Ability? Or is it more a matter of ST-ability?

Ever get the feeling you're a bit of a rubbish rider? That you'll just never be one of those riders that can do everything their instructor asks them to? I spent most of my riding career, I swear, feeling that I would never be a decent rider no matter how hard I tried.

...

Do you struggle with certain aids?

Drift or slip to one side, especially on your horse's "hollow" rein?

Tip forwards or backwards when your horse changes speed?

Think you just don't have the body, or perhaps the mind, of a good horse rider?

...

Are you a trainer, perhaps a classical dressage trainer, who can't understand why some riders struggle so MUCH with some things?

Believe that a good rider can adapt to any saddle, that lunge lessons would be much more valuable than seeing if a better fitting saddle for the RIDER might be the solution?

Do you work really hard helping your "less able" riders to achieve their potential?

...

Is this REALLY about rider ability? Is rider ability innate, are there some riders that just might never get there?

Reasonably stable on the right side of her body when the left side is destabilised.

Not so stable through the torso when the right side is destabilised.

A lateral view of a plastic pelvis on a well shaped seat, roughly in a functional neutral position with the rami supported by the seat shape.

I'd like to argue the case that stability is what we should all be focusing on a little more, and stop thinking about ability.

A stable load is the easiest for a horse to carry (think of carrying a wriggling toddler on your shoulders).

A stable load at the base of the wither is the easiest to carry (where the horse has a healthy mechanism to provide lift, amongst many other reasons).

A stable load, with a neutral pelvis and in a three point seat, sat at the base of the wither, is the easiest to carry….and even easier if you're sat over your feet (more so for flatwork, slightly less so for jumping) and with the flat of your thigh against the horse.

So how is this best achieved? How do we help the horse by being the easiest load to carry?

A top rider seen in TV coverage of horse trials, balancing himself in a "hairy" moment.

A GP saddle for a very wide horse showing nice alignment for flatwork. The rider had previously been tested for stability in the saddle before fitting to the horse.

Showing a view of the pelvis (Percy the plastic demo pelvis based on a real asymmetrical pelvis!) in the saddle that you may not think of, that the triangle must have support throughout.

Lunge lessons CAN be great, ridden biomechanics lessons CAN be great, working off horse with your Pilates or Alexander teacher is absolutely great and mechanical horses can be very helpful…but if you're fighting your saddle then I'm sorry, I'm NOT going to talk about ability before we sort THAT out. You're being given a significant "handicap" score before you get started.

To be very clear, this is not a manifesto against training, far from it.

It's about getting the best possible training, always, but also realising how important the right kit is, and that a stable fit for you means massive benefits for the horse. Horses can only carry us healthily with a degree of "push up" through their forehand, with a lot of lift being expressed through the base of the withers. If we're not stable, if we're tipped, then that lift becomes much less likely.

I will debate this with the classical trainers I really respect, all day long. Going from a saddle that "kinda fits" – your backside fits in the seat, your knee doesn't go over the flap, you know that "baseline" sort of fit – into a saddle that actually fits and and allows you to sit with that neutral pelvis, with your lower back with a nice soft curve (individual to each rider), to have the flat of the thigh against the horse and to be over your feet…the difference can be night and day.

It is not simply a matter of finding a nice open seat and small blocks – the good old Passier GG for example, beloved of so many classical trainers – but about a saddle that fits your skeleton. Almost any saddle that was long enough for my external size (5'8 and a UK size 12-14 when I was riding) was always too narrow for my very wide pubic arch and the area I was supposed to sit in too far behind my stirrup bars.

It's not a matter of picking up a nice open seat GP instead of a modern dressage saddle, especially of traditional design. So many saddle designs sit us too far back to be able to get us onto the right part of the horse's back, over their centre of mass - in addition it makes it harder to get the stirrup bar in the right place (and a GP has a more forward bar than a dressage saddle as a rule), and we are sitting on a wider part of the ribcage, often up against the cantle. These are "mid to rear" balance point saddles, the lowest part being behind the mid point of the tree. Technical stuff.

The seat isn't too small, it's entirely the wrong shape. Going bigger makes things worse not better.

Very short, fairly wide pelvic shape, hard to stabilise. Pubic arch to the top, seatbones at the bottom, 11cm apart, and 4cm from seatbones to pubic arch.

If your kit destabilises any part of you, potentially everything becomes out of whack. Credit to the Erik Dalton estate, a wonderful graphic specifically showing a tight thoracic girdle but so useful generally.

A nice open seat but one that absolutely matches the shape of the pelvis...though might look to some like it's a little small because of what we've been taught!

We are built to walk on the ground – a solid, stable base most of the time, with our feet "designed" for the purpose. We receive feedback from them, from the ground – proprioceptive feedback, the ability to know, to sense, where we are in space – helping us to be stable while we walk, skip, run. Falls in the elderly are partly about proprioception, not just about strength and intrinsic balance.

We are not designed to sit, not really. Not on the sofa and definitely not on a horse. We lose our proprioceptive input, with a mobile stirrup under our feet, and usually a pretty small tread in said stirrup for many activities.

