of unexpected surprises.  I find it difficult to blame my horses, since out in the woods I may occasionally spook more than they do.  Perhaps my horse caught the scent of the ground fowl before it flew up under our noses, because sometimes I find that even my spooky horse is walking on calmly while I’m the one jumping out of my skin.

On this video, look at the rider’s position at the 2 minute mark.

Even if you ride in a different type of saddle or with a different stirrup length, this is the basis of a truly strong, independent seat.  At any gait, you should be able to feel as though you are standing on the ground, and that if your horse and saddle simply disappeared you would drop to the ground and land on your feet.  This is not what many instructors teach, but it is key to being as safe as it is possible to be on horses that have volatile or changeable temperaments or tend to spook unexpectedly.

Riding for long distances, you can’t remain standing heavily in the stirrups, so an important part of learning to ride this way is getting a feel for how to distribute your weight evenly down the insides of your legs, taking some of the pressure off the balls of your feet.  The area where you touch the horse/saddle is from the lower, meaty part of your inner calf up to your inner thigh a few inches below your crotch.  When you look down at your knee, you should see that your foot points in front of it at the same angle (your foot/toe and thigh should be parallel).  When you stand, your knee and toe point the same direction, obviously, but many people ride with twisted joints, which is poor body mechanics and leads to pain.  There is no gripping involved, but rather “weight distribution,” which means having enough contact with the saddle to feel a difference between sitting heavily down on the horse versus “standing” lightly in the stirrups.

Once developed, this seat is truly independent, meaning you can have no contact with the reins during a trot or gallop and yet remain stable over the horse’s center of gravity.  The horse can jump over something, leap sideways, or even spin around without you losing your balance by more than a few inches in any direction.  Your feet, however, must remain underneath you and not be allowed to swing back or forward.  Think of your stirrups as the ground, and always keep them where the ground is supposed to be, whether you are jumping, stopping suddenly, or going down a hill.  If you jump, the ground doesn’t shoot off behind you, so don’t put your stirrups back there either.

Another key piece to riding safely is to remember to use all of your joints.  Flexing them not only helps keep you loose and uses your body’s natural shock absorbers, it also brings into play your proprioceptors.

“Proprioception means “sense of self”. In the limbs, the proprioceptors are sensors that provide information about joint angle, muscle length, and muscle tension, which is integrated to give information about the position of the limb in space.”

(http://courses.washington.edu/conj/bess/spindle/proprioceptors.html)

Proprioceptors are what keep you from falling down on your face when you trip suddenly.  These come into play when your body senses it is “standing.”  When you stand lightly in the stirrups as described above, your proprioceptors will automatically adjust for sudden changes in movement, which means that instead of “working on balance,” you tap into what your body does for you automatically and instantaneously every day.  Trying to balance on your behind versus using your proprioceptors is like the difference between deciding to let go of a slimy leaf in your hand and the reaction you get when you touch a hot stove.  One requires a decision that you make, which takes some time even if it is a rapid decision.  The other one is an automatic reflex, and one you don’t have to think about at all.  The reflex of proprioception is the only thing fast enough to keep up with the lightning fast spook or other reaction of your horse.

I can well remember the extreme difference this practice made in my own riding confidence.  I went from feeling nervous about riding just a mile out from the barn alone and debating over which saddle felt the most secure to use, to looking forward to the excitement of galloping my horse out on the trails miles away on secluded logging roads.  Even when I was taking dressage lessons and felt my balance was very good, I still spun off the saddle and hit the ground when my horse whirled and bolted.  In contrast, after learning this secure type of riding (which is also how eventers ride on cross country courses), I remember one day cantering on one side of a two lane road, blinking, feeling a whoosh and opening my eyes to discover I was cantering on the other side of the two lane road.  It is an amazing feeling to be able to laugh at a horse’s antics rather than to dread that at any moment you may have an unexpected and rapid landing on hard ground.

An added benefit of learning to ride like this is that you will feel safer riding new horses, friends’ horses, and riding horses in other environments such as while on vacation.