Hi, recently I was told that I have been using the wrong part of my leg (inside leg). Personally I grip with my thigh and use more of the inside part of my calf rather than the back-ish part of my calf thus causing me to loose my stirrups and preventing me from having more weight in my heels. I feel like this also affects my stamina while jumping as well and it gets harder as jumps get higher. I was wondering If anyone had any tips/practice ideas to get my back part of my leg and hind engaged more as well as how to quit this bad habit? Thanks!
Who told you this? Your instructor?
You don’t actually want to grip with your legs. Your balance and your core strength and posture and heels down should keep you in the saddle. A solid rooted stable leg position is * not * gripping. If you grip you will bounce off one way or another.
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Hi Emily,
Thigh gripping is a relatively common “instinct” for many beginner and even some intermediate riders. The habit is borne out of a lack of proper rider balance. It’s an instinct because it’s common for many riders to try to compensate for balance issues, by using their thigh for stability. Many trainers will say to grip with the calf as a way to break the habit, but in my opinion that’s not always a part of a sophisticated teaching paradigm.
IMO… It’s a much more effective teaching paradigm to provide the student with a knowledge about the classical foundational principles of horseback riding that underlie the reasons for all the training exercises a teacher includes in their training program.
It’s been my life experience that about 75% of trainers are unable to articulate these foundational principles in words, even thought they may understand them in a functional sense.
So here’s an overview of the “secrets of riding” that took me many years of exploration to quantify into a set of intellectual ideas. None of this is anything new by the way, these are just basic concepts of classical riding translated into descriptive terms.
** It’s all about Balance **
The horse is an animal that evolved to live in the wild, it has a body that is optimized for surviving in the wild. Everything a horse can physically do, it can do without any rider on it’s back.
At some point in history. People tamed horses, and eventually taught themselves how to ride horses.
But just because people learned to ride horses, it did not change the bio-mechanical fundamentals of how the horse uses it’s own body.
So imagine a talented gymnast who’s really good on the balance beam. The gymnast works hard to develop their body’s natural skills of balance and athleticism, and becomes highly skilled at what they do. But let’s imagine that someone is going to jump on that gymnast’s back, and the gymnast now has to do some balance beam stuff while carrying a passenger piggyback. We just majorly screwed up the gymnast’s balance. The gymnast may certainly learn to do certain balance beam moves caring a passenger… BUT it’s going to be a whole lot easier on that gymnast if their passenger learns not interfere with gymnast’s balance to the highest degree possible. This makes life much easier on the gymnast.
The rider on a horse, is analogous to the gymnast caring a passenger piggyback.
** It’s the number one job of the rider, to learn to be as non-interfering with a horse’s balance as they possibly can, to allow the horse to use his horse body “unencumbered by the rider”. So the horse can do the things that horses are naturally gifted at doing, without worrying that their rider is going to mess up their balance **
The number one job for a riding teacher… Is to teach their students to always have excellent balance while they are on their horses backs. The challenging part, is to not just teach the student to have balance, but teach the student to have balance while the student uses their riding aids to guide the horse. But also maintain rider balance while using their aids as the horse is trotting, cantering, jumping, transitioning, halting, turning…etc…etc…
Of riders… Some trainers will use the phrase “remaining in the center of your horse”. Another phase about a rider to memorize and understand is termed “having the ability to use independent aids”.
“Remaining in the center of your horse” means the rider has the skill to remain balanced (remain centered, as in center of balance) and not interfere with their horses balance while riding.
“Having the ability to use independent aids” means the rider has developed the skill to use all their aids… Core (body), seat, legs and hands… Use all of their aids independently while remaining balanced in the center of their horse.
These are the two fundamental tenets of classical horsemanship. Everything else is based of the rider learning how to use their aids and balance to effectively control and command the horse to do what the rider desires the horse to do.
With the above information explained. I think it may now be easier to understand the answer to your questions about gripping with the thigh or the calf.
A centered rider using independent aids does not grip. Gripping would be perceived by the horse as interfering with their ability to move without rider encumbrance. Many horses would perceive gripping as a leg aid. If the rider grips with any part of their body long enough, the horse will either become evasive in an attempt to escape the nagging grip. Or tune it out and not respond to that part of the riders body as an aid.
Gripping can be a very misleading word for a trainer to say to a student because it can be easily misunderstood.
The word “contact” is a far more appropriate word for a trainer to use. The rider maintaining a steady contact with their calves on the sides of their horse is a more appropriate riding concept. The amount of calf contact should be equivalent to the feeling of letting the weight of your hand rest gently on your thigh, while sitting with your arm relaxed.
The purpose of that light calf contact is communication with your horse. Your leg is saying “I’m here” "I’ll let you know when I want to ask you to do something.
It’s also taught because most learning riders do not yet have the ability for independent aids. A sloppy lower leg constantly bumping randomly against the sides of the horse can drive some horses nuts. better to teach the student to keep a light contact with the calf.
