Episode 16: Riding Horses Western vs English vs Bareback

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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.

Hi, I'm Stacy Westfall, and I'm here to teach you how to understand, enjoy and successfully train your own horses in today's podcast.

I'm going to share with you my experience of three different riding styles. A question I get frequently from people who hear that I do something with horses is do you ride Western or English? And I kind of want to throw in or bareback. And the answer is yes, I ride and compete in all three. Did you know you can compete in bareback? You can. So over the years, growing up, I actually learned to ride Western as of my earliest memories. Second then was bareback because I was too small to put the saddle on my pony, and it was easier to just put the bridle on and find something to climb up on. So a lot of bareback. And then I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed about getting an English saddle because that's what they had on TV at those shows like the Olympics and the jumping shows. So I really wanted an English saddle cause that was super cool. I did eventually get one for Christmas. And then My Little Pony and I were doing it all Western bareback in English. I mentioned that I competed with bareback and growing up, and I'll bet you can still find it somewhere around you. A lot of times you can find classes that would be like ride a buck or some kind of class like that where they're going to slip. Well, in this case, they were putting a dollar under your thigh and seeing who could ride the longest bareback like that.

And many of you will remember the bareback and bridle, this ride that I did, the freestyle training with Roxy, that was obviously bareback by choice, not required by the competition. I've also had a lot of experience competing Western, whether that's been in training or a bunch of other different things ranch riding, mountain shooting. And I've been taking dressage lessons, which my mom and I did when I was very young. And now I've picked up in a much more serious about now. I think it's kind of interesting to explore the differences or how they can complement each other. When we talk about Western English or bareback. And I think I'll go into it in more detail in another season when we talk about the horse specifically. But it is interesting to note that popcorn, who many of you will remember from the road to the horse, because he's the horse that I won the road to the horse colt starting competition in 2006 with which was Western. I then took him and together we earned his register of merit in the H2H, a reigning which was a Western. Then I took him and all the while that a lot of trail riding both bareback and Western and took him and then also competed. And he took me from a level one mounted shooter to a level four mountain shooter out of six levels that are possible.

And he started to have a few soundness issues. So I transitioned out of that. He's getting older now. He's 16, but I started showing him in dressage and I mean traditional dressage. I will post a picture on the website of popcorn. I all dressed up in traditional dressage and in 2017, popcorn. And I qualified for the regionals in training three in traditional dressage. And I love that it shows the versatility between all these different things because that same horse is moving from one event to another, which means that at the root of it, there must be this common route that we're gonna explore, especially when we get into the horse's seasons. But right now, what I want to talk about is how these different saddles or no saddle affect the rider, although we can't figure out who said it first. A wise person once said riding is the art of keeping a horse between you and the ground right after you keep the horse between you and the ground. It starts to get a little more complicated. And this is fresh on my mind. Because of a recent dressage lesson that I took. I have decided that this year I'm going to compete in Western dressage and traditional dressage and maybe some training and maybe some ranch riding. So my horses are gonna be really busy. But either way, definitely an emphasis on the dressage this year. And so I signed myself up for a riding lesson, and it's been almost two years since I rode in my dressage saddle.

So the day before the riding lesson, I decided I should probably get it out of the trailer and saddle up in it. Yes, I do the stuff, too, if I don't set that goal, which we talked about last season. If I don't set that goal, whether it's show goal or whether it's. Riding lesson goal. A lot of times it's easier to just keep doing what I've been doing. So in this example, riding in the western saddle. So I pulled out the dressage saddle. And it is amazing to me that when I put that different saddle on a horse, I know well that suddenly I feel like I'm kind of flopping around everywhere. Now, mind you, this is not talking about the saddle. You're going to understand more in a minute. But basically what I've discovered is that I have at least three different seats when I'm riding a horse. Realistically, once we go beyond these three seats, I'm going to describe today my western seat, my dressage seat and my bare back seat. It actually goes much deeper because, for example, when I ride Western and I'm starting a colt, my seat in the way that I use myself and my seat is different in the first 30 days of riding horse than it is when I'm doing finished maneuvers, getting ready to go into a training pen.

So that's a whole nother level. But today, we're just going to talk about Western English and bareback. Let's go ahead and start with the one that we all have access to, whether we're using it or not in that would be bareback. I mentioned earlier that I grew up riding both western and bareback and it really turned into mostly bareback. I'm quite sure that when I went to college, which I went to an equine college, quite sure that when I went to equine college, I spent four years riding Western at the college. And the day I graduated, I'm sure that I had more hours under my seat bareback than I still did in any kind of saddle, because when I grew up, I was bareback pretty much all the time on my pony. And then the same thing when I got my horse bareback is interesting because it naturally will encourage you to get into a rhythm with the horse if saddles have something going against them. There is something between you and the horse, and when you're bareback, that is eliminated. And it's pretty neat when I put riders on the horses how quickly their bodies naturally will get into sync. If you have the chance to ride on a on a horse that you'll be safe on when you're learning to ride bareback right after you get past that apprehension, when you tend to be tight and almost want to bring yourself into a more fetal position.

