i bought my horse in may and wasnt able to ride him until august, and once i started riding him, i noticed my lower leg is all over the place. i compared videos of me riding my horse and videos of me riding lesson horses in january/february of this year, and my leg is much more stable in the earlier videos. my horse has a problem with carrying himself (especially through turns) and i always blamed that for my swinging leg. i dont really pinch with my knee (at least less than i used to), but my leg still swings. could my horse’s wobbly canter be the cause or is it a skill issue on my part?
Video is the only way to know for sure.
If your saddle doesn’t fit this horse, it’s going to fight you for good position, not to mention not allow him to use himself properly
Loose lower legs are a core problem, at the… core LOL
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Loose lower leg often means it is sliding too far to the front. That can indicate that the rider is pushing down with the front of their foot, even though they intend to lower their heels. What tends to happen is the push pushes the stirrup forward, and as the front of the foot goes down, the heel starts lifting & floating.
Pushing with the toes/front of foot is a natural reaction that we have to re-train in ourselves.
Two-point practice. Tip your knee out from the saddle, and toe as well. Pull your lower leg back under you. Slide your knee back. Sink all weight into your heels while lifting your toe.
Be in a partial two-point as you transition from trot to canter. Stay that way with your lower leg feeling as if it is far back under you as you sit slowly into the saddle. You should feel as if you are almost over your knees, your foot is so far back. Really it is under your hip bone (hopefully) but it feels more extreme until you have the feel again.
Sounds like you just need to get your old feel back.
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I’ve also found that slab sided horses are easier for me to ride. Because I’m short. My latest horse is big and beefy and wide. And very much a push ride. Initially I dealt with my leg straying a little too far behind the girth, especially to the right as that’s the direction he wants to bulge a shoulder. I had to very consciously always make sure my leg was in the proper place and relax into the canter. Even when I had to push and correct a bulge.
The horses I had ridden it in the past were very much whoa kind of horses. That carried their own pace without correction or pushing. And they were not so big! Work on core strength. Lots of two point. Exercise out of the saddle. And as mentioned above. Make sure your saddle fits you and your horse.
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@JB this is the most recent example i could find, i dont have many videos. i used to ride with my heels as far down as they could go and the stirrup always slid back toward my heel, i dont have any videos/pictures though
If you had your heels down, and the stirrup slid back, that seems like you’re pinching somewhere… Maybe not the knee perhaps your thighs? But that tells me that your leg is creeping up. And not long
Lovely horse! What does your coach suggest ?
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Did you ride between May and August or were you off for those months? My first thought is you just need to get your fitness back if it wasn’t a problem before.
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i used to pinch with my knees big time, it’s better now, and ive picked my heels up a tad. my trainer honestly doesnt comment on my lower leg at all
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i was not riding but in physical therapy
That’s probably it then. I’d bet that as you get back in riding shape it’ll get better. Having a horse that is unbalanced can really call us out when our fitness slips when it may not be as obvious on a horse that’s fitter themselves. Adding in some at home workouts focused on core strength and lower body strength and mobility will help get you back faster.
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I suspect that your heels were not as far down as you thought. And/or they floated occasionally, as you may have balanced on the front of the foot in the stirrups.
If the stirrup was sliding back, the heels must have been coming up to allow that. Heels dropped below the stirrup bar is part of what keeps the bar across the ball of the foot.
We can think that our heels are down, but our attention is continually pulled away, and if it isn’t a firm habit then the foot tends to float into a flatter position. It is a more comfortable and natural position and that’s where the foot wants to go until it is thoroughly re-trained.
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How do you feel about the canter? How does your upper body feel? Do you feel like you’re absorbing the motion or do you feel stiff or tense and like you’re pumping with your upper body? It may surely just be a Fitness issue. But if you find getting stronger doesn’t help look at your upper body also. Mainly your shoulders and your hips.
And your video is a veeeery small moment in time but you look a bit behind the motion. In a chair seat. Fighting your saddle. Does it fit you?
A saddle with a stirrup bar in the wrong position will exhaust you! Trying to find home.
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That’s not a lot to go off of but I’ll be the lone wolf that says I think your leg basically looks fine. Utter perfection? No, but I really had something else in mind when I clicked play.
There are some horse shapes that are just always going to have a bit of leg movement. Definitely not worth obsessing over, which is rarely a good thing anyway. Step back and take in the whole picture. My guess is he just needs muscle before he starts truly carrying himself, and that will give you a bit more steadiness in the leg.
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i spent forever looking and found this. i always felt my heels were extremely dropped but it could just be me
Based on the video clip, you are pinching somewhere. Your leg is not wrapped around the horse and there is not much weight in the stirrup. Your butt is way to the back of the saddle. I would bet you are tight in the hips and gripping too much with your hips rotated into adduction. And pelvis tilted a bit backward. Because your leg creeps up and you aren’t balanced in the middle of the saddle with a neutral pelvis, you can’t stabilize the lower leg.
No stirrups work could help but only if you don’t just grip tighter in your shortened leg state. Sometimes it helps to think about actually loosening up in order to get your leg long. When we want to add strength, our tendency is to scrunch ourselves up. Looser, longer, focusing on your seat bones as the contact point. Core work to gain more independence of the seat and pelvis.
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i feel uncomfortable in my horse’s canter as i feel he is unbalanced. i think my upper body rocks too much almost like im trying to move for him, but when i try and fix it i become super stiff and get bounced out of the saddle on each stride
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You appear to be in a chair seat there, so it may be the saddle doesn’t fit you, even if it just doesn’t fit you on this horse but does fit you on other horses.
If that’s the extent that your leg moves, that’s not nearly as bad as I was envisioning 
The only way these 2 things can go together, is if you’re lifting your toes, instead of sinking weight through your heels. Lifting toes is a symptom of an inappropriately tense leg, usually because you’re drawing your thigh up, which coincides with being put into a chair seat. The chair seat puts your center of gravity too far back, so you raise your legs a bit in an effort to counter that.
that really is down quite far. Some of that may be your conformation, but some may be the above, since it’s no possible for weighted heels to allow the stirrup to slide back towards the heel.
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I am hoping that you see that this leg and heel position are nothing like your leg and heel position in the video. At all. Not even close.
As I mentioned above, I think you have just lost the position a bit during your riding hiatus. You and your horse both just need to reacquire what you had going before.
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i totally understand that, i just wanted to share some previous faults to show a sort of position evolution lol
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First. Saddle check. Then fitness. And work on stiffness / tenseness in your upper body. You have to wrap your leg around without excessive gripping and try to relax through your upper body too.
Here’s the thing also. You get a new horse. You want to be perfect. You get tense ! Been there done that and I have the t shirt. If your saddle fits YOU … then you have to allow yourself to gain fitness. And relieve your tension. Whether it’s in your thighs or your hips or your upper body. Sink down. Absorb the motion. There are really two different moments in the canter. When the horses lowers beneath you and when it rises up.
Also you can get really stiff in your shoulders trying to “steer” with your arms. But your legs can steer. Your reins just provide the path.
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