Creating a Spin-Off of Parra thread: Forward Seat vs Modern Riding

[TwiSedai]

Making a new thread because I think the discussion is interesting, but think it needs it’s own thread.

The general gist of it was asking about the forward seat, and then how it’s relating to dressage as it’s currently ridden. I do think there is some merit to it, especially in helping a horse unlock it’s back (and I might look into it more for my new guy who has a short tight back, gets stuck and kicks out). But I also don’t agree that everyone is riding too backwards at the upper levels. I think there are some very soft, sympathetic riders outside of the ones getting all the attention lately (as they should, they need to be called out). I’ll link this thread in the Parra one.

[Jackie_Cochran]

OK, this may get a bit technical.

I try (and often fail) to stay in a true Forward Seat ala Littauer in various of his books, riding on the flat. I have MS and I can no longer jump and canters/gallops are simply too exhausting for my body whether in 2-point, 3-point, or sitting back in the saddle. I ride mostly at the walk with some slow (I ride elderly lesson horses) trotting, sometimes extending the trot.

The leg aid I will be referring too is what I now call the “collecting leg aid.” When the horse’s barrel tries to push my lower leg out I just mostly stiffen my lower leg and resist. Sometimes I add a tiny bit of spur, just to tell the horse that this IS an aid I expect some type of response to.

When I use this collecting leg aid I and my riding teacher have noticed that my weight shifts back a little bit, I sit up straighter to completely straight, while the horse keeps its back more relaxed than tense. Since I do not do this for very long I keep my stirrups at their normal length (short enough so I can get my seat completely out of the saddle), if I was expecting to use it more I would lengthen my stirrups one-two holes. I ride in a Pegasus Butterfly Claudia jumping saddle, the one the saddler was closest to my favorite saddle, my Crosby PDN.

On one mare, elderly Arabian, I felt like a hand was on my belly pushing me back. This particular feeling has also come from the other horses I use this aid on though not as strong. When I “feel” this there is no way that I can keep in a 3-point seat, I have to relax back and end up in something that somewhat resembles a dressage rider sitting upright. The horse’s back no longer supports my 2-point, it is really hard to keep in 3-point since I feel like the back of the saddle has moved further down under my seat bones. I breathe and let the horse dictate the position of my upper body because I know if they don’t like it they will tell me quickly and sometimes emphatically. I still use my very relaxed hands in the Forward Seat methods–giving and taking and not blocking the motion of the horse.

Very rarely, usually when my hands do not give as much as the horse desires, I get some more advanced movements, the elderly Arab mare gave me a terre-a-terre one day when I was trying to canter her, and one day she gave me a croupade, both witnessed by other people. One time I got a “school trot” as described by Nuno Oliveira, that was on an Arabian gelding. Personally I consider all of these as mistakes caused by my imperfect riding though my riding teacher was impressed by how the horse moved then. I most certainly did not plan these movements, the horses volunteered them, and remained CALM.

So I see and feel the difference between the Forward Seat when the horse goes faster or is obeying one of my aids, all the while keeping his back suitable for my FS, and the weight further back, sitting on my seatbones with my body at a 90 degree angle to the horse’s back, usually when the horse slows down while shortening the stride of his hind legs with his hind legs supporting more of our weight. This happens maybe a few minutes during my half hour ride, when the horse feels like he is ready for the added physical challenge.

My contact now is ALWAYS light, with loose,supple fingers UNLESS the horse goes faster with a lot of impulse. I let the HORSE dictate the position of his head, his neck, his back, and how he moves his legs in detail, I concentrate on not blocking the horse’s forward movement. When I give a rein aid I only give it when I do not feet the hind leg on that side pushing (which means I have to give 2 hand aids to halt or slow down.) I tweak my finger, moving it maybe 1/8" to 1/4" with an immediate release and my release is GENEROUS, with my fingers relaxed and my hands moving forward a little.

I tend to avoid the sitting trot, I’ll do 3 to 6 strides then my body objects. I have a damaged spinal cord and a damaged brain from my case of Multiple Sclerosis and I am convinced that sitting the trot ends up with my brain bouncing off of my skull. I don’t want more damage to my brain so I limit the sitting trot to short, occasional sitting trots. Too protect my brain and spinal cord I also avoid bouncing on the horse’s back at the trot and canter, the bouncier the sitting trot the more likely I am to end up in 2-point to save my nervous system.

I NEVER dig my seatbones into the saddle. I do my best not to bounce at the sitting trot and usually I succeed in keeping my seatbones glued to the saddle moving them in response to the horse’s swinging back, whether in 3-point or riding the more dressage position.

I tell every horse I ride that I will go ahead and fall off rather than pull strongly on their mouth. Fortunately I ride well enough so that has not been necessary.

Occasionally, on a particularly resistant horse, I will set my hands, not move my hands, keep my fingers and arms tense, all while I wait for the horse to stop pushing as much with his hind legs. When the push is less strong I release my hand aid and reward with praise. Eventually I even got the “rebel without a cause” sour tempered ruined horse who never had a day of proper training in his life to go from me using all the muscles of my arm to keep my hand in one place to get him to slow down a little bit to being able to stop him with twiddles of my little fingers. Of course during this long process that horse did open his mouth and my riding teacher could see it since I do not ride with a noseband at all (I cut off the chin straps of my Micklem bridles so the horses can open their mouths if they need to.)

I am not gloriously galloping cross country and jumping fences in stride, but at least I did it in my youth before I got crippled (jumping 3’6").