Now, keep in mind that happens with or without saddles. When people get on horses, they tend to have this urge to pull themselves up into a more fetal position as the person relaxes. What I feel and what I see is that bareback will actually encourage people to lengthen their legs. And I think that partially comes from the fact there's no staff inhibiting that. But I also think the way the contact feels in your thighs is just a little bit different. I taught all my kids to ride bareback and it's something that I've had a chance to observe over and over again. The way that I think this works and this is just based on my own observations, is that I think sometimes when people think about riding bareback, they think about holding on and clamping with their knees. But when I try to describe it to somebody, I almost say it's a better description. If you think about sitting on like climbing up and sitting on a wobbly fence or if you've ever been around a round pen made out of panels and those panels are just kind of held the other by the chains. So when you climb up on there, those round pen panels are going to wiggle, but they're not going to fall over. And when you climb up on something like that and try to balance on it a lot of times and you're balancing on something, you almost have the urge to open your body up.

You have an urge to stick your arms out left and right like you would if you were trying to balance walking across a beam. But if you're sitting on something, you'll almost have this urge to open yourself up so you can extend those arms and legs so that you can balance better over that. And when a horse is moving in a balanced way, to me, this is how bareback riding feels because it allows me to sit deeper on that horse and my legs naturally want to extend so I can extend that that leverage that I get with my legs being long down and out around and not grip necessarily. However, if the horse makes a sudden move or if I lose my balance, I can absolutely say that there's going to be some clamping of legs involved. So say I start to slip off to the right hand side. It's going to be very natural for me to clamp and grab with that left leg. And that leads me to a question I get asked fairly frequently, which is obviously Stacy you can ride bareback. Why don't you train and ride all of your horses bareback? And this comes up a lot of times when we're having saddle fit issues that we're talking about. And people want to know, like, why don't we just all just ride bareback? And I do ride bareback a lot.

Especially when I trail ride. I really enjoy trail riding bareback, but that's partly because where I hit a wall a little bit with riding bareback is I already talked a little bit about the challenge of the balance, but also refinement as the maneuvers or movements that I'm teaching my horse get bigger. So sliding stop gets bigger, lead changes get more, accurate spins get faster. It's a challenge for my balance bareback. But there's also the idea that the horse is not always going to be perfectly balanced during that. I think we forget that the horses are learning how to do some of these things. So when they're learning to this sliding stop, they have to learn how deep into that stop to go, how to trot out in their front end. They have to learn how to balance during these different maneuvers. And you could even say that when a horse was learning to jump, they would learn. There's some natural talent to jumping, but there's some learned ability to gaging distances and and the amount of effort and all kinds of things that go into that. Well, that also means the horse is going to possibly make mistakes in a way you can describe. Making mistakes is a loss of balance when you're riding bareback and the horse experience is a loss of balance.

You're going to experience a loss of balance and it's going to be a little different than it is if you're in the saddle. So when I'm in a saddle, I actually have the ability to press my weight down and out into my strips to catch myself instead of clamping a leg against a horse to catch myself. And if I clamp my leg against a horse, you have to keep in mind that I was trying to get this horse to a higher level of training. Again, I love riding bareback on trails, but when I'm trying to go is higher level training, when I'm working on that refinement. There are a lot of buttons. There are a lot of things, buttons that I. I call them up and down my horse's sides. Some place that I see that I squeeze. And it means move your shoulder. Another spot that I squeeze. It means move your hip in another spot means move sideways in another spot. That means all these different speed cues, all kinds of different things. And I'm kind of just grabbing hold of that whole control panel when I slip and lose my balance. So this is why I don't try to ride my horses to a really high degree of training. And I don't try to do a lot of the training bareback because of that challenge, that sensitivity. And I believe that it's just more balanced for me and the horse.

During those moments when the horse is going to lose balance. Let's move on and discuss riding Western. Even when we discuss Western and then when we get into English here in a minute. Even when you go into something as broad as a Western saddle. There are so many choices inside of that. For example, if you ever have a chance to sit in a cutting saddle, you'll find that they have a very flat open seat. And if you ever sit in a barrel racing or mount a shooting saddle, you'll find that that seat is very tight and tends to feel like it's holding you in. And a lot of training saddles come in a range that's somewhere in the middle. You can find a reigning saddle that's got a more flat seat that's more open or you can find one that's a little bit more built up and kind of hold you in one spot. Then that's just talking about the seat. Then we've got to talk about the Serps and where those strips hang and where they kind of want to pull your legs to. So, for example, if you go to a tack shop and you sit down in some saddles, you can feel that if you were going to try to stand up in the Sturtz, some strips are hung in a way that your leg naturally wants to kick forward. And they might do that on a cutting or reining saddle because pulling the legs forward to be able to brace your weight while the horse is making some of these maneuvers is going to be something some riders want.

