I think of it as my shoulders and hips frame the horse’s shoulders & hips.
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It can be hard for h/j riders that have really mastered forward seat, two point, light seat at canter, to learn to sit gaits in dressage. Sometimes they can’t even sit the canter. It takes deliberately learning a new balance point.
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Truer words were never spoken. We had a fantastic German clinician who came over periodically pre-Covid. I swear the hunter perch made his eyes water. 
“Sit back on ALL your BUTTS!” was a common refrain.
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@SuzieQNutter Funny you mention that. Yesterday I rode a different horse and I found the sitting trot to be much easier and comfortable on him. It was more fluid and almost canter-like and I didn’t really have an issue with being tipped forward. On my main horse, the sitting trot is a very sharp up-down-up-down and my trainer has to constantly tell me to sit back.
@Jackie_Cochran I am seeing how critical pelvic mobility is at all strides and how it contributes to the overall seat. Once you’ve got it dialed in and moving properly, the hands do very little. But absorbing the motion I’m finding to be difficult on the horses with the less fluid sitting trot. My trainer can do it well as can her best students so I can’t blame the horse.
@Scribbler @TheDBYC YES!!! Putting aside the jumping seat and switching to dressage has been rough, from head to toe.
Yes you sit with heels down, pelvis straight, elbows in line with ear shoulder and heels, head looking at the horizon … and then the horse moves!
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Wouldn’t bareback riding help folks find a good independent seat? i mean…that’s how i learned.
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An important piece of the sitting trot is the horse has to give you a place to sit. A horse that does not have a relaxed, supple back behind the saddle will jar you. The back has to be up, and working, and moving for you to be able to have something to sit. Otherwise you are just driving a car with all its suspension components worn out on a dirt road.
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Unfortunately, it takes an unobtrusive, go with the flow, soft handed rider to encourage the horse to put his back up, initially it requires less hand, and an encouragement to stretch out and down.
This is where an observant pair of eyes on the ground are useful.
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As above the horse has to have the muscle before you sit. I think crossing your stirrups and riding without stirrups is more beneficial. The most beneficial is being lunged without reins or stirrups.
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Also I don’t think the issue here is independent seat per se. It’s sitting the trot. My friends and I rode bareback a lot as kids. We developed good seats. But we rode walk jog canter bomb. We never tried to ride extended or really running trot bareback at least not on purpose.
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Unless a rider can properly sit the trot, and maintain steady hands at all gaits, they cannot exhibit the all important independent set without which progression is impossible.
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sitting upon farmer neighbor’s mules and his one horse bareback, maybe a halter with a thin frayed cotton rope tied to each side of his halter, but more often, nothing on their head, i learned to ride and learned to control the equine by body/voice/hands/legs/feet The good thing was they were not speed demons, lol…in fact it was a major effort to get them to walk off at all. I learned then to ride the entire horse and to do that with my entire body. Years of Saddlebred/Morgan saddleseat schooling/showing gave me nuance, but never took that out of me completely. I’m not happy keeping my legs (sort of) stationary in dressage, but i still have my whole torso left to use. Question: Not sure i understand ‘independent seat’ but i’m thinking i have that. (I’ll ask my coach next lesson) I think it means you don’t use the reins or your stirrups to be able to stay sitting atop your mount.
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Not needing to use your reins or stirrups is the very very first step in moving towards an independent seat. Ideally, a rider has mastered this before they leave the lunge line or in short order. Using the reins or stirrups for support is a natural response in a beginner rider but makes progressing beyond basic steering near impossible as the rider becomes precarious and unbalanced if a stirrup is lost or a horse stumbles.
A truly independent seat is one that can influence the horse separately from the other aids (like the leg or hand). This means that the rider has the ability to coordinate each section of their body to work collaboratively in the same moment. Most of us would default to “well duh” but most riders struggle with this to varying degrees.
When a leg goes back, they accidentally drop their hip at the same time. When they sit deeper for a stride they also accidentally hold with the hand and don’t feel it. Our bodies lie. That’s why expert eyes on the ground are critical. Those eyes help us realize “you didn’t feel it but when you turned right you dropped your inside hand and pulled back”.
An independent seat is not a yes/no box but an ever refinement of being able to have deeper awareness over the body and how to use each aid independently.
Most riders I’ve met who have solely relied on bareback work to try and develop an independent seat have learned how to find a relaxed chairseat. They often lack the ability to isolate individual body parts and don’t find a lot of knowledge transfer for dressage. Riding without stirrups in a correctly fitting dressage saddle encourages a better alignment of the body so that the joints learn to work as true shock absorbers. Some bareback riding is fun and good but should be seen as the single tool for developing an independent dressage seat.
