What lifts you and keeps you balanced in rising (posting) trot? (plus video exercise)

Let’s start with an experiment.

[If you do it, please leave a comment sharing how it felt :)

Exercise Experiment: It will only take you 2 minutes. You can sit on the floor or on your bed. Sit on your heels, upper body straight. Take your arms to your sides and move up so you're kneeling. Repeat 3–4 times. Do it side by side with a mirror if you can, or rest your phone somewhere so you can film yourself doing it. Then, read on and see the video at the bottom of this post 🙂 And share your views!

Let’s have a think now… Why?

Rising by using your back, upper body motion, and/or by pushing up from the stirrups (standing up on them) has a huge effect on a rider’s ability to stabilise their own body, achieve independent hands, encourage free, forward movement in the horse, use their lower legs independently of their upper legs, ask for greater collection later in training... and the list goes on.

Random freeze frames

I typed into YouTube: ‘my horse riding lessons’. Below are random freeze frames from some public videos showing what most of us assume is a stage “we all have to go through”. But do we really?

To make things worse, these frames are from a video titled: How to Ride Posting Trot. You need to be very selective in what you watch if you are a novice rider learning on YouTube…

In the photos, the riders are completely dependent on their horse’s balance, having none of their own. Their rising trot mechanics are such that they push themselves upwards using their hands, upper body swing, and rely on stirrups as if they were a springboard.

This is highly detrimental to the horse’s back and willingness to work—and for that reason alone, it would be nice if we avoided it. But there’s another side of the story: it takes much longer for the rider to acquire balance and confidence if they are taught to rise up and down like this.

When riders use upper body swing to help with lift, they cannot later use their upper body to stabilise the horse’s ribcage when they start schooling. If they don’t learn to achieve a stable, controlled thigh position, they struggle immensely with using their thighs for turning and positioning the horse’s shoulders.

Let’s look at more freeze frames of rising/posting trot where riders use their thighs to lift themselves:

Rising (posting) trot

These frames are also from an instructional video on rising/posting trot. The rider looks quite neat and polished, albeit tense, in all three paces—and I am guessing she is a hunter-jumper rider, where you're required to hollow your back and push your seat back.

In my view, this makes the rider very dependent on the horse’s balance, as she has few tools through her seat to correct crookedness, impulsion, or connection. Horses under this kind of seat generally move quite heavily on the forehand. Quite a strain on the rider’s spine in this posture too...

On a good note: she is using her thigh to lift her body off the saddle. Hunter enthusiasts—please correct me if I’m wrong!

Jumping saddle. Notice the rider’s head barely going up and down… it’s the hips that travel on an arc. A good mark of very good rising trot mechanics. Upper body always centred on top of seat bones. Weight always in front of the rider’s thigh and into the knee in all phases.

Dressage saddle. Very tall rider in great balance. Again, very little actual “up” motion. Weight drops down through the thigh to the knee in both phases. Upper body always centred on top of the seat bones and above the lower leg.

My own rising trot

General Purpose Saddle. My own rising trot. Good use of thighs and upper body again. Some instability through the right hip and tension in the left side of the body. Slight hold through the right knee at the beginning of the sit-down phase, but mechanics as such good nevertheless.

The biggest advantage of good mechanics in rising/posting trot

The cherry on the cake of good body use is that your posture will create back-to-front riding.

Your own back position, and its positive isotonic muscle tension (rather than movement), becomes a driving aid. As the horse loses energy and tries to fall behind your leg (think of a mini feeling of sitting in a braking car that pushes you back into your seat), they will feel your own energy counteracting theirs and coming from your back, forward.

This motivates the horse naturally, in the same way a foal knows to move if nudged by the mare from behind. The rider no longer has to use undue leg pressure if they use their seat and upper body well.

In basketball, there is a clear difference between bouncing the ball up and down against the floor, and throwing it up and forward in a nice arc so it goes through the net. Different body position and use of limbs, back, shoulders, fingers must be used for either.

In equestrian rising (posting) trot, there is a similar difference between an up-and-down rise (when we use the bounce of the horse plus push from the stirrups), and a forward-and-up rise and sit, where the rider’s hips travel on an arc and they lift their body without changing neutral spine posture. Different use of back, abdominal muscles, hips, feet, and… thighs.

So, which way is the right way, and why?

You might think, “Hey, I’ve been doing rising trot for so long, I don’t even remember when and how I learnt it. But if you have issues with your horse’s forwardness, impulsion, straightness, back roundedness, connection back to front, or consistency of contact (to name just a few)—stay for a little longer. It would be great to hear your views!

Over the last 30 years, I’ve taught over 10.000 complete beginners or novice riders to ride - roughly 8 to 10 per week - (I’m actually slightly overwhelmed by this number—I even decided to under-calculate it not to exaggerate!).

Sadly, half of those I would have taught by the up-and-down mantra.

In 1997 I came across Centered Riding and slowly changed my ways until I was able to eliminate the need for “up-and-down” instruction from my teaching vocabulary.

What are your thoughts? Do you agree with me?

If you ride well, can you tell how you use your thighs in trot?

If you teach, how do you teach rising/posting trot to beginner riders?

Have you had a go at the exercise at the start of the post?

Here it is again—this time on video, which forms part of Aspire’s Start Programme video material. There is nothing like waking up that muscle awareness before beginner riders try it in the saddle 🙂