Installing Seat Aids and Adjustability

I had a couple of comments a couple posts ago about my position techniques while riding for collected/extended paces so I figured I'd talk a little bit about that today. May as well since I'm thinking about it a lot as I go to fix the adjustability in TC's canter work. 

Extended trot- thighs open, pelvis rotated

When I was a kid, I was taught to sit deep to slow a horse down, and to get up off the back of the horse to speed a horse up. It made sense, race horses are raced with riders off their backs, dressage horses are ridden with rider's seats on their backs. 

I wasn't really taught much about my position and how it influenced the horse beyond having good balance and good equitation. I was always pretty balanced and a nice looking rider, so no one really bothered to teach me about how my position affected the horse. I stayed out of the way, which is pretty good for a teenager riding at the lower levels. Just get out of the way. 

Pirouette- light seat

It wasn't until I started riding Leo, really. He was the first horse you really couldn't just sort of PUT on the aids, you had to ride him on the aids. If any horse has helped me with TC, it's him. He liked to retract his neck and he liked to drop his back. That sounds familiar. 

Rico had spoiled me with having a strong back and a lack of sensitivity to me as a rider. I could pull his face and kick him up and tell myself I was a good rider because I could get a horse on the bit. I got on Leo and the second I picked up the reins he stuck his head straight in the air to get away from my backwards seeking contact and he dropped his back out from under my heavy seat. 

Leo was a Grand Prix horse, by the way. 

It was Leo, and of course his owner/trainer who coached me, who really showed me what the aids were for collection and for extension beyond the reins and the legs. He also taught me a lot of the movements that I would later go on to install in Rico. If you have any access to a horse that knows more than you, do everything you can to ride that horse and take lessons from someone who knows him/her. You won't regret it. 

Passage- more weight in seat, but thighs lifting

So onto TC. 

I'm teaching him, as I've taught many horses before, to sit down and collect as my weight is distributed more into my thighs and to extend and push as my weight is distributed more into my seat. 

There are several reasons why I do this. 

First, if I want TC to do something, I have to give him room to do it. If I want him to go forward, pulling on the reins is a bad idea. If I want him to do a leg yield, blocking him on the outside side is a bad idea. If I want his back to come up and his hind legs to come under, I have to make room for them, so sitting deep and down into the tack with no tone in my seat is a bad idea. I'm just squashing his back muscles and making it harder for him to lift them under me. We primarily teach horses to move away from pressure. 

Asking for more trot- more weight distributed in seat, still some
in thigh though

Second, my thigh controls the recycling of energy. Thinking of sitting on a hose instead of a horse, pinching into my thigh is going to cause less water to come through out the front than letting go with my thigh. Putting weight into my thigh and out of my seat recycles the energy backward rather than letting it flow forward. You can't really pinch in the knee without taking weight out of the seat. 

Third, I like aids that are very simple for simple concepts like cover more ground and cover less ground. It all goes back to the idea of baseline gaits, I want to have the simplest aids to communicate the stuff I'm going to be asking for a lot. So I have my rein aids that cover the length of the neck (using both reins) and the direction the nose is pointing (using one rein). I have my leg aids that cover the amount of bend (using one leg at at time) and the amount of energy (using both legs). And I have my seat that covers the mechanic of the hind legs (carrying vs pushing), or the way the energy is recycled (cover ground vs on the spot). Pretty much all movements are within reach then. 

I don't like it when aids are doing too many things. Like if my reins controlled the speed of the horse, that's my seat's job. What happens if I want a long neck and want to slow down? That's going to be kind of impossible. And if my leg controlled stride length and energy, well, what if I wanted a lot of energy but on a small stride length? That's going to be especially difficult. 

Pirouette- more weight in thighs than seat

If you look at the top riders in piaffe, the majority of them are sitting lighter in the tack than they sit in the extended trot. I've added pictures throughout this post of Rico and I in various degrees of collection. 

So Tuesday's ride was all about making sure that I had a horse who was committed to being in front of my leg at the canter. I did a little forward and back in that ride, but really wanted to build on it on Wednesday with some actual schooling of lengthenings and shortenings in both canter and trot. It's one thing to make sure that when I ask him to, TC goes forward, it's quite another to school the lengthenings with a clear idea of what the transitions in and out should ride like. 

I started with some transitions between gaits to make sure that my aids were independent of each other- hands not slowing down the horse, light leg aids to change gaits, etc. Then we went into canter and started our work. 

For a horse like TC who wants to push himself over the ground, I started with the forward part of the forward and back. He knows that sharper, slower taps with the whip = cover ground (vs a light taptaptap means speed up those legs), so I would change my seat, put my leg on, and tap him once if he didn't respond. Then I'd bring him back by half halting and using a voice command at the same time as changing my seat again. 

Piaffe- light seat

The seat aids aren't complex. Neutral seat for TC is let's say 60% weight in the seat and 40% weight in the thigh. If I want to collect him, I swap that around, 60% weight in the thigh and 40% weight in the seat. If I want to extend, I push it to maybe 80% weight in the seat and 20% weight in the thigh. I wouldn't do 100% of one or the other, because I do need contact with my seat bones in the collected work and I do need weight in my thigh to maintain tone in the extended work. 

TC took to this REALLY well. Actually too well. Soon I had a horse who would really move when I relaxed my thighs and would, sometimes reluctantly, come back when I closed them. That downward needs a bit of work! 

The hardest thing for both of us was maintaining energy in the downwards. It's really easy to think of the collected gaits as having less energy than the extended gaits but that's absolutely false. The collected canter should feel like it has an extended canter within it, and you're just recycling the energy back to the hind legs before it gets a chance to come out the front at all. But the whole act of slowing down the miles per hour of the canter makes me want to take my leg off. Ugh. 

TC is a smart cookie, so he had me fixed in no time with that, add leg to collect! 

Extended trot- pelvis rotated, thighs out, leg forward

We also played a bit in the trot, and that's where things got real fun. TC has always had a really good lengthened canter. He just can really cover ground. And he's had a lot of practice when he zips off with me. The lengthened trot has been hit or miss. Sometimes I feel like it's coming along okay and other times I feel like his friesian bloodlines take over and it's a hot mess of legs everywhere as he starts trying to go baroque in it. 

This time I used the same aids in trot, adding a bit of lift with my thigh just before I asked, and we got an AMAZING lengthening. It felt huge! And I only had it at maybe 75% since I didn't want him to fall on his face. It's still slightly on the muscle, but I really like what he's doing with his body. He's really trying to cover more ground and I'm all for that. 

I'm usually not one to get all excited about a movement being done in a way that I wouldn't want to see it in the show ring (like TC has offered many an unclean change and that mostly just depresses me because they're not clean. I don't care if he's technically on one lead and then switching to another, it's harder to fix an unclean change than it is to wait and put on a clean one), but I really felt like this was on the right track. 

Pirouette- light seat

Today hopefully we'll address maintaining throughness in the lengthened trot and keep plugging away at the canter!