Episode 250: How to use your seat to cue your horse.

Episode 250_ How to use your seat to cue your horse..mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Episode 250_ How to use your seat to cue your horse..mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Speaker1:
It's amazing how as the writer gets more consistent with leg cues. That includes the lower leg, the calf, the thigh, the looking, the seat cues naturally develop as the rider gets more awareness of their whole body and specifically their legs.

Speaker2:
Podcasting from a little cabin on a hill. This is the Stacy Westfall podcast. Stacy's goal is simple to teach you to understand why horses do what they do, as well as the action steps for creating clear, confident communication with your horses.

Speaker1:
Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall and I'm here to help you understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses. In this season of the podcast, I've been answering questions that your mind may offer you when you head out to train your horse. Today I'm answering a question that came in about using your seat. Here's the question. Thank you for the opportunity to ask a basic question. I've been riding for over 50 years and have never learned or been taught how to use seat cues. Thank you for doing your podcasts. They are motivating and very helpful. Well, first of all, you're very welcome. I really enjoyed doing the podcast most of the time. Sometimes they feel like work, but today it feels really good because this is perfect timing for the question that you just asked. Because I've been playing with Bridleless riding again and so much of the cue system is held in my seat and my legs. So I'm going to explain this in levels to make it easier to understand. And the first way I want you to think about seat cues. The first level I want you to think about is that seat cues begin as a natural side effect of riding consistently with your hands and legs through consistency. So that means looking the direction you want to go, moving your hands and your legs to support the horse as they travel in that direction. If you do that consistently, the horse will begin to see the clues and some of those clues happen in your seat.

Speaker1:
So I'm sitting in an office chair right now, and what I want you to think about is that when you look if I look to my left or my right, I can feel how it changes my weight distribution or I can feel how I have to shift so it doesn't change it that much. So when you are riding and you move your hands, let's say that you're riding two handed and you move your hands or let's say your neck reining, so you're riding with one hand when you change your hands. Now there's even more of a chance that you're going to change your weight, because as I sit here in this office chair, if I look, it's one thing, but if I turn my hands a little bit, move a little bit, then I really feel more of a weight change down in to my chair. So before you even add your rein, cue, pretend my reins. In this example in my office chair, we're pretty loose. S before you even add the Rein, Q or the leg cue. Your horse is already getting clues when you turn your head and look. And when you begin to move your hands, even if contact isn't made. So if you are writing and you begin to make a turn to the right, if you look and then you turn your body along with your eyes, what's going to happen is you're going to start to put a little bit of a twist in your body by moving your shoulders.

Speaker1:
So as I go further on in this podcast, I may default to mostly talking about your lower body, but keep in mind that your head and where you look and your upper body, not whether or not you're pulling on the reins, but your upper body, your shoulders, everything above your waist. All of it matters because it is influencing the way that your seat feels. But I'm not going to repeat look and then shoulders over and over again. Here are four things that I've noticed I can do with my seat. I can follow with my seat or I can block with my seat. I can sit slightly to the left or the right. So when I say that, what I mean is one hip bone comes more on top of the saddle because one of them moved off to the side a little bit more. Or I can sit with one hip bone leading or one hip bone behind. So kind of a twist in my body. Let's go into these one at a time. So let's start with the following or the blocking idea. Actually, inside of this, there's following, blocking and getting ahead of. But let's start with following. So if I think about having a following seat, the easiest place to picture this is inside of the Canter or the loop because the classic rocking horse movement that children learn when they get on a rocking horse is that rocking motion that happens at the canter or the lope.

Speaker1:
And this will often be reflected as like a cycle of energy that's happening because you can really feel that energy in that lope because of that moment of suspension and that sweeping motion that happens. I'm telling you, it's there in every gait. Yes, the walk does not have suspension, but it still has movement. So you can still inside of a walk, follow or get behind or block or get ahead of. So this idea of the energy moving through the horse and you and specifically through the way your seat interacts with the saddle or the horse's back if you're bareback, this exists in every gait. So the rider again can be with the motion. So I'm sitting here in my office chair pretending that I'm cantering on my horse. Interesting. I notice I actually have to pick a lead because my body knows which lead would feel which way. So I'm following this motion and I could get ahead of that motion by moving my seat faster than what the horse's motion called for. Or I can be with that motion, not ahead or behind, or I can become behind the motion. Now, when I say behind the motion, I like to often call it blocking.

