Questions covered in this Q & A:

  • How to stop gripping with the legs at canter.
  • What is the difference between the full seat and the half seat? Why bother doing it as dressage riders? How?

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Welcome to the May Q & A.

We were quite sparse with the questions for May so I’ve got one from Karen S, and then I made up one as a second question for this month!

Karen asks,

How do I stop gripping with my legs at a canter? I've managed to improve the gripping significantly at the trot (thanks to your help with rising trot), but I still keep gripping in the canter; hence, my horse slows down and breaks into a trot thinking that is what I want. I wish he could know what I want and not what I am telling him to do......

Thank you, Karen, for that great question. I’m sure there are many people out there with the same problem, and I know I’ve gone through this myself with many different horses over time. The thing I’ve learned is that you can’t really NOT grip in the canter, because of that down stride moment when the horse moves out from under you. If we truly let go with our legs, we’d lose our balance every stride!

So here’s one strategy that has worked for me very well.

As the horse is moving along, grip and release in rhythm with the stride. Work on GRIPPING on the down stride, and then release on the up stride. If you’re not sure what I mean with the down stride, it’s when the horse’s mane is flying in the air! (I heard that first from Jane Savoie – it’s an excellent visual). So when the mane fluffs up, grip. When the mane is quiet, release.

Now, you can also change your focus a little and try to do more gripping with everything above the knee, and less gripping with everything knee down. Good balance always starts at the seat, and the seat includes everything from the hips to just above the knee. So you can think about gripping more with the inner thighs but NOT the knees. The knees are a powerful tool to do exactly what you say happens – stop the horse. I use knees when I need to do a stronger half-halt.

So feel your knees in the canter, and then adjust accordingly.

One other concept that has helped me a lot is to NOT let your shoulders swing excessively in the canter. Many of us tend to counterbalance the horse’s movement by leaning forward and back, and that actually causes the seat to change constantly and throw us off balance. Instead, try letting your hips do the movement with the horse (so open the hips on the down stride and close them on the up stride) and try to keep your shoulders more stable. That might help A LOT in keeping better balance overall, and therefore allow you to release the lower legs and knees when needed.

Also, if there’s any chance that you can get someone to lunge you on your horse, that would be the best way to work on the “seat” area without having to be concerned about where you’re going. There is no replacement to lunging the rider, and you can literally short-cut the learning curve by at least half if you can get someone to lunge you around!

 

Good luck! And I hope that helps a little.

 

OK here’s Question #2, that I made up:

What is the difference between full seat and half-seat? How and why are they used?

As dressage riders, both English and Western, we tend to stay in the full seat as a mantra. I mean, why should we even go into the half-seat when we’re not jumping at all? Also, don’t we need short stirrups to go into half-seat?

First off (here’s my answer), what is the full and half-seat?

The full seat as used in dressage is the one that makes contact with the saddle in three points: the two seat bones and then the pubic bone. If you ride in a dressage saddle, you’ll notice that the twist, which is the front of the saddle, rises up toward the pommel. The saddle is designed that way explicitly to allow the pubic bone a point of contact. If you can maintain these three points in movement, then your spine will not be hollowed nor rounded.

The half-seat is what most people use when they jump. So there is contact with the front of the seat but the back of the seat is lightened and even lifted out of the saddle. Some people make a distinction between the half-seat and the 2-point position. The half-seat is still further in the saddle than the 2-point, which requires the seat to be completely out of the saddle and the upper body on a much more forward angle, ready for an upcoming jump.

So while we’re not doing a real 2-point position, we can surely benefit from the half-seat in dressage. To assume the half-seat, just tilt your hips at a more closed angle and allow your upper body to come toward a 30-degree angle. You can stay on your thighs and leave your long stirrups but simply remove your weight off the horse’s back.

As dressage riders, we aren’t necessarily taking our horses over jumps. But still, there are plenty of times that you might want to take your weight out of that saddle.

I thought of two overarching times.

  • For Fitness: Young horses, unfit horses and even older horses might benefit from a lighter seat so that they can move more freely, especially in canter. Take your weight off the horse’s back so that they can develop the muscles over time. You can take a full seat position infrequently at first, and then longer as you feel your horse strengthen underneath you.
  • And the second time would be for Balance: You might want to take a half-seat when your horse is cantering along at a strong pace – say on the trails, or even in the ring for a hand-gallop. The half-seat will help you maintain your center of gravity over the horse’s shoulders and not get left behind. Better balance for you always means better balance for the horse!

In most cases, you will want to lighten your seat to give your horse the opportunity to move through the back better. And to answer the stirrup length question – no, we don’t have to shorten the stirrups in order to go into half-seat. In fact, half-seat will allow us to lengthen the legs and then allow the heels to drop even more than usual, which will help in creating those long, “draping” legs that we all want. Just make sure to keep your legs underneath your hips, and not allow them to come too far forward or too far backward.

OK that’s it for this month’s questions. I’m looking for questions for June, so please send them to me either via the Facebook group or by email. Keep sending me questions! And have a great ride!