My horse has a pretty big trot naturally and because of that I always thought I’m just not good at sitting trot but I had a few lessons with other school horses and I felt fine and my trainer actually thought my sitting trot was pretty good.
As soon as I start sitting on my own horse though, I lost all that good feeling and felt like I don’t know how to sit anymore and it’s super bouncy while my core keeps collapsing on me. If I try to sit up and sit deep, I get bounced out of the saddle and if I try to relax I can’t really engage my core.
Anyone has a good advice for this?
See my other post on sitting trot in the other thread. Send me PM if you’d like help on exercises to do in the gym. I’ve been working with a personal trainer for exactly this sort of thing and it has helped immensely.
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Lots and lots and lots of core exercises out of the saddle - and if possible, time to practice sitting trot on horses with a more manageable gait.
There are lots of ways to strengthen your core out of the saddle - balance boards, yoga, pilates, sitting on an exercise ball instead of a desk chair, sit ups, crunches, bicycle crunches (so good for obliques, which are hard to get!), leg lifts, the list goes on… 
So just work on mostly core strength? What should a good sitting trot feel like? On the school horse it almost felt like I’m following him more with my lower back and below, but on my horse it feels like my pelvis tend to rotate forward and upward.
[QUOTE=ebott2015;9034080]
So just work on mostly core strength? What should a good sitting trot feel like? On the school horse it almost felt like I’m following him more with my lower back and below, but on my horse it feels like my pelvis tend to rotate forward and upward.[/QUOTE]
You need core stability, not necessarily strength as we tend to think of it. Yes, it’s strength - but different.
When you sit the trot, your upper/middle back should not be moving. Your pelvis ends up staying the same relative to the saddle, your legs move along the saddle to stay the same relative to the ground, and your hip joints and SI joints allow that motion. Depending on your conformation, the muscles to support that position probably require a lot of strengthening of various abdominal groups. If your horse has a lot of twist to its trot, you will also have to strengthen obliques to keep yourself from flopping. I’m VERY short waisted - my ribs and pelvis overlap. So I have to use the upper abdominal muscles to sort of lift my rib cage out of the way.
The other factor is your horse. My gelding has a very short back and is very uphill. Getting enough swing and reach in his gait to make it sittable instead of a twisting impossible wreck to try to sit took a VERY long time. He can’t have tension in his back at all, and has to be really using his own core to make his trot sittable. In the last 9 months or so his trot has become easily sittable as if by magic after huge amounts of work. On the other hand, my mare has such an easy trot to sit I used to have trouble posting it.
netg–
What do you do to transition your horse’s trot? We’re not quite at the point that he’s 100% relaxed and swinging. Is it mostly just training? What are some exercises that you found useful?
I’m not netg but I would suggest transitions within the trot. Make your seat feel as though you are trotting in place, then ask for longer strides by relaxing your hips, closing your lower legs and going more forward, then back to in place, then more forward, each time asking for more forward, and allowing your hips and seat to go.
The core is useful when asking him to come back and trot in place, not so much so in going forward.
It’s probably more that your horse isn’t sittable yet rather than you can’t sit the trot. I’d focus on the horse while also making sure your position is correct and/or improving.
[QUOTE=ebott2015;9034359]
netg–
What do you do to transition your horse’s trot? We’re not quite at the point that he’s 100% relaxed and swinging. Is it mostly just training? What are some exercises that you found useful?[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=merrygoround;9034537]I’m not netg but I would suggest transitions within the trot. Make your seat feel as though you are trotting in place, then ask for longer strides by relaxing your hips, closing your lower legs and going more forward, then back to in place, then more forward, each time asking for more forward, and allowing your hips and seat to go.
The core is useful when asking him to come back and trot in place, not so much so in going forward.[/QUOTE]
Basically what merrygoround said. My guy had mental tension and tension from other physical reasons we had to work through, and riding it meant TONS of lateral work to loosen up tight muscles until he could more easily work over his topline and really swing. But her description is pretty much what you need in general for a more typical horse.
I agree with others that the horse has to give you a place to sit. I just recently bought a new saddle-- my horses had grown into a wide tree, and my old medium-wide was pinching their shoulders and causing some tension across the back. With a better-fitting saddle (for both me and them!) I find sitting trot MUCH MUCH easier. I’m not too shabby at the sitting trot, but I felt like a flopping fish trying to sit on my stallion in the old saddle. I simply couldn’t sit it, I just posted on him (and felt like a failure). In the new one, I feel my core muscles working, but it allows me to sit his trot effectively; his back still swings a lot, but there’s less tension to the bounce. And medium trots are dead easy now on my upper level horse: having a saddle that sits your pelvis in perfect natural balance allows your core to do the work stabilizing the upper body, freeing up your hips to follow the movement.