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relaxed seat
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It is a catch 22. You can not sit properly on a horse that is not going correctly. A horse cannot go correctly if you are not sitting properly.
An independent seat also means you can sit the way you want, to ask the horse to do something, even if the horse is not correct.
That is where experience comes in as newbies do not know how to sit yet even when the horse is correct.
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@ [eightpondfarm]
re: not using reins to steer or stabilize. You’ve got it!
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I understand what you all are saying here but I’ve found that understanding doesn’t necessarily translate to physically being able to do something.
This is a really sensitive horse so unless I get everything right, collection won’t happen and he’ll repeatedly toss his head in the air and throw either shoulder. This is what happened in the first part of my lesson today. I don’t like what my trainer is instructing me to do in this particular instance which is having me use “assertive” hands to get his head low. This is hard to do without feeling like I’m playing tug-of-war with his face so I usually try to keep my hands out of it as much as possible and I tried to stick with what I know which is use the seat for collection but for some reason it wasn’t working.
About half way through the lesson, why I don’t know, things came together and it was effortless. This was at the posting trot but he was suddenly light in my hands, hocks engaged, responsive to my seat, and well collected. I wasn’t doing much other than changing the tempo of posting to make some tweaks and opening/closing my fingers around the reins. I felt like I didn’t change anything, it just suddenly came together. This leaves me confused.
I know the standard reply to something like this is “find a new trainer” but I’d like to give her the benefit of the doubt. I just don’t know if she’s really giving me proper instruction on how to ride this particular horse. The only other person who rides him is a really great rider and she has no problems with him. I don’t like to ignore what my trainer is telling me with regards to assertive hands but it just doesn’t feel right to yank at his face, irrespective of what my seat is doing.
I’ll try to get some video of myself riding him.
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A lightbulb moment for you and hard to describe for you to understand.
‘Novice riders work too hard.’
So to try and explain I will use side reins as an example. Side reins never pull back, they only hold.
This is what you want from your hands to not pull back. The side reins hold they do not throw away the contact which you are thinking of as good instead of bad. Think of it as bad and dropping the contact.
So we put the side reins loose on my Mare Twiggy, she has been trained western. She goes along with her muzzle higher than her wither.
The side reins are long and I do not tighten them. So like you felt, they are doing nothing.
Nothing happens in the first session or the second session. By the 3rd session her head is lower. She is starting to learn that if she gives the reins slacken.
By week 3 she is going along with the head carriage of a dressage horse. The reins are still the same length. She has learned to go forward into the reins and that the bit is good and not that it will not hurt her.
The length of the reins did not change. The understanding of the contact and how much I pushed her forward changed.
So with your hands you don’t want to throw away the contact. You do have the ability to give the reins which the side reins do not do. This means if she pulls and you give you will teach the horse to pull. That is your fault not the fault of the horse. The horse only knows what you teach them to do and what you allow them to do.
If she pulls and you hold, you give when she gives you are halfway there. THIS CAN ONLY BE DONE WITH A HORSE AND RIDER WHO UNDERSTANDS, otherwise you will teach the horse to rear. This is dangerously territory as they have nowhere to go but up and they can go over backwards and land on you.
That is why you need to learn in real life from a trainer and not just from us with the written word
How hard do you hold the reins? You have to hold enough to keep the bit up in the horse’s mouth and not being held there by the the cheek pieces. Yes that is how am I was taught, the bridle was removed at the ponyclub grounds. I only had a snaffle bit and reins I was on acres of ground. I had to ride a circle in trot and canter and not let the bit fall out of his mouth. When I came back to my instructor and halted he spit the bit out. She put it back in off we went again.
I have done that with hubby but with a lunging cavesson on and me in control of the horse.
How light do you hold the reins? When you ask for the horse to go from collected trot to medium trot your hands must go with the horse. You don’t want the horse hitting the bit in that transistion, the horse will lose confidence in the bit. You don’t want the reins to be thrown away. It is invisible.
Learning contact for you will take much much longer than the horse. The horses learn much faster than us.
So don’t sweat it yet as your instructor may just be tring to get you to have contact and not throw the reins away. If they start telling you to see saw and put draw reins on is 2 red flags. The fact that the horse started going well with you do nothing is a green flag.
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This was very insightful, thank you Suzie. I went back and read it a few times to let it sink in.
No see sawing or draw reins and my current trainer has been more patient with me than I have been with myself. I think I’m just obsessed with what my hands are doing since I was very heavy handed with prior trainers and horses. I want to do right by this horse and know that I’m finally riding properly and kindly. Lots to work on, back in the saddle I go.
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I think video would be so helpful here. What you could be experiencing is guidance to be the stable one in the storm or it could be some front to back instruction. We all use different words to explain similar sensations and can use very different words to explain the same Sensation!
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