So what CAN we stabilise? The pelvis. Our base of support in the saddle, part of the skeleton…the "scaffolding" in our body.

Our pelvic lower "outlet shape" is not the shape of a horse's back. And our pelvis is not the shape of most saddles – most riders are tipped one way or another, forwards or backwards, or are holding themselves in neutral, either through a conscious tension, or less consciously through months and years of "working on our seat". We've developed skills that help us sit better, but that extra tone, that extra tension, is unwanted.

A neutral pelvis with three point contact is the most stable way to ride. We can better resist the physical forces that are exerted on us directly by the horse, and indirectly. We sit more evenly through corners, we sit straighter in the canter, we are able to better sit quietly, to save our energy and the use of our active muscles for aiding, with the deep postural muscles better able to do their job…keeping us stable!

I was unable to sit in neutral at all, in any saddle, as far as I can remember. I had a wide pubic arch, and fairly wide seatbones, plus I'm short from front to back which can add more instability. Sitting in a three point seat was something for other riders, not for me. Or so I thought. So I stuck with my expensive custom saddle and kept being disappointed at photos of me riding…I was always tipping back onto my pockets which meant I was always fundamentally unstable, no matter how much training I took.

Starting specialist rider fit training in 2021 I finally found a saddle that I could sit in correctly, a 16.5 seat shown in the photo shown below in the middle…my mind was blown and my saddle fitting career (and brands stocked!) shifted. I believe that riders with pelvic shapes that fit in traditional saddle designs maybe have an easier time learning to ride and look like they have all the ability. Perhaps at least part of it is that they are intrinsically stable, and NOT in pain, in most saddles. Some trainers can't understand a rider who bleeds because of ill fitting saddles...some, but few, have experienced it. Perhaps these trainers fit this category.

Sitting easily and naturally in a VSD with an open seat that again, the rider was tested in first for stability, before fitting to the horse and ordering the saddle.

My magic 16.5 saddle with, yes, me in it! I'd not ridden for a long time and this saddle is too straight cut for my tight hips...the blocks are pushing my leg back just a fraction so my foot has come back too far. I can, however, sit with a neutral pelvis without effort. Sorry I was wearing dark trousers!

A quick sketch of calculations for stirrup bar placement ("S") for a typical female proportioned leg with longer femur, on left, and a more typical male leg on the right. These are sweeping generalisations and proportions are exaggerated but note the relationship between thigh length and angle, and foot size...then with bar placement. H(ip), K(nee), A(nkle)

What about when we're out of the seat?

If you're a jumper or eventer, do you struggle with NOT climbing up the neck of your horse? If you jump only smaller jumps do you find you tend to just "pop up" in the saddle, bringing your hips a little forwards and your shoulders up?

Do you find your rising trot is massive? Do you see people doing a smaller rising trot and see them able to achieve perhaps a degree of collection?

Seat shape is SUPER important when we're sitting, when we're out of the saddle what is sitting under (not so much in front of) our knee becomes more important, but stirrup bar placement is critical.

If your stirrup bar is too far forwards you have to come a long way forwards to get into a stable balanced position, whether it's in rising trot, or in jump position or of course two point or a very light seat across country. Being too far forwards and out of the saddle is always going to make the rider less stable, and this becomes a safety issue.

Again I have a theory that those that teach a really BIG rise in the trot are doing it because of stirrup bars so commonly being too far forwards. In a forward balance saddle, with the rider over their feet, a much smaller and more controlled rise is more productive in many situations (obviously the requirements shift moment to moment, and from one horse to another). Not having to swing so far forwards means we are intrinsically more balanced at every point.

Sure, when jumping you don't want the bar as far back as for flatwork – it can lead to the rider being unsafe in terms of being flung out of the "front door" if anything goes wrong, and we all need to know when to jam the foot out in front of us in an emergency, but so many saddles have bars in entirely the wrong place for a safe and stable position when we're out of the saddle…and again our horses suffer. We land more heavily in rising trot and of course after a fence, and we use a lot more energy than we need to, so we suffer too! We are continually in "catch up", being behind the movement by design.

Stability isn't the same as safety, but they're related, and if you're stable, you're sure to be safer.

This advanced/elite rider will have found stability of course, but I would hazard a guess that the stirrup bar is further forward than ideal, look how forward shoulders and hips have to be to get the rider over the stirrups, to be in balance in two point. And further forwards means higher up above the saddle...not a recipe for a more intrinsic stability.

A super stable seat as her horse takes a flier - bum down, probably feels like it's "bum back" too, and fold from the hips. Unfortunately the angle can't show where the hip is in relation to the foot.

A big brand dressage saddle with, arguably, a GP or even jump saddle stirrup bar placement, track the stirrup leather up and forwards...

So next time you ride in your own, someone else's, or a new saddle, have a think. Does it sit you at the base of the wither where the horse can best carry you? Does it help to stabilise you; are you sat comfortably over your feet, with a pelvis that isn't tipping, does your knee can drop nicely and your thigh lay flat against the horse? Because if you can't sit this way without effort…you just might be fighting your saddle.

Is it the INstability your saddle promotes in you, and not a lack of ability?