But what will confuse many learning riders, is the this calf contact concept is not rigid law of riding by any means. Their will be plenty of times when it’s perfectly appropriate to remove the calf and reapply it as an aid. Watch an upper level dressage rider use their calf in this way. It’s also an aid at the posting trot to apply the calf on every sit to ask for impulsion, then remove the calf while rising from the saddle.
To address the thigh question. This is something that usually goes together with knee pinching. It’s very common for a learning rider to pitch with their thighs/knees. The rider typically does this because their center of balance is not yet fully developed, and the rider uses their thighs/knees acts a way to brace themselves on the saddle for stability.
The issue with thigh/knee bracing is that it can result in a lot of swinging of the lower legs, losing stirrups, inability for the rider to support their weigh properly from the ball of their feet in the Stirrups, and it acts bio-mechanically to shift the riders center of gaiety to far forward as they attempt to support their core from the thigh and the knees. The rider may have problems with a hunched forward posture that will prevent them from developing an effective seat for developing their arms, hands, shoulders and back muscles so they can maintain a steady and effective contact between hand and bit. Such riders may attempt to ride with rigid arms and try to use their wrists to give rein aids. The elbows may often be help up and away from the riders sides. These are all things that can be associated with rider thighs/knees bracing.
Exercises…
All the basic classic balance building exercises apply. Starting with the trainer holding the horse as the rider does the routine of classic touch your left fingers to your right toes. Lunge line lessons with no stirrups, trainer tying up the reins in throat latch, touching your nose with each finger while trotting on the lunge, reaching around and touching the horses croup. etc…
A very nice exercise I like… is to work under saddle at the posting trot, and become conscious of all of the following…
While trotting… sit the trot and remove your knees slightly from the saddle for a moment while simultaneously rolling your pelvis slightly forwards in time with the dip in the horses outside hip at you sit. Then rise into the post while maintaining a light calf pressure at the horses sides, feeling like your pushing your pelvic forward as you rise. This is technically the correct sequence of seat and leg movements of a proper pasting trot.
If you feel unbalanced when you sit and relax the knees away from the saddle, that’s the symptom that more fundamental balance building exercises will likely be of benefit.
Remember…
Learning to ride is a process of perfecting basic skills, and then building more complex skills upon those basics.
It’s the old building a house from the foundation up metaphor. If the foundation is weak, whatever you build upon it will only be a stable as the foundation below that supports it.
When problems arise in training for both people and horses, regress back and re-visit the area of training that was not fully developed. Fill the training gap, then progress forward once again.
Even the best of riders may need to re-visit some of the fundamentals from time to time.
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Instead of thinking about gripping with your legs, think of it as just draping your legs around the horse. The key to staying upright and in the saddle is balance, not gripping. You can’t keep your legs still and in the proper position by gripping. You can only do it consistently and without wearing yourself out by keeping your body in balance over your feet.
As far as what you can do to improve, I think different techniques/mental pictures make sense to, and work for, different people. For me, it helps to visualize relaxing, with all the tension flowing down out of my body, down my legs, and out my heels. The other thing that helps me is to do the classic visualization of my horse disappearing out from under me - would I end up standing balanced on my feet (good) or would I fall on my butt or on my face (bad)?
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Increase your core strength; you can’t balance properly without it.
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I’m not too happy with your instructor.
That said, you don’t grip with your thigh, but is should be in contact with the saddle , whether strongly for a half second half halt, or longer for a downward transition, other wise it’s fairly relaxed. it’s also useful for transitions within the gait, rather than going to the hand.
As far as not using the side of your calf, but using the back of it–all I can say is we take pride in not having contact marks on the back of our calves , only on the inside surface. Using the back of your calf turns your toes too far out.
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If grip isn’t important why did my trainers growing up make me spend so much time posting without my stirrups?
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To develop your balance. And thigh strength. And ability to two point.
Yes when you two point you carry much of your weight in your thigh muscles. But you don’t grip.
If you grip you are inadvertently sending aid cues to your horse.
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Maybe we just have different definitions of the word “grip”. To me the strength requires to two point without stirrups is “grip”. Carrying weight in your thigh muscles while lifting you seat off the saddle and not sliding down or flinging yourself around is “grip” to me. And why did I need thigh strength if it wasn’t to be used for “gripping”? What was I going to use it for?
I am playing devil’s advocate a bit. Though I am still pretty sure that a word like “grip” can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. (I’m also pretty sure my trainer had me ride without stirrups because she liked to torture us sometimes.)
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You carry the weight in your knees into the flap and knee roll. Your calf hangs down away brushing but not gripping the horse. Your upper thigh is off the saddle. Your weight is down into the saddle and your core is holding up your torso.
At no point are you closing your legs in order to stay in the saddle. If the horse acts up or spooks you drop your leg and maybe brace against the stirrups but you don’t clamp calves or thighs to stay on.
I can’t speak to your long ago training. It’s possible you were taught to clamp your calves.
