We will not discuss here the fitting of saddles to horses and different types of saddles and seats, but the properties of the saddles that we want to preserve in order to best convey the properties of movement between the rider and the horse from the perspective of Anna’s Riding Method and the information gathered

Stabilising the Seat in the Posting Trot Step 1: Standing with the support of sitting The first step to a stable seat is to transfer a large portion of the rider’s body weight from the saddle to the legs. We don’t want the rider to stand in the stirrups. We want him to shift a

Why the Legs? Why the Thighs? The legs are much easier to cushion and amortise the upper part of the Rider’s body. In fact, the legs are made to amortise and absorb shock coming from contact with the ground that would otherwise be transferred up to the rider’s upper body. When you walk, your each

How to stabilise Rider’s position in the Posting Trot? As you already know, for the stabilisation of the rider in the saddle we will mainly use the quadriceps muscle. For the sake of simplicity we will refer to it as simply as “thigh muscles” in further materials. This generalisation is needed because the muscle groups

How to deal with the motion of the horse’s back? Riders very often deal with the upwards movement of the horse’s back in such a way that they try to compensate it and gradually kill it with stiffness in their body. We have already written about it, so we will not repeat how this approach

Posting Trot One method of dealing with the waving movement of the horse’s back at the trot is to post or to raise in the saddle. It is a very convenient form of “dealing” with the problem of an active horse’s back, as it allows the rider to lift his body in the saddle before

What happens during trot? In a simplified way, we can say that the horse’s trot movement consists in bouncing the legs off the ground and moving forward with cyclical jumps. Cyclically, it means that the movement starts in a certain position and returns to that position (like a bouncing ball). In other words, the force