Speaker1:
So if you picture that Canter again, imagine that if you're cantering, imagine a rider that doesn't go with the horse. A great way to picture this is picture that it's a bag of sand or a sack of potatoes that's strapped to the back of that saddle. So it would move, but it would move sluggishly. It wouldn't go with the motion. It would most likely be behind that motion. So when that horse has to lift something like a dead weight, like a bag of sand, it's going to make that more work for the horse because that object, that bag of sand isn't contributing to the motion. It's not cycling that energy the same way that you could with your body. And I think this is worth noting because we can subtly communicate on purpose by using this smaller following seat to help slow horses down. So don't be fooled by the idea that you can be with or ahead or behind and don't accidentally think with is the correct answer because the correct answer is aware of if you are ahead with or behind. Because if you want to be following, that's one thing. But if you want to help use your seat to help that horse slow down, then you're actually going to want to not follow as much, which is why I'm calling it blocking. You can also use your seat in a way that helps the horse move bigger.

Speaker1:
So sometimes riders will accidentally block when they are apprehensive about going. So their legs might be saying go and they might even have a dressage whip and they might be saying go. But if they don't really want to oftentimes their seat or that energy in their seat doesn't match and a horse can notice that even going from a standstill to a walk. Now, sometimes riders will accidentally do the opposite and they'll get ahead of the movement. I think this happens even more so if you actually think about how your hips can be either level or they can tip forward or they can tip back. So again, I'm sitting in an office chair as I record this, and if I want to talk about accidentally following too much, every time I think about doing that, I notice that my seat, even sitting here in the chair, is going to do one of two things. Either I'm going to tip my pelvis forward, which means like stick my belly out and let my butt stick out behind me and like give that lower back gets a big arch in it. And so I kind of tip my pelvis forward. And that is something. I often see riders do on accident when they're getting ahead of the movement. That's not to say that a rider can't also get leaning back and still be pushing too far forward. So what the pushing has more to do with isn't necessarily if you're lean forward or lean back.

Speaker1:
Think about in the Canter how your seat would slide, slide, slide. If you're sitting in a saddle, happens bareback too. It's just a little stickier with the hair. So in that sliding motion, that is where you're going to feel that following or that not so following motion. Which makes sense why a lot of times when we want to slow down, we will tighten up our core because if we tighten up our core, we will start blocking or shrinking that following motion that's happening. Just to stretch it one more place further. The posting trot is another great example of how the rider can influence by getting ahead or being with or getting a little bit behind the motion. Oftentimes when people are learning how to post or rise to the trot, they won't necessarily have the right timing when they're first learning. So either they won't come up quite enough. And so because they don't come up enough to match that horse, they'll actually be a little bit behind the motion. And that will be challenging for both them and for the horse. Or sometimes riders will really stand up a lot and they'll almost get ahead of the motion because they're coming up and they're staying up out of the saddle longer than necessary for the flight of the horse's leg at the trot. And so they'll be slightly ahead of and then eventually, over time, the rider can learn how to be with.

Speaker1:
And then once you understand all three, you can actually use that posting or that rising motion to influence the horse's speed or the horse's amount of reach or both, just by how you are using your seat. Okay, time for a recap. So when we're talking about riding with the seat, the first thing we're actually going to remember is that looking matters because the head begins the signal. So if you're going to turn, then the head begins your twist, then your shoulders will follow. Maybe your hands will be involved on the reins. But even if you sit here and imagine it, then you could twist first with your head turning and then your shoulders turning. And you can feel that twist. Go down to your seat, Bones. And now let's go another level deeper. So inside of that twist, if we're turning, I'll talk about straight in a minute. There's also this following or blocking motion we just talked about. Well, inside of that following or blocking motion, you can also sit to the left or the right. And I want you to picture this like one hip bone is more on top of the saddle than the other. So sometimes this will happen on accident where a rider will be maybe either stronger or tighter on one side of their body or the other. And so what this means is that they might accidentally be riding with one seat bone more in the middle of the saddle, which means one of them is slightly off to the side.

