Your Seat, Part 1

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I will talk about the way I like to explain how a rider can use his seat, balance and overall position but I want to preface it first by saying that anything you do with your horse is a learning process. Think about when you first leaned to ride a bike. You were told to put your right hand on the right handle bar and your left hand on the left handle bar.
Then you told to put your right leg on the right pedal, and the left foot on the left pedal with your butt planted firmly on the seat. The well meaning parent, uncle, aunt, friend then told you to point straight, pedal and balance. Then what happened? Well, if you're like me you fell down. A lot. This is the kind of learning process I am talking about when it comes to any kind of riding. Just like the longer you rode your bike the better you got, the more you ride your horse the better you'll get. Well, kinda. The good news is a bike will not help you stay on the way some horses will. We'll get to that.

I'm pretty simple so forgive me, but I'm going to replace the word “seat” with “butt.” Keeping it real. In general, I like to have 1/3 pressure in the right foot, 1/3 in the left foot and the other 1/3 in the saddle. Think about it -- you won't sit on your butt with no balance pressure in your feet. Make sense? Let me phrase it another way.

I hear a lot of people say things like sit deep in the saddle – the idea being if you sit deep you're safer. But if you're on a rough horse, and you're sitting deep you're probably going to appear to be a pretty sloppy rider. In my opinion, just because you have both legs on either side of the horse and your butt's in the saddle doesn't mean you're riding – you're just sitting. If you're doing a rollback, roping cattle, running barrels you have to have weight – balance – in your feet or your butt won't be in the saddle. It will be on the ground.

So Packzilla really asked, “How do I sit?” You now get the obligatory answer to all horse questions: It Depends. If your horse is going to buck you off then you better get like a bull rider and get deep in the saddle to help your sorry self actually stay in the saddle. If your horse is not very talented and you want him to appear to be more talented (i.e. getting a ribbon in a pleasure class while not looking like you are in pain riding him), you will want to put more pressure in your feet to absorb all the bounce. Doing this will allow the horse to move easier since he will no longer be feeling the full pressure of you on his back.

Pretty straight forward stuff . . . but I know it's easier said than done. That's why you have to keep practicing, just like you kept riding your bike. So get yourself in the mindset of 1/3 pressure points through your two feet and butt next time you swing your leg over your horse. Then pay attention to how he moves, what he does so you know how you need to redistribute the pressure in the three points to work with where your horse is today. That will help you get ready for Part 2 of this series where I'll get a little deeper into balance and the Teeter-Totter theory.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment below or share your own thoughts and ideas, and ask questions about this topic by posting on the forum connected to this series. Discuss ->

Check out Your Seat, Part 2 of Hoyt's 4 part series that addresses Packzilla's questions. See It – Do It!