So that saddle is going to take your leg there, but that's going to be a little bit of a problem if you want to keep your leg directly underneath you or if you want to pull your leg back. And this is going to be something that if you're aware of where your saddle wants to put you, you'll be able to understand whether you're fighting your equipment or whether you actually have a weakness in your legs, because all of this is going to affect it. I prefer a saddle where my leg hang down more straight. But I can move it forward and backwards. Now, this is surprisingly difficult to find in a Western saddle because one thing we have different in a Western saddle is those big fenders that hold the Serps. And depending on how the fender hangs down there and what it rubs on as it moves forward and backwards, because it can catch on your billet, it can catch on a lot of different things, depending on how the rigging of the saddle is made, depending on all water, different pieces that will actually interfere. So you can I've ridden in saddles where my leg would hang downstream, but when I went to pull it forward, it would the backside of the stern leather would catch on something and you your leg would not be able to move forward.

Now, initially, sitting there looking at the saddle, you'd think you'd be able to move around. But when you got on or functionally moved it, it would catch on different things. And you're like, well, it's not hurting the horse, but it's it's catching and my leg is not able to move for I want to move my leg. So these are interesting things to keep in mind. Again, the western saddle comes with some great benefits. Has the saddle horn has a lot of leather there and with a lot of leather comes this more stable feeling leg. Because that's one of the biggest things I feel different between the Western and the English saddle is that that big sturdy fender that I'm talking about could be a problem moving. It also means that if it's staying there, it can actually help stabilize your leg. So it's kind of a toss up. You had to learn what you like and what your purpose of the saddle is. Let's switch and talk a little bit about English apples again in the English saddle. You've got so many different styles. You've got jumping and all purpose and dressage. And when you line them up, they can look every bit as varied as all these different Western styles that you can find.

So for this, we're just going to kind of talk in general. But in general, what you'll find is you don't have that really thick start fender. You've got just this thin strip leather that's very easy to move. And that's one of the interesting things when I jump on and switch saddles. The first thing that my body has to remember is, wait a minute, I don't have this more stable Western style fender that's doing this, but I'm also not in my full bareback seat. It's kind of like a halfway between. So I love that. And I love that my dressage saddle helps encourage my leg to be really long and down because I love that feeling that I already have when I do bareback. So when I ride in my dressage saddle, I feel like I'm accessing something closer to my bareback seat because of the way that my saddle feels. Now, the interesting thing is because my strips are there, sometimes my muscle memory wants to treat the Sturtz like they're the Western strips. And I'm not saying right or wrong. I'm saying that they move differently and one moves a lot easier than the other. So it takes me a little bit of time for my body, my muscle memory to remember that this SERP leather is going to move very easily compared to my Western. And because of that, whenever I switch off, it's been a while. Now, if I ride in my dressage saddle for a few days and then I start switching back and forth, I don't feel this issue.

But if I put that dressage saddle down for months and months, when I pull it back out, my muscle memory is remembering a certain thing that's no longer true. And so I have to stabilize my leg and a little bit different way, which is just a fascinating thing for me to realise because this strip is there. So my body recognises the SERP is there and automatically expects it to act like the western one where if I'm just straight up bareback, there's no strip. My body doesn't have that trigger. This is just amazing. I'm not even thinking it when it's happening. But one question I get when I do switch into the English saddle is people will be like, isn't it a lot harder to stay on? Now I'm just going to speak about the dressage saddle that I have right now. And I will say that you see in your balance determine a lot more about staying on top of the horse, more so than the saddle in my dressage saddle. I actually feel almost more secure than in my general Western saddles, maybe with the exception of my mountain shooting saddle, which has that really tight feel because that's what it's made to do, is keep you on while you're making these very big fast moves.

But in general, my dressage saddle has every bit as much of a feeling of security as my Western saddles, my general reigning saddles. And I think. People sometimes are thrown off by horn or no horn, but the horn or no horn isn't really the issue as much as how you are sitting down in that seat. So when I'm riding round, if I had the urge to use the saddle horn, I think a lot of people on the on the western saddle, when they're first learning to use the saddle horn, they'll accidentally inadvertently like it. So pitcher that you're sitting there on your saddle and you reach forward and you grab hold that horn. You actually can either pull and pull yourself forward towards it or you can pull kind of like you're pulling yourself deeper onto the saddle, meaning that you're almost pulling up on the underneath of that horn just a little bit. Now, here's what's cool about the English saddle is the front of the saddle, which we're gonna say is the Parma. But to me, because of riding in the Western saddles for a long time, that front almost feels like I'm just reaching straight into the gullet of my western saddle. If you can imagine, you just grabbed the front of the English saddle. Your hands gonna be in what we would almost consider the gullet of the western saddle. Just grab there and pull. Well, there's only one direction you're gonna pull yourself and that's gonna be down onto the saddle.