Bottom line: check your saddle fit, in addition to strengthening your core and suppling your horse.
Yup, what EventerAJ said.
Try a bunch of different saddles. For my body type, I need a forward balance saddle for a really bouncy horse or else I feel like I’m sitting on a beach ball. When the saddle keeps me near the horse’s shoulders there’s no problem at all sitting the trot.
To me, (I currently have a very lovely easy-to-sit mare and a very big expressively moving, launch-you-to-the-moon mare), I look for the feeling that the top of my femurs are free enough to rotate in the hip socket (“left, right”), while keeping an erect sturdy upper body, following with my belly button. Almost like subtle pedaling, nothing extravagant or even obvious.
When starting the sitting trot most riders will either shorten the horse’s gait to make it possible to sit or somewhat sit, or they will collapse in the core, laterally or longitudinally. Or both!
I teach it to my students on the longe, and focus a few circles on keeping the hips soft; then a few circles on maintaining a following, upright core; then keeping tabs on the upper arms, that they aren’t creeping to the shoulders…and then we attempt a few strides of putting it all together.
If you can find a solid horse that you sit easily or mostly easily without having to slow its gait to do so, that is a horse you should practice on! And if the withers allow, practice bareback too: it’s an interesting lesson when you can feel each of your seat bones being lifted and “revolved” by the each long back muscle. You can feel that half of your pelvis being lifted by the corresponding side of the back, and it can really give you great clues and “ahas” into how to let go to really sit better and better, even on the big movers.
To me, (I currently have a very lovely easy-to-sit mare and a very big expressively moving, launch-you-to-the-moon mare), I look for the feeling that the top of my femurs are free enough to rotate in the hip socket (“left, right”), while keeping an erect sturdy upper body, following with my belly button. Almost like subtle pedaling, nothing extravagant or even obvious.
When starting the sitting trot most riders will either shorten the horse’s gait to make it possible to sit or somewhat sit, or they will collapse in the core, laterally or longitudinally. Or both!
I teach it to my students on the longe, and focus a few circles on keeping the hips soft; then a few circles on maintaining a following, upright core; then keeping tabs on the upper arms, that they aren’t creeping to the shoulders…and then we attempt a few strides of putting it all together.
If you can find a solid horse that you sit easily or mostly easily without having to slow its gait to do so, that is a horse you should practice on! And if the withers allow, practice bareback too: it’s an interesting lesson when you can feel each of your seat bones being lifted and “revolved” by the each long back muscle. You can feel that half of your pelvis being lifted by the corresponding side of the back, and it can really give you great clues and “ahas” into how to let go to really sit better and better, even on the big movers.
Another vote for check-your-saddle. I see a lot of people in seats that are too small, or trying to straddle twists that are too wide, for their anatomy. The latter, in particular, can pop you up like a cork in the waves, especially on a big-moving horse.
I find the twist actually goes both ways along with other designs of the saddle. It really depends on your anatomy. Personally if I ride in a saddle with a narrower twist than I prefer, it destroys my position. To me it feels like my hips are collapsing in and it locks up my hips. I actually will get cramps in the inner part of my thigh and my legs will be very stiff and pulled up. It can just be a hair too narrow for me feel like this. Saddle fitting really is about differences by millimeters.
Another thing with the trend of the big external blocks, they have to be placed correctly for the rider. If they are set too far back holding the leg in a position rather than supporting the leg, it effects hips and muscle. Basically if you legs are forced back by the saddle, it does not allow the flexibility in the hips to follow the horse’s movement because it is already maxed out.
I hope that helps and please let me know if you have any questions!
I did find an Albion that fits my horse really well and for the first time I could finally sit his canter instead of getting popped out every stride. As far as sitting trot, I have good and bad days for sure-some days it’s a lot easier but if I’m stiff somewhere in my body, it is a lot harder. I’ve ridden some older school horses and had no problem sitting on them, but my guy is a really big mover and his normal trot is still pretty hard to sit. But hey at least I’ve gone from sitting two strides to sitting like 5 without bouncing!
