Equitation is the Foundation

There is an abundance of information on the Internet about how to have a better relationship with your horse, how to help your horse self regulate, how to make your horse like you, and how to do things in a way that keep your horse from going over threshold or experiencing any discomfort. But, what’s missing for so many people, is an understanding of equitation and how to sit on a horse. So much good could be done for our equine partners if we would learn how to ride in a way where we have control over our own balance, and where we enable the horse to move fluidly underneath of us without getting in their way. It’s easy to get drawn to flashy programs and people who promise that anything will be able to be achieved if you just allow your horse to make all the decisions.

Having a genuine relationship and finding joy in being with a horse is no doubt important. But when we forget about what it means to ride a horse with good equitation, regardless of the discipline, then we steal so much from our horses in the long run. There are so many problems, both physical and mental, that could be avoided if a person would dedicate time to developing their own balance in the saddle. This often is not flashy or fun work, and it doesn’t include pictures of someone barefoot in a floaty dress telling us that all we need to do is honor our and our horse’s feelings - and if we do everything else will fall into place. In fact, the contrary can happen when we start to focus on our own equitation. We can go back to feeling like a beginner again, and needing to learn how to gain control over our own alignment and how to use our bodies in a coordinated manner to allow the horse to be balanced underneath of us.

I don’t often promote a green horse and a green rider combination because the person will not have the physical ability to help the horse find better balance. A person and a horse can lose so much confidence with this combination. It’s also why I don’t often encourage people who never ridden young or green horses to try to do it by themselves. Unless, they have spent the time needed to develop their own seat and their own balance in the saddle.

So many people are getting swept up in the mystical and fairy dust programs that exist out there, but one of the most important and common sense approaches of being a good steward to horses is learning how to ride and how to sit on them in a way that makes them better, sounder, and healthier. Every time I ride, I think about my own equitation and how to improve my seat so that I don’t get in my horses way. Good equitation is not a static set of principals to learn (shoulders back, heels down), but instead incudes understanding dynamic balance that can adjust moment to moment - it’s where you sit in the horse, not on the horse.

I hope that the work it takes to put into developing ourselves comes back to the forefront, because our horses deserve it.