Before you pick up a trot, you will need to find your balance in the half-seat. While your horse is standing still, find a position where you can slide your weight down onto your stirrups so your seat comes off the saddle an inch or so. You will be in the half-seat. Your knees and hip joints will be flexed, and your torso will be slanted forward. When balanced in the half-seat, your center will be over your stirrups and feet. If you dropped a plumb line from your center through your foot, your knees would be ahead of that line, your hip joints would be behind it, and your head and shoulders ahead of it. (A plumb line is a length of string with a weight on the end. Used by builders and surveyors, it always hangs down perpendicularly.) The tip of your toe will be under the tip of your knee. Rise up and down a few times as if doing a rising trot (also known as posting). Then practice some rising trot at the walk until balance is easy.
After resting, pick up the trot in the half-seat position, off the horse's back but not rising up and down. Let your joints absorb the horse's motion. For the sake of stability, you can rest your knuckles on the horse's neck in front of the withers at first until your balance becomes secure. When you're comfortable, start rising to the trot in that balance, then after five or six strides return to the half-seat. This repetitive Two Seats exercise increases your comfort and security in each seat, allowing you to switch fluidly from one to the other. Usually riders instinctively assume a 45-degree angle with their upper bodies while in the half-seat, but you can derive more benefits by varying that angle. Try a somewhat more upright position by allowing your knees to flex more forward, your hips to come more under you, your shoulders to come up and your hip joints to be more open. Or, conversely, flex your joints more deeply to lower your torso to a more horizontal position. The Two Seats exercise, done at rising trot and half-seat in any of these positions, will substantially improve your balance and stability.
As you learn to ride with your bones through these unmounted and mounted exercises, you will become more aware of how your body--in all its different parts--can coordinate with the horse's movement. The resulting following seat not only harmonizes with your horse's action, but it is the pathway for clear, precise directives that your horse will willingly obey.
This article originally appeared in the June 2001 issue of EQUUS magazine.
