- Text by Sarah Warne-Furtado for Eurodressage
In a lesson with Richard Weis when I was 13 years old, Richard told me “I had to use my body like a spring and bounce myself around the arena.” He talked about my posture and how the energy must flow from the ground through and out the top of my head. I must make myself a good load for the horse to carry.
I think this is such a great way to summarise something that we as riders tend to forget and it should be every riders objective to “make themselves a good load to carry!”
Making Myself a Good Load to Carry
I have thought about this recently as I try riding again for the first time after having three children. How do I make myself a good load to carry, so as to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
“Every rider has felt how easy it is to sit well on a horse who is using himself well. The rider feels well carried. In the same way it is much easier for the horse to carry a rider using himself well," Weis wrote together with Susanne Miesner in a paper titled "The Posture Does the Riding" handed out to around 2000 participants at three lecture/demonstrations at the DOKR in Warendorf, in Mannheim, and in Berlin.
The paper went on to describe the term ‘to use oneself well’ as being a rider who has “efficient and effective organisation of posture and coordination."
So how do we make ourselves a good load to carry? “All we have to use, when we sit on a horse and guide it, is our own body from the top of our head to the soles of our feet, and the power that drives it. Before we can expect to control the horse we need a high degree of control of ourselves. Gaining this is our first responsibility," Weis wrote.
This is our responsibility as riders, to gain control over ourselves. Notice he doesn’t say our own bodies, but “ourselves”. This of course is because riding requires not just physical control but mental and emotional control. We must be patient, clear, generous, humble. For physical control over our bodies we need to have very good body awareness, and the correct balance of both strength and relaxation required to maintain a posture, while being relaxed and effective within that posture.
This requires us to foster that awareness and postural effectiveness off the horse, so that it may come naturally and not be forced when we are in the saddle.
“Since the criteria of a correct seat are the same as the criteria of good posture in general, being constantly attentive to one’s bearing when standing or walking is excellent training. A correct vertical posture of the head and the trunk on horseback is not a special posture applicable only to riding," said Weis.
"Sitting the horse onto the bit"
Often we hear instructors tell riders to sit up, or sit back, which creates stiff upper back and “held positions," or riders that lean back. Richard would tell me to think of a rope pulling up out of the top of my head, helping me to visualise a posture where I felt tall and able to allow the energy to flow up and out the top of my head. I was sitting neither back nor forward, but lengthening my spine and holding myself there without effort or force. In developing this posture the horse is able to move freely and our aids become efficient and increasingly subtle.
“A correct seat of itself acts as a positive influence on the horse’s movement and posture, because the relaxed elasticity of the rider’s spine, together with a deep seat and soft embracing leg contact, are stimulating the horse’s back movement and impulsion. The rider seems literally to "sit the horse onto the bit," creating and maintaining his desire for free forward movement. Thus the rider is able to control the horse and to keep elastic spring in all paces, even in collection…”
They refer to “Sitting the horse onto the bit” as a result of all the other elements. Contact is therefore the consequence of a relaxed elastic rider and a horses natural free forward movement and impulsion. When these things come together and the rider is not restricting the natural flow of energy and movement of the horses back then he is able to maintain an elastic and constant feel in his fingers.
How do we develop what they refer to as a balanced seat and a “soft embracing leg”?
“The first consideration is the balance of the rider. When we sit on a horse we take an attitude between sitting and standing. We support some weight through our seat and some through the stirrups so we are neither sitting nor standing, but doing a bit of both at once. All our weight travels through the horse and is supported ultimately by the ground through the pull of gravity. Balance refers to our relationship to the ground through the horse. Keeping our centre of gravity over our feet and our feet under our centre of gravity is highly energy efficient. Therefore we can be fluid and elastic in the movement required to go with the horse," Weis and Miesner stated.
Richard used to say that if he pulled the horse out from underneath me I should land in a squat position. (I.e my feet under my centre of gravity). How many times do we see a rider where if we took the horse out from underneath them they would land flat on their bum, or fall forward onto their nose?
“The rider should sit upright in the saddle so that a straight line can be drawn through his ear, shoulder, hip and ankle joint. The rider needs to spring his torso forward just enough to land his seat over his feet where the legs act as shock absorbers (ankle, knee, and hip) softening the jar on the rider’s back and the horse’s back. In this way the weight of the rider is distributed over a wide surface area on the horse’s back, some into the stirrups (towards the front) and some into the seat of the saddle," Weis wrote.
Postural Superiority and Ability
Being a good load to carry is about learning to bounce along with the horse, which requires a great deal of postural superiority and ability.
“Many riders hate to bounce. They ride as if they don’t want to hit their head on the roof. Often the weight slips back in the saddle. Legs are often drawn up or pushed forward. Both attitudes cause a lot of extra weight to be carried by the horse at the back of the saddle. This is the opposite of self carriage in the rider," Weis opines.
We very often hear about self carriage of the horse, but we don’t often hear about it in reference to the rider. I have pondered if self carriage as a rider is made more difficult as we age, when injury or pregnancies, or chronic pain alter the perception we have of ourselves. Our focus can become stuck on our areas of pain or weakness instead of on our role as riders to become that good load to carry. This is where perseverance and body awareness comes in, and the work off the horse should be dedicated to enabling us to focus and adapt ourselves in the saddle.I have spent 6 years training at 4:30am every morning before my children woke up, working on my own posture, working on re teaching my hip to have the flexibility that it needs to have so that when I sit on the horse I am not restricted. I am not tense. So that I may begin again without being the weakness that ensures I will never be a good load to carry.
“In self carriage the rider does in his own body what is required to keep up with the horse. Of course there is some effort involved in this. The efficient rider distributes this effort evenly throughout his whole body and does no more and no less than the minimum required. The body is toned in such a way that it acts as a spring. Too much tone and it becomes stiff and jars, too little and it sags and flops," Weis and Miesner wrote.
If someone lifts heavy weights with a poor technique the muscle will grow but become short and inflexible. We see the body builders that can barely move they are so tense. On the other hand someone who lacks any muscle strength or correct posture off the horse will flop over in the saddle. The horse is the same. We want to train the horse to grow his top line through gymnastic exercises that work to strengthen while also lengthen, to enable the muscles to become strong while remaining flexible and able to relax.
Two Bodies as One
If we hold the horse too tightly and constrain him in the movement he will grow short tight muscles that contract but do not release.
Udo Burger wrote in The Way to Perfect Horsemanship that, "total harmony of movement between the two bodies is the essence of the art. But the first thing the rider must learn is complete mastery of technique and it is only after years of application that he will discover that he has developed not only the ability to follow effortlessly every movement, but also to feel every impulse of the horse flow through his whole being."
Every rider wants to develop good ‘feel’. “The ability to feel every impulse of the horse flow through his whole body.”
I have often wondered whether this is a natural talent or something that can be taught. One thing is for sure, it’s not enough to talk about being a good rider, to preach about the correct seat or to make critiques of others who are trying to figure it out. A balanced rider repeatedly makes themselves a good load to carry, and thus, eventually, it becomes who they are.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit," said Aristotle.
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