My riding teachers LIKE how their lesson horses move under me. My riding teachers LIKE how I can change an iron jawed horse into one with a soft, responsive mouth. They LIKE seeing their lesson horses walk faster than 2-2 1/2 MPH, I always try to get to 4 MPH, striding freely on contact. My riding teachers like how I do not abuse the horse’s mouth, back or sides. My riding teachers do have to help me keep my lower leg in position, I am not a perfect rider after all.

[Jackie_Cochran]

I was talking to my riding teacher yesterday during my lesson about this particular realm of discussion on the Forum, the direction of modern competitive dressage. I told her that I had introduced Forward Seat theory to show that there is a different way to train the horse other than the practices of the worst abusers in competitive dressage.

She said GOOD.

When I started taking lessons from her well over a decade ago I had recently heard about Rollkur. I asked if she knew about it–she did not. I then described the process, told her it was against EVERYTHING I had read about or been taught about good horsemanship and riding. I told her that I knew it was her stable, her horses, her students, and what she did was her business, but personally if she told me to do Rollkur on one of her lesson horses I would REFUSE to do so. She had no problems with that, what I described had horrified her and fortunately she did not teach it and no one in her stable did it. Good.

Over the decade we have had MANY discussions about dressage. She absolutely believes that serious hunt seat riders NEED to take dressage lessons to use their legs. After all that is how she finally learned to use her legs and her other aids in a coordinated manner, stuff her previous riding teachers had neglected to teach her. Of course I mildly disagreed, I have had just one dressage lesson in my life (not on my horse) and in that lesson there was the demand that I not follow the motion of the horse’s head at a walk. Of course the horse went behind the vertical, I was horrified, and did not take another dressage lesson. I do have a vast library of dressage books through the last two centuries or more, I read these books, I think about what I read, I discuss what I read with my riding instructor, and I illustrate how I use this knowledge withing the parameters of the Forward Seat. It was Kay Russell, a Forward Seat instructor, and her lesson horses who gave me the foundation of how to use my legs effectively and she was the ONLY riding teacher I had who even taught anything about this aspect of higher riding.

My riding teacher would not listen to me about this if my riding did not prove what I say. I ride her lesson horses, she knows how these horses go, she knows their resistances, their points beyond where they do not want to go, and the extent of their training. Since she put me on this wonderful super-sensitive, opinionated, insistent on rider perfection, inverted, and sometimes runaway lesson horse for my first lesson she has seen how my methods improve the horse, leading the horse into calmness, leading the horse to proper reaction to my aids, improving the movement of the lesson horse, and make the lesson horse “happier” about being ridden. If I had not proven it with her horses she would not have taken me seriously, at all. She has had hundreds of lesson students, she has seen a lot, and she knows when she sees effective, humane riding.

What she lacked when I started taking lessons from her was THEORY, and how to apply riding theory to riding a horse. By the end of my third lesson from her I knew that she was the best riding teacher I had ridden with since Kay Russell, the Forward Seat teacher, and I spent some time trying to figure out how best to teach her about the FS. When I asked her what she needed me to work on with this horse one thing she said was that he got upset when the girls clumped up in a group talking and giggling. He wanted silent riders. Well, if I was to teach these theories I had to talk. I decided to explain everything I did verbally to this horse, and of course my riding teacher heard it all. I gave this horse the basic gists of “Common Sense Horsemanship” by Vladimir Littauer, how this affected how I rode, how I expected him to move (calmly with relaxed strides), the theory of Forward Control and how I applied this theory, and the theoretical basis of how I train horses. This horse was dismissive at first, hey I was just another blabber-mouth student to him, but then he noticed that what I said had a direct relationship with what I did on him, and he started listening intently. (This horse most definitely understood English if the rider was patient and clear.)

Both Debbie and this wonderful lesson horse learned about the theory and practice of Forward Seat riding from my little dialogues with the horse during my 30 minute weekly lessons. He became a calm, free striding horse, carrying his head in the proper FS manner, obeying my aids willingly, and patiently working with me when I experimented with something. He was the best horse I have ever ridden, even better than my angel from heaven first horse.

And now Debbie tells me that she often teaches her other students how to ride forward, on calm, relaxed and free striding horses. She has even used some of my stuff with her dressage students. Because I have coherent theory and because I can prove the theories in practice, she and I have developed a student-teacher relationship similar to the higher grade seminars in graduate schools. Debbie and I have FUN discussing riding theory.

I consider “Common Sense Horsemanship” by Vladimir Littauer the most important equitation book published in America by and American horseman (he had become a citizen I think when this book was first published.) The only other riding book that comes close to Littauer’s vision and exposition of his vision is “The Way to Perfect Horsemanship” by Udo Burger, who gets down into the nitty gritty of how to ride dressage humanely and effectively. It is from deeply studying both of these books and riding several horses, usually on my own (I had no riding instructor for years) plus what I learned from Kay Russell that made me a more advanced rider in spite of my MS.

[Alterration]

While the original works and videos by Littauer are older, I think the ANRC’s video series (free to watch here - https://anrc.org/anrc-dvd-series/) are very useful. Particularly the second DVD about stabilization of the horse, and then how to reschool a horse to accept contact.

I’ve used this method quite often in the past and still use it when a horse comes in disturbed by contact. It’s also my comfort method in terms of the base of support when my hips and back are bad, which is becoming more and more often as I age. I also think it helps riders be non-abusive if they are not ready (either because they are beginners or because of injury, age, or fitness) to the horse. One of the hardest lessons I ever watched was an older beginner dressage rider bouncing around on her KS spine horse’s back because “she didn’t have balance yet”.