It’s also possible that you were taught so well none of this discussion makes sense to you.
I was a self taught kid rider a lot of western and bareback as well as English. As a returning rider I had all kinds of things to unlearn and relearn and just learn for the the first time but “pinching knees” and clamping legs was not one of my problems. I’m more likely to jam my heels like a rodeo rider and go into a chair seat!
I had some trouble figuring out what “pinch with the knees” even meant on COTH threads but now I can see when people do it IRL. My guess is it comes in part from children in H/j lessons bring pushed to jump before they have an independent seat.
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I totally agree with you and am glad you asked the question! I find riding without stirrups in my dressage saddle very easy (no “grip” required, just balance) but hadn’t tried to do it in a jumping saddle for years. I learned that posting/two-point without stirrups really pisses my current horse off because I do have to “grip” to some extent to get my bum out of the saddle. He hates the additional pressure. It definitely uses different muscles than posting/two-point with stirrups too.
But your weight can’t be down in the saddle if you’re in two-point. And you do have to close your legs to get up there. That is where the “grip” comes in, and to me it feels completely different than two-point with stirrups. Maybe we are talking about different things? As far as riding without stirrups in more of a dressage seat I totally agree with your description.
I’m not trying to argue with you BTW. I have just been thinking about this lately and enjoy the discussion.
There is obviously some degree of grip going on when you two point. It’s not that you never end up putting pressure on the saddle! It’s just that you don’t grip with your whole leg over a jump or otherwise. You aren’t staying on the horse by gripping with your calves.
And yes children are being taught to ride that way and wonder why the horse bolts after the jump. Then they come to my coach who puts them on a longe line to rebuild their seat
The gripping in the wrong way is ubiquitous at a certain level of h/j lessons and is hard to imagine doing for a competent rider!
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Totally agree with that!
A few weeks ago I read an interesting thread about grip and riding without stirrups on the Horse & Hound forum: https://www.horseforum.com/english-riding/two-point-no-stirrups-more-harm-759866/#/topics/759866. Like us here, they were going back and forth a bit about the difference between gripping for stability and counterproductive clamping. Example:
There’s having your knee and thigh on, using them in a stabilizing way, which is important – and then there’s actually clamping on, which is what I meant by gripping. The type of gripping I’m talking about is using knees and thighs in a vice-like way to try squeeze oneself into remaining on the horse. It inhibits the horse’s movement and actually makes the rider less stable – even though it mentally feels more secure – by forcing their centre of gravity up and pushing them out of the saddle.
In the case of no-stirrups two-point, however, this kind of grip that is normally avoided seems to be the only way to push the seat up off the horse, so I question if it’s all that beneficial to horse or rider. A no-stirrups forward seat where the hip angle closes but the rider isn’t trying to squeeze themselves off the horse’s back might be a good compromise – same angles without forcing a clamping type of lift.
Posting without stirrups relies a lot more on using your core strength to pull your pelvis toward the pommel and allowing the horse’s movement to push you up out of the saddle than bracing your legs against the horse’s sides to push yourself up.
If you want to talk about 2-pointing without stirrups, then yeah, you’re going to have to grip with your legs, but in my mind, 2-pointing without stirrups is a special exercise intended to accomplish certain specific goals and gripping with your legs in that context isn’t really relevant to the context in which the OP posed her question, i.e. it’s red herring.
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As a returning older rider whose muscles are relearning the basics, I want to say this is a fantastic thread. I have a good instructor but have never had balance and leg position explained as clearly as I’m reading here. These comments will help with the difficulty I have with balance and leg aids; i;e; when I apply an inside leg aid in bending, it’s difficult to maintain contact with the other.
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Thank you all so much, I feel like the word “gripping” can definitely be used wrong in the horse world because there is just so many mechanics to riding but their hard to explain. I admit that was not the best word to use, but I do pinch with my thighs and knees a lot which I think stems from being told when I was little not to let my legs swing (which griping does not help lol). I now have a way better understanding of how to address these problems. Thank you!!!
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I have loved reading everyone’s responses! Discussions like these are really interesting when it comes down to “theory in practice”. I was never told to grip, but to close my leg so that I had secure but not aggressive contact. I do remember having a very bad habit of doing the “oh S*** sit and grip” when I saw a bad distance which caused my horse to rocket forward to an even worse spot!
I really had breakthrough when I had a fantastic no-stirrup lesson with a new trainer who told me to let my legs hang down and not to hold on with my calf! I was like, what how will I stay on??? Sure enough, as soon as I let my legs dangle, I felt soft, secure, and had my horse in front of me. I did not jump stirrup-less though, no thanks! This same trainer told me not to grip over the jump either, but sink way into my heels and let the natural lengthening of my leg hold me in the tack.
Now I do not jump big, 2’9 on a brave day, but I do imagine that body strength come into play over actual big jumps so I would love to hear some from someone who can compare how it feels jumping 2’6 to 3’6.
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