How to Sit English Style on a Horse

Video Transcript

Hi! I'm Kelli on behalf of Expert Village. I am going to show you some tips and techniques that I use when performing transition in the English saddle riding. So the first thing that we are going to do when we get on our horse is to make sure we are sitting with proper posture. So when we are sitting on the horse, we want to have a vertical line. If you could imagine a vertical line going from your shoulder to your hip to your hip, all of those should be in a nice straight line. You should be sitting straight if you can picture your two shoulder blades touching together, so you never want to arch too far back or slump forward with your back. You want to keep your back nice and straight, stay in good posture. Also too, you want to sit straight and square on your horse with your seat bones even on each side. You never want to lean too far forward or sit too far back that is going to cause your horse to lose its balance and lose its cadence. So when you are holding your reins, these are English reins so we how we are going to hold them is between our ring finger and our pinkie. We are going to grip them, flip them around and have our thumb on the top. So when we hold our reins, we are going to be holding like this. A few inches in front of our saddle and about 4 inches up off the whithers. We are going to have our elbows nice and relaxed and bent at our sides. You don't want them sticking out like chicken wings or you don't want them to straight where there is no bend to them at all. Also what you are going to do when you are sitting, you want to make sure your heel is nice and down and the stirrup is on the ball of your foot. You don't want your heel up or you don't want to much foot in your stirrup. If you were happen to get thrown, there is a much more likelihood that you could get drug in your stirrup which could really dangerous. So you want to stay sitting square on your horse having your shoulder, hip and heel in a perfect line. Heels down and the stirrup on the ball of your foot. You are going to be looking straight ahead with your chin parallel to the ground. You don't want to be looking too far up and you don't want to be staring down at your horse. Holding your reins nice and soft and supple a few inches in front of your saddle horn, a few inches above the whither and you are ready to go.

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