Speaker1:
I actually will do this on purpose so my seat can help push the horse to one side or the other. And one of the easiest ways to imagine this is if you've ever had the chance to sit on a large yoga ball or an equine activity ball like the one that I made with Weaver Leather, the blue one that Weaver has is the perfect size for me to sit on, although I do like balancing on the giant red one, but I can't touch the ground. But when I sit on that ball, what I notice is that if I put weight in my left seat bone, if that left seat bone goes down, the ball wants to move to the right. And so I understand that I can do a similar thing when I want to move my horse. I find this to be especially true when I want to move the main part of my horse. So not the shoulders or the hips, but the barrel of the horse. So think side pass or leg yield. When I want to move like that, I'm more likely to feel like I'm going to move one of my hip bones to the left or the right. Subtly, keep in mind that if you're riding this like a side pass or a leg yield at a walk, this is going to be very subtle and you don't want to over exaggerate it.

Speaker1:
I personally can feel this more at the trot or the canter, not so much because I'm necessarily exaggerating it a lot more with my own body, but because the way the horse moves their body, even though I'm still using a subtle version of this, I think I can feel it more because there's just more motion involved as we get that suspension in the trot and in the canter, I can feel that ball, that barrel of the horse moving more like the ball as we have those moments of suspension. So now we've got the idea of looking. We've got the idea of twisting your body. We've got the idea of your seat can be following or blocking or getting ahead. And now I've introduced the idea that your seat bones can go left or right on purpose. Think of that like they're going to move towards like 3:00 or 9:00 if you're sitting on that saddle. Now, I want to add one more layer. And that would be that I can also have one hip bone leading or I can drop one hip bone back and have it more behind. So let's go back to that last example of sitting on the ball. When I put my weight on my left hip, think about it in that clock that I was just talking about.

Speaker1:
I could put that weight on my left hip and I could have it going straight over to 9:00, or I could put a twist in my hips and let that left seat bone drop further back. And if I'm sitting on that ball and I drop that left hip back and then put weight in it, it's like I'm putting my weight at 7 or 8:00, and when I'm riding, that's more likely to push that horse kind of diagonally across the clock. So over to like 1:00 or 2:00. So on that horse, when I drop my outside leg back, so pretend I'm going to the right and I drop my left leg back and I let my left seat bone drop with it. The other thing that I'll notice on the horse is that it brings my right seat bone and my right thigh into a different level of contact on the horse. So way back when I was learning to ride bareback as a kid, I remember slipping and sliding around up there, and I remember moments when it felt like I was slipping off to the left and I kind of would hook my leg, my right leg over the horse, sometimes even almost ending up with my knee as the highest point, like dangling off the side of the horse. And what I want you to picture inside of that, don't try it.

Speaker1:
But what I want you to picture inside of that is that if I've slipped a lot over to the left, like when I was a kid and I'm dangling on hooked by my right leg, can you see how there is a direct influence, not just in the fact that my left leg is doing something and the weight that's happening in my left, But there's also going to be a counterbalancing effect happening in the other side of my body. So keep that in mind. When you're out there and you're playing around with it, sometimes it's easy to focus on, Oh, I'm supposed to drop this one back and do this, and then you wonder why something is happening. There's another half of that story always happening. When you shift something on your left side, you're going to change something on your right side. So I could drop my left leg back and I could let that hip go to that side. So that would be like, drop my left leg back, drop my left seat bone back and put weight in that left hip. Or I could drop my left leg back and I could actually put weight in my right C bone. Yes. I'm still acting this out, sitting in my chair. I highly recommend it for you and it feels completely different. So even though both of these examples, I said, drop my left leg back, dropping my left leg back and then sitting on my left hip, whether or not it slides very far or not, or dropping my left leg back and putting weight on my right seat bone.

