Sitting the trot requires you to tuck your hips under and forward toward your horse’s ears, absorb the bouncing of the gait through your lower back, stay totally quiet with your hands and still with your upper body–all while staying relaxed!!

It might sound like a tall order, but that’s what this video is here to help explain.

A few pointers for the sitting trot:

1. Keep your core engaged. I say “engaged” and not “flexed” or “hard” because your abdomen still needs to be flexible, but it can’t be “gooey.” Your ab muscles help balance your horse, and they keep your upper body from flapping around as your lower back and hips rock with the bounce of the horse’s trot.

2. Sitting trot means turning up and down motion into forward and back motion. It’s not that you magically stay still while your horse is madly bouncing away underneath you, but rather that you take the motion that before you used to post up and down and use your hips and lower back to change it into swinging towards his ears and back.

3. Even as you let your hips rock back and forth, don’t let your lower back arch too much. If you let the top of your pelvis tilt forward and you lower back really arch, you will both lose the strength of your seat and hurt your lower back (I’ve now learned this the painful way…). That’s why I say think about tucking your hips and almost “scooping” toward your horse’s ears. This motion lets your hips take the bounce without sacrificing your lower back.

4. Practice, practice, practice! It’s the only way to get good at the sitting trot. Have someone video you so you can see where you might be going wrong. I’ve learned so much about my riding from making these videos… ;)

Happy trails!

-Ali

I read in a book once that the canter was the gait at which worry couldn’t keep up. I certainly subscribe to that belief ;) Cantering can be tons of fun, with its rocking-horse motion and the exhilaration of speed. But what is a canter? And how do you ask a horse to canter? The video below explains the basics of a canter gait and how to ask for a canter from the sitting trot.

This video is a start for beginners in understanding basic upward transitions. An upward transition is from a slower gait to a faster one, like walk to trot or trot to canter.

Your horse has a weird mark on him, and you call up the vet to ask about it. “It’s a big red spot on that part of his leg below the knobby joint. You know, the short part of the leg.” Just not going to work, is it? That’s why it’s very helpful to know all the parts of your horse! This video walks you through the names for all the common parts of the horse. Enjoy :D

-Ali

A dressage whip is a very useful artificial aid, but it can be a bit unwieldy to switch it from hand to hand. This video shows you how to smoothly change hands with you dressage whip!

Getting on a five-foot-high animal isn’t the easiest task. In this video, I walk you through the best way of getting on your horse–a process we call “mounting.” Then I show you how to get down again, with a step-by-step review of the whole process.