A good seat is an essential if we want to be a good rider. Every book and every trainer seems to agree on this. How a good seat can be achieved or what constitutes a good seat, is perhaps a little less clear.
Perhaps the first question we need to ask ourselves is why our seat is so important when we ride? The answer is because apart from being our base of support, it is our primary aid. The seat provides an important form of communication between us and our horse. It is the only aid we cannot stop using while we are sitting on a horse; we can stop using the reins, we can stop using our legs but we cannot stop using our seat! If we are crooked either laterally or vertically it WILL affect the way our horse goes. All too many of us don’t exercise nearly enough, long hours sitting at a computer affects the way we sit, add in weak core muscles and tight hips and it is not surprising that so many of our horses have back issues.
Only a supple, well balanced seat allows the possibility of subtle influence. Our ultimate goal should be to be able to reduce our aids down to just tiny changes in our weight and position, so that to anyone watching it looks as though we and our horse are moving as one being.
Unfortunately, for most of us, a good seat doesn’t come naturally. And yet without a good seat we cannot expect a consistent and light contact or deliver our aids effectively. Our hands and our legs are reliant on our seat. Our horses don’t necessarily help us either. It is far, far easier to sit correctly whilst being lunged on a beautifully balanced schoolmaster than riding our own asymmetrically horse that has his own postural issues. However for most of us, the former isn’t always an option so we have to make the best of what we have.
So let us look first at what is meant by a good seat. Traditionally the classical “good” seat has a three-point contact, comprising the two seat bones and crotch or the two seat bones, crotch and inner thighs. But a good seat surely has to vary depending on the chosen discipline. The answer of course is yes, the seat does need to change depending on your discipline, the movement required and whether you are riding a young, green horse or Prix St George super star. Nor is the seat static, horses are living moving beings and so our seat has to be dynamic not rigid. But no matter whether we are riding dressage, out hacking, showing jumping or even eventing we need an independent and balanced seat that is supple enough to be able to mirror the movement of the horse!
An independent and balanced seat means that the rider needs to be able to maintain their own balance (self carriage) during upward and downwards transitions and sudden lateral movements (such as turns or even shying) without the use of artificial support (reins, neck strap, saddle), or gripping with their legs! If this is the definition of a good seat, how few of us actually have it? No wonder then that the Spanish Riding School used to expect their students to do 6 months to a year on a lunge without stirrups.
At the very least, our aim should be to allow our seat to follow the horse’s movement smoothly and to keep our centre of gravity in harmony with that of the horse. Only once we have learnt to sit without tension in secure balance can we really follow the movement smoothly and be effective with our aids. An outwardly correct position with tension in the wrong muscles just causes our horse to brace.