Improving Sitting Trot Question

[KurPlexed]

@Obsidian_Fire

All the training is “in the transitions” and a half halt is just another transition.

Agree!

After watching OP videos I can see her reins are long and horse is not connected and she is running away from her seat. If they aren’t connected, you can’t feel them dropping you until it’s too late and way harder to put back together again.

My suggestion is to

1. Shorten reins
2. Develop a nice connected medium walk with your legs draped long.
3. Pick up a trot (concentrate on the first few steps and feel how the hind legs feel under your seat. It should be pretty easy for the first few steps to sit that trot)
4. Notice when your body wants to grip? That’s when you need to half halt and rebalance. Actually before your body wants to grip is when you should be half halting.
5. If you can’t half halt, do a full transition to the walk and regroup as quickly as you can and ask for trot again and repeat the steps above.

Ideally you’ll get better and quicker and feeling when you’ve lost the balance and you’ll get quicker at fixing it so that you’ll only need very small half halts to bring her back into balance if your reins are the appropriate length.

When I notice my body gripping I first “think” rock him back into his hind leg, jello butt, legs long and then send him forward again into that renewed connection. It also helps me to imagine that I have a huge belt buckle on and I want that buckle to be bouncing up and down. That’s where the movement goes. You’re lower back must be very mobile to let that buckle bounce.

[KurPlexed]

@Jealoushe

My horse is never on the forehand hahaha she’s the opposite and comes up and shortens the neck.

She may be up in the neck and short in the neck but her shoulders are dropped. You can see it in the videos.

Eta that’s why you don’t have a good place to sit. Her back and shoulders are dropped

[Jealoushe]

I agree my reins are long, but I disagree she isn’t connected because I can feel she is connected it’s just me flopping around her making things not the way they should be haha. She isn’t running away at all she is a very steady girl and I’m riding her forward.

[KurPlexed]

You can’t have a good connection if you’re reins are long.

I didn’t mean running away as in running away lol. I meant running away from your seat. She needs to stay under your seat and your seat regulates the tempo. When she runs away your seat is trying to catch up to her tempo.

[Jealoushe]

Just consider her back can look dropped because she has lordosis and it’s 4” below her withers. I’m not saying she is perfect in those videos but I wouldn’t say she is on the forehand.

Anyways the issues are caused by me not my horse and the expectation my horse be perfectly up and through 100% of the time especially while we both learn sitting trot is silly.

I’m looking for help to fix my position and advice on tips and tricks to figure it out. I’ve already stated I’m aware it’s best your horse is connected and through but obviously we are learning so I’m not just going to give up on improving my sitting trot until my horse goes like Valegro lol

[KurPlexed]

[KurPlexed]

@J-Lu

I think sitting the trot is easier when your horse is connected over the back, and doing things like leg-yield left for 3-6 steps then leg yield right 3-6 steps, shoulder-in, shoulder-in to haunches in, shoulder-in right 5 steps then shoulder-in left 5 steps, etc. makes your horse more round and I think makes you less thinking about your position sitting the trot and more thinking about your effectiveness sitting the trot. You have to be effective to pull these exercises off. I think if you think “this shoulder-in sucks” you can learn to play with your position, weight, and aids to get a good position when sitting the trot. And then the skies open, the angels sing, and your horse says “That set of aids -I understand. Here ya go.”

Great advice!!! All of it

[meupatdoes]

The most helpful thing anyone ever said to me about the sitting trot was “Sit like you are advancing a pogo stick.”

From the videos it looks like you have a little too much weight in your seat and it is slingshotting down the back of your leg and sending your heel forward in the down beats.

Try to take a little weight out of your seat and send it down the front of your leg into your thigh and knee, and keep a little more weight on the front side of the stirrup than the back.

A helpful strength and balance building exercise is to post two, sit one. Then when you are sitting/pogosticking, sit like you are about to post two.

[outerbanks77]

@meupatdoes

The most helpful thing anyone ever said to me about the sitting trot was “Sit like you are advancing a pogo stick.”

I like that! I read that Wayne Gretzky said in an interview that he was good at hockey because he learned to not to skate to where the puck is, but where the puck is going to be. I’m not genius at sitting trot, but for some reason that clicks with me for improving my seat in canter and sitting trot. It’s a little of opening the hip and advancing the pelvis forward to meet the horse at the next downbeat. That doesn’t mean launching out of the saddle obviously, but it’s a little counterintuitive to thinking we want to look like we’re glued to our saddles.

[Sybrin]

Where I live we actually learned the sitting trot without stirrups, like ever. On a lunge in a circle, stirrups away and just learn to balance all three gaits. Learning to relax your legs and not trying too hard to sit but just to stay balanced and move with the horse’s movements.

Eventually we also had to learn to sit every gait without reins too to avoid getting too dependent on the reins, by tying the reins and both T-posing and holding raw eggs in our hands, lol.

It is tough, but I know you will get it eventually! Keep practicing.