Speaker1:
It dramatically changes the way this feels, and the horses can learn to recognize the difference. I have covered a lot of ground, but the great news is that you can go back and you can listen to this again. And I highly suggest that you sit on a chair or even better, if you have a yoga ball or an equine activity ball, something big enough to sit on, that's even better. And of course, you can sit on a tolerant horse and try this. Now back to what I said at the beginning of the podcast. I have a tendency to talk a lot about this stuff based on the rider's legs more than the seat. So if you go back and you listen to the previous 249 episodes of this podcast, you'll probably hear me talk more about the rider's legs than the seat. And that is because the seat is often being influenced by the direction we look, the twist in our body and our leg position. Now, this is even true when you want to go straight. Because when you want to go straight, you're going to look straight ahead. There will not be a twist in your body and both legs will go on evenly to mean go forward. Forward as a direction, not as a speed.

Speaker1:
If you're not sure what I mean by that, go back to episode 192, which is titled Forward is a direction, not a Speed. When I talk about the leg use, I'm always talking about the seat. Even if I don't mention it because you're going to learn as you play with this that when you move your legs, you will naturally be influencing your seat. As I wrap this up, there's a couple more things I want to mention. First, the biggest mistake I see people make when they're trying to bring awareness to their aids is that they often do too much. And overriding with your seat equals blocking or getting in the way. This is another reason why I much more often talk to riders about how they're using their legs. It's amazing how as the rider gets more consistent with leg cues, that includes the lower leg, the calf, the thigh, the looking, the seat cues naturally develop as the rider gets more awareness of their whole body and specifically their legs. I think the biggest reason that this happens, if you go about it focused on your legs first, is because when riders learn how to move their legs independently, so sit in that chair and move that left leg independently. Sit there and move that right leg independently as the rider learns how to do that. What I see happen is that they hinge better and so when they can use their legs independently, the seat becomes independent.

Speaker1:
And then when the seat is independent, the horse can read those more subtle cues. And if all of this seems like a lot to remember, my biggest recommendation is just play with it. Don't over focus. I just recently realized that I did my first bridleless ride 20 years ago this October, and when I go back and I watch that ride, you can find it on YouTube and I can link to it in the show notes over on my website. I remember when I got a chance to watch the recording of the ride. I was surprised when I watched it to see how much my rein, hand, which had no reins in it because I was riding bridleless was acting like I had reins. And so even though I hadn't planned that, when I was prepping for that ride, my body knew that everything needed to stay consistent for my lower body to be consistent. So even though I wasn't focused on acting like I was neck reining with my right hand, if you go watch that video, you will see my right hand like phantom neck reining. And that just came from the fact that in order to keep my lower body consistent, I was going to have to stay consistent with my upper body. And part of what got hard wired into me in all the years of riding was using my hand in a particular way, in the way that we had been training.

Speaker1:
This doesn't mean it has to always stay like that. And I spent the next three years shifting the use of my body in my regular riding. So if you go and you see the bareback bridleless freestyle reining ride that I did, it looked different. And my hand and my body wasn't acting exactly the same way, even though it was still the same cue system in my seat and my legs and my whole body, I had subtly shifted myself away from that phantom hand mostly. I think you can still see pieces of it if you look. And now, 20 years later, I can feel myself shifting again as I play with Bridleless cues on Willow because there's some different things I want to do with her. So in your question, you mentioned that you've been riding for over 50 years and you've never learned or been taught how to use seat cues. I'm about to turn 49 next month, and I got my first pony when I was six. I have ridden at the highest levels with only my seat and leg cues, and I still feel like I'm learning and I love it. I hope I'm riding for the next 40 years and still trying to figure out more. That's what I have for you today. Thanks for listening and I'll talk to you again.

In the next episode.

Speaker2:
If you enjoy listening to Stacy's podcast, please visit Stacy westfall.com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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