Livingstone Cowgirl

01/25/2025

Julie Goodnight Horsemanship &n ...

01/15/2024

Full range on now live - https://michelleclarke.co.nz/collections/cartoon-series-art

05/25/2023

10/03/2021

Are you the one who has to spend hours and hours finding your seat, or coordinating your hands and legs to finally not interfere with your horse? Then join the club!

09/28/2021

- If you keep losing your right stirrup, you’re probably sitting to the left.
- If your left leg feels strong and well-behaved, but your right leg feels like it’s nowhere near the horse and you just can’t get it on properly, you are certainly sitting to the left.
- If you can’t get your horse to bend to the right, you’re probably sitting to the left.
- If when going clockwise you twist to the inside too much in your upper body, but when going counterclockwise you find it hard to twist at all, then you are probably sitting to the left.
- If you over use your right rein, and have trouble building contact on the left rein, you may be sitting to the left.
- If you feel like you are collapsing/leaning your upper body to the right, you are DEFINITELY SITTING TO THE LEFT.
- If your left stirrup feels shorter than your right stirrup, you are absolutely sitting to the left.

I practice and teach riders to sit a LITTLE BIT to the inside of the bend. (Eventually we change that to “in the direction of movement” around 2nd level, but that only changes things in shoulder in and leg yield).
If you chronically sit, let’s say, to the left, then traveling left you should probably try to stay centered, and traveling to the right, you may feel like you are sitting like I am on the saddle stand. It might take a lot of exaggeration to unlock your crookedness. Go ahead and exaggerate! You’ve probably been sitting that far the other direction for years and didn’t notice. You’ll need to sit far enough to the right to get your right seat bone to drop down. You want to feel like your inside seatbone, knee, and heel are a little lower than your outside seatbone, knee, and heel. This helps your horse rotate their ribcage, and helps the rider achieve inside leg to outside rein connection by sending the energy disgonally across the rider’s pelvis and the horse’s body.

By the way, if you like posts like this, follow our page! If you love posts like this, consider signing up for a virtual lesson.