[EventerAJ]

I generally sit the trot well (enough), but some days --particularly after galloping racehorses when I’m perched high above the saddle and gripping with my knees for stability-- my inner thigh is just “tight” and won’t let me follow the motion to sit deeply. My unintentional tension then transmits to the horse, who subsequently is less inclined to offer a soft supple back to sit into.

In days like this in my dressage saddle, I drop my stirrups (or cross them) and force myself to post the trot as long as I can. After a few laps, my legs get tired of gripping and turn to jello…and miraculously I sink into the saddle, my thighs are relaxed and heavy (too tired to grip, actually) and the sitting trot is just there.

Of course core strength is also important, but for the random days I fight the bounce, dropping stirrups really helps.

[eightpondfarm]

that is the it of it isn’t it… relaxing enough so that you can ride. go with the flow. meld with the horse beneath you. It’s a lot about balance not as much about strength.

[Piaffe11]

Sitting trot on a training/first level horse would probably be a bit more balance than strength. Once you get to second and above, sitting the medium and extended trot has a lot more to do with strength. If my abs are not engaged, there’s not a chance I am sitting my mare’s medium trot at all. Not saying balance doesn’t come into it, but balance is something you learn to begin riding - it is the strength you build upon that which moves you up the levels.

[blue_heron]

Disagree. Sitting trot on a big training/first level horse horse that is not in perfect balance and has not learned to 1. come up in front, 2. provide a place for you to sit, and 3. learned to come into the bridle such that the same resistance you feel in your reins translates to your abs takes an incredible amount of strength. And you must be able to take and give that strength at will to stay in balance with them.

Of course some horses will be more difficult to sit than others, but my big WB mares’ true medium trot was much easier to sit for my trainer and I than it ever was at first level.

[joiedevie99]

@Piaffe11

Sitting trot on a training/first level horse would probably be a bit more balance than strength. Once you get to second and above, sitting the medium and extended trot has a lot more to do with strength.

I can’t tell you have many times I have “learned” to sit the trot. I fully expect to have to learn a few dozen more times in my lifetime

I learned as a kid taking lots of lunge lessons and riding bareback. Then I re-learned as a teen to do training/first level work for eventing/pony club on my big comfy appy. A year later I re-learned when I got my TB.

I’ve re-learned to sit the trot no less than 3 times since my first FEI test in a rated show. This last time, I bought a super sensitive type that reacts strongly to any tension in the hip, and trots for a 9. It’s not easy - I’ve learned to stretch before I mount if he’s my first ride of the day.

My point is, at each place in time, I gained exactly as much core strength, flexibility, relaxation, and pelvic engagement as I needed to complete the task at hand. And that amount varies wildly as you go up the levels and develop the gaits to have more push, and more elasticity. It also varies a great deal from horse to horse - and not just from horses that work properly over their back to those that don’t. Some horses are just easier.

[BigMama1]

@eightpondfarm

that is the it of it isn’t it… relaxing enough so that you can ride. go with the flow. meld with the horse beneath you. It’s a lot about balance not as much about strength.

Depends on the level. Core strength and cardio fitness are huge components of being able to sit an upper level trot.

[lazaret]

The phenomenal amount of core strength required to keep the glute max relaxed while engaging the glute med and lateral oblique is really underestimated by a lot of people who have never had to use it.

Also, you have to do all that and still breathe. That’s the real trick

[BigMama1]

And keep your legs long, sternum lifted, shoulder blades engaged, elbows at your side maintaining steady weight in the contact, forearms soft, fingers closed but not gripping, eyes up…I struggle mightily with all of it just at Third. Literally can’t imagine how GP riders do it.

[eightpondfarm]

Yesterday, just for fun, i sat the trot on both my lesson horses, on ‘both’ of each of their trots. To date my mare has a collected and i suppose you could call it: semi-extended. I felt for muscle-madness and didn’t actually acknowledge any unusual engagement. My young Standardbred fella does have a decent enough trot and then, lol, …there’s this fast pace gait (which i counted as one of his ‘trots’) and lol…that is a fun ride!
But still, I just don’t see it…all the muscle stuff you guys are about. I practice yoga and am naturally very muscular, so maybe for me the muscle involvement isn’t worth noting? dunno.

I’m still about balance being the main-deal.

@lazaret

The phenomenal amount of core strength required to keep the glute max relaxed while engaging the glute med and lateral oblique is really underestimated by a lot of people who have never had to use it.

[lazaret]

I feel like I’m repeating myself because I am - if you’re still leg yielding at the walk, there is no physical way that either of your horses are putting out the power and swing of a true upper level medium trot, never mind an extended. If I remember right, you barely or don’t even canter these horses? They don’t have the physical strength to do any of the trots we are talking about.

I really don’t know what you hope to gain by trying to correct the people who are out there actually doing what you’re talking about. You really think that these people don’t know what is required to…do what they do every day? And that you really possess the secret that somehow no one else has figured out?