Because of that, it's almost more natural to get the correct angle for pulling yourself deeper into the saddle in an English saddle than it is in a western saddle, which is just really interesting if you don't understand that. Write to me and I'll make a little video of it. But anyway, I'm going to move on because this is a lot of talk about saddles or no saddles, but I think it's important to talk about it because when you're working towards becoming a better rider, it is all about stretching yourself out of your comfort zone. It becomes a power when you are getting out of your comfort zone. Each one of these different saddles has something to offer you. I personally learned to ride in a western saddle and then bareback and then an English saddle. I often recommend people who are interested in riding bareback, but they're apprehensive about having nothing to either learn to drop the strips in your western saddle so that costs you nothing and you can start changing the way that you balance because you'll make that bridge between having the strips and not having the Serps or. I've had quite a few clients go out and purchase an inexpensive English saddle because then they can get on and ride and have that experience. I'm talking about where you've got that that middle ground.

Personally, I love switching back and forth and learning more about me and my balance and what's going on and how it's affecting everything. I mean, I'm just still fascinated with the fact that my muscle memory, my legs, you know, makes these assumptions between these different, you know, saddles or no saddle. Any discussion of saddle brings up saddle fit or, you know, how this is going to be experienced if we ride bareback for the horse. And I'm going to talk more about saddle fit versus bareback in an upcoming season of the podcast. But the shortest version of the answer of which one's better for the horse. English, Western or bareback? The answer is a well-balanced rider. A well-balanced rider is what your horse desires, despite which saddle or no saddle you're on. And that's why this whole season's been dedicated to the riders body awareness, strength and becoming a stronger, more well-balanced rider. Now, saddles are a big subject and I want to cover one more thing. And one of the reasons that there's such a big subject is because they have to fit two different individuals. They have to fit you and they have to fit your horse. And over the years, I've been approached by several different saddle companies, but I was very concerned with putting my name on a saddle and then having it marketed as the saddle will help anyone and all horses, because I don't believe that.

I believe that saddle fit is a big subject, whether we're fitting just the horse or just the rider. And the fact that we really have to do both is complicated. And what I was looking for was a solution that would really work for the horse and rider that would be looking for a new saddle. And thankfully, I met Jack and Trish from Stagecoach West, which is a store over in New York. And their customer service is amazing. And because they're a store, they can provide the customer service that I wanted. Anybody looking for a saddle to have, I told them basically I'm willing to design saddles with you guys as long as you're willing to tell a customer if that saddle will actually work for them or not. If this saddle that I design, that's going to work for me and my horses, if it's not going to work for that customer, then you need to sell them a different one. Please. That's what I want and that's what they do. They have a crazy good return policy where if you buy a saddle, they'll ship it to you and the shipping's free and you have 10 days to ride in it. And if it doesn't work, you can send it back. And there's no restocking fee or any extra charges because they're horse people. They ride horses. They understand that when you're buying some of these things, sometimes you just gotta have it in your possession to know for sure that it works.

So I love it. They work with a lot of different people. I've designed saddles with them. My husband's designed saddles with them. Other people have designed saddles with them. And so for that reason, they have lots of choices. If you guys have saddle fit questions, look in your area or Google Stagecoach West. Figure out somebody who can really help you, figure out what is going to fit you and your horse, because if your saddle is fighting to pull your leg forward and you're fighting to bring your leg back, that's not a problem with your body. That's a problem with your saddle. And one quick way to diagnose that sometimes is just trade saddles with a friend for a ride and see if you have a different experience by riding in their saddle. It can give you a pretty quick glimpse into, hey, maybe this is more of a TAC issue than it is actual muscle issue here. As always, keep yourself safe while you explore these different methods of riding. Make sure your if you're gonna experiment with any of these changes, make sure you're doing it on a horse that you trust. Or find a place to take a riding lesson. If you have the opportunity to figure out how to take some lessons or ride your horses in several different ways, meaning bareback or English or Western.

Go ahead and stretch your comfort zone. It's just super fun. I mean, I love going and taking these lessons and and becoming that learner all over again.

I think it makes me a better teacher and I know it's making me a better horseman. Thanks for joining me today, guys, and I'll talk to you in the next episode.

If you enjoy listening to Stacie's podcast, please visit Stacy Westfall dot com for articles, videos and tips to help you and your horse succeed.

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