Using the Weight Aids Correctly When Horse Riding

Riding a horse that goes in complete self-carriage more-or-less entirely from your seat weight aids is a feeling you will never forget. Executing pirouettes and flying changes or collected canter from halt and canter half-passes just by moving your seat bones and weight, with the occasional suggestion from a rein hanging by its own weight, is, as classical trainer Nuno Oliveira once exclaimed, �â'¬Ëœthe heaven of horsemanship'.

Weight aids and, as I call them, position aids, which are even lighter, are the ultimate in physical communication with your horse only superseded by possibly the eyes and by the mind and spirit. There is no doubt that where you put your weight is where your horse will go, with hardly any exceptions.

Faulty Weight Distribution

Horses are sensitive to weight and position aids, and it is often the case that riders do not realize where they are putting their weight and seat. Not knowing about seat aids means that they do not control the seat and are quite innocently giving their horse a cacophony of mixed messages which can result in lumbering, uncertain responses or none at all because the horse simply can't decide what he should be doing.

Some people have little natural body co-ordination and may be adamant that they are weighting one seatbone when the horse is resolutely drifting the other way because that is, in effect, where their weight is.

Example

Imagine a horse being asked to canter a circle to the left but who hangs right to the school entrance when he comes near.

To correct this, the rider has put her left seatbone and shoulder back (instead of forward) and pulled back on the left, inside rein, making it even easier for the horse to fall out through the outside, right shoulder. Because the horse is traversing right in a fair semblance of (unwanted) leg yield, she has let her weight go to the right (instead of left to correct it) with a view to pushing the horse over (left) from the outside (right), something I have never managed to fathom.

This is a common scenario, and there is also a school of thought which teaches that if you weight any part of your horse, this creates a block to movement because the horse can't move under the weight. But the example proves that the horse will almost always go where you put your weight, whether you want him to or not.

Walk on a loose rein around your school or field with your weight and seatbones centrally placed in the saddle and in the usual classical posture. Without using leg or hand, put your left seatbone forward and put a bit of weight on it. Your horse will go left. Try it to the right and he will go right. Try left again but this time just position the left seatbone forward without weighting it. Your horse will go left. Try it to the right and he will go right.

Trainees cannot understand why their horses comply with classical aids when they have never been schooled classically. The classical aids are based on the seat and weight and it is logical because they accord with how the horse uses his body.

The icing on the cake is attained when the horse will incline mentally and physically in a certain direction merely because you have �â'¬Ëœpointed' with your seatbone, without even weighting it. Horses progressively schooled, for instance, can be taught to go into canter just by a forward positioning and lifting of the inside seatbone, keeping it forward to confirm canter to the horse as long as you want it. To return to trot, even with a green horse, you simply return the seatbone to its central (neutral) position.