ANSWER:
The trained eye can see it in the way the horse uses himself. If the rider's
hand is quiet and the horse is resistant, the hand is usually dead. In
addition, the rider also needs to activate the hind legs more and allow the
impulsion to pass through his midsection better. A dead hand has
repercussions through the entire horse's body. The back can no longer swing,
so it starts to sag. The hind legs no longer have room to step underneath,
so they start to drag with a high croup. The reason why a rider is heavy
handed is almost always a lack of balance, and a lack of balance is almost
always related to stiff hips and a weak waist. It's really a chain reaction
in the rider as well as in the horse.
By comparison, a rider with a light hand will also always be a balanced
rider, with heels, seat bones and shoulders in a vertical alignment, which
enables the rider to maintain self carriage.
Sometimes the differences in the seat of both riders can be subtle. Both can
have quiet hands. Both can look like they are sitting straight. But the
heavy handed rider's pelvis is usually tilted forward, although the seat
looks fairly vertical. The slight forward tilt, however, causes the rider's
weight to flow through his thighs and pubic bone into the horse's shoulders:
both horse and rider are unbalanced. The rider with a light hand, who also
sits vertically, has his pelvis in a vertical position, without a tilt, so
that his weight flows through his seat bones into the horse's hind legs. So,
in spite of superficial similarities, both seats are radically different in
their effects on the horse. The untrained eye will probably see that one
horse is going nicely, whereas the other is not. The educated eye can
furthermore trace the flaws in the horse's gait to the flaws in the rider's
seat. That's the reason why all my corrections begin with the rider's seat.
As long as the seat is deficient, i.e. unbalanced and crooked, there is no
point in trying to work on the horse. The rider's seat has to be made
functional and effective first. Form then follows function. That's why
rider's with an effective seat always look elegant, apart from very few
exceptions.
- Thomas Ritter
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Last Update: January 13, 2007