I had been quietly enjoying the private lunch which included clinic organisers and Heather, when the president of the Northside Riding Club decided that, owing to the delicate nature of the conversation, it might be worth informing Heather of my role as a journalist from HorsePoint.
Despite turning away from the BHS system around forty years ago, Heather’s reputation as a sought after instructor is testament to the validity of her methods. Needless to say when she discovered I was a journalist she didn’t even skip a beat! As a result of having the courage of her convictions, there has been a growing awareness of her ‘kinder’ way to ride. Heather’s back-to-basics approach provokes gratitude from both horse and rider.
The dominant theme of the Sydney clinic was the rider’s position – static and moving. She explained that all riders should be motivated to achieve a correct position as we all at least share the common goal of staying in the saddle!
In Heather’s self-designed Equisimulator staying in the saddle was relatively easy. Based on the idea that it’s easier to teach a rider the correct position and body movement on a horse that didn’t move in a forward direction, the Equisimulator is the best thing since sliced bread. The second day consisted of lessons where a rider would ride on their horse while Heather made whatever corrections were possible by talking to them. If the rider was having trouble getting the feel of the correct movement on a consistent basis then Heather would have them dismount and ride the simulator until they were moving with the horse. They would then remount their horse and without fail have a much improved sense of the correct movement.
Ear-shoulder-hip-heel, who doesn’t know this fundamental vertical line which places us correctly on the horse? Saddle manufacturers it seems would have us believe otherwise. Next time you sit in your saddle position yourself correctly and see if your stirrup leathers are vertical, don’t be surprised if they’re not, nearly all saddles are designed with the stirrup bars too far forward for the classical position to be maintained without forcing it. Heather’s comments regarding the stirrup bar position have invariably met with disdain and she has even been told that the idea of having them further back is just trying to “make it easy for the rider”. I would have thought riding was hard enough without having saddle manufacturers add to our troubles!! “It’s like expecting a golfer to use crooked clubs just to make it a bit harder to hit a ball into that tiny hole.” Although the historical reason for having stirrups bars forward has to do with jumping, and in this context it makes sense, for a dressage rider there is no sense at all. Why are such simple things so hard to understand?
Speaking of simple things, in your next lesson ask your instructor, or if you are an instructor, how do you teach the correct movement for sitting and rising trot, and what about canter? Sit deeper, flex at the hips more, follow the movement, stick your tummy out, tuck your tummy in. None of it helps substantially because we haven’t understood the precise way in which a horse moves it’s legs and body in each of the three basic gaits. We all know that the walk is an even four-beat rhythm with no suspension, the trot is two beat with suspension and the canter has three even footfalls before a moment of suspension, but what is happening to the horses back where the saddle sits, while all of this commotion is going on with the legs?
Simple really, the main thing to keep in mind is that as the horse's hind leg steps under, be it in walk or trot, the horse's back will drop lower on that side and consequently be raised up on the opposite side. So when the right hind is coming through, the right side of the horse's back drops and the left rises. As Heather said “rather convenient then that as humans we have two parts to our backside”! In keeping with the notion that, as a rider, we want to move with the horse – not follow it, which hints that we are somehow behind it – we should raise our left buttock as the right hind steps under the horse’s body. This is true both in trot and walk, the movement in trot just happens a bit faster.
The canter is all together simpler because it doesn’t require us to separate left and right in such a distinct manner as for trot and walk. In fact all the canter requires is for our pelvis to make small backward circles, with the up phase of the circle happening as the horse comes up in front. Above all, we should avoid “pushing with our seat” which blocks the horse from coming through and instead of allowing it to come up in front we effectively grind its forehand into the ground. To increase collection the circular shape becomes more elliptical, with a higher rise and fall as shown in the circle diagram to the right.
The first picture shows the backward circle which the pelvis makes for a normal canter. The middle ellipse shows the movement when shortening the horse and for the final ellipse the canter would have a very high level of collection. Going with the horse in this fashion will improve the horse’s movement, stop wobbly lower legs and be more effective when you want to adjust the horse’s length of stride.
Heather claims to have discovered the key to correct movement of the body by watching western movies when she was a teenager, “the cowboys sat like glue”. Perhaps a lack of western movies on TV today is why we need sticky-jods to sit like glue!
In the next part of this article I will review the second day of Heather Moffett’s clinic, which looks further at saddles and discusses some of Heather’s philosophies in the broader scheme of things.
- by David Prior