As riders, we have two means of training: our bodies (the seat and aids), and systematic exercises for the horse. I believe it was Charles de Kunffy who said that hypothetically, one could be sitting so perfectly on the horse that the exercises become unnecessary. I love imagining such perfect seat: perfect alignment, perfect positioning, perfect muscle tone, perfect hands. And each time I climb aboard a horse’s back, I attempt to find that sweet spot.
Unfortunately, dressage is a bit like the concept of infinity. You’ll never “arrive”. And the less rideable the horse, be it green, or stiff, or crooked, or excitable…, the harder it is to stay in anything close to a perfect position. But also the more necessary it becomes. When we add to this striving for the perfect seat the notion that the hands have only a tertiary function (the legs create energy, the seat transmits it, and the hands merely receive it for recycling purposes), and that any riding primarily organized with the hands is counterproductive at best, we quickly find out where our positional limits are.
In a recent clinic with the IMHO brilliant Andrew J Murphy, that limit was the counter canter on an older, stiffer horse that much preferred to change than to stay on the left lead. Whenever he popped a change, I could feel my left leg sliding back and therefore positionally agreeing to the change. I was promptly called out on it and an epic struggle ensued to find a way to remain sitting in the split position even if the horse underneath me offered all sorts of extracurricular moves including some one-tempis. For me that meant further back with my upper body, tailbone down, elbows down, right seat bone down, right shoulder rotated back… once I found that spot that enabled me to only have my pelvis move with the horse and the rest of my body stay where I put it, the horse’s throughness improved dramatically too. And of course, the counter canter is just a canter. Oh the possibilities ;)
Had I ridden a horse with less physical challenges, one who can counter canter easily, I would have never gotten that message so viscerally. And it also gave me a tool to recreate the feeling and keep finding that “slot” until it becomes my natural go-to way of sitting. In addition, I got some valuable input on nuances of applying the lower legs. While before I considered my inside leg the bending and inside-hind-activating leg, and my outside leg the containing aid, I took away a better sense of both legs as an uprighting as well a back lifting aid.
Improving your seat is the gift that keeps on giving. Every ride, every horse. Keep at it:)
