Teach the Basics – Heels – part 2

February 21, 2010 Riding Instructors, Riding School No Comments

Where do Good Heels Come From? Or Where do they NOT come from?

Sitting Correctly:
It’s impossible to have great heels without sitting correctly on the horse. By sitting correctly I mean in a balanced position, in the optimum spot over your own feet. You can tell if a rider is sitting over their feet because at the walk and halt there will be a straight line from the ear through the shoulder through the hip through the heel. At the trot the rider’s ear and shoulder may be slightly in front of the line, depending on the seat they are riding.

The rider in picture 1 is posting the trot. She’s sitting over her feet. The yellow vertical line shows that she has her heel under her hip with her heels are nicely down, maybe even more than necessary.

Balance:
Any correct position on the horse should be one that the rider can balance in on the ground. It doesn’t matter whether the stirrups are short or long or absent. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s full seat, 2 point or over a jump. If the rider can’t maintain their balance in that position, standing on the ground without the horse, they’re displacing their weight and balance to some other, usually undesirable spot, while mounted.

This Jumping Rider is balancing over his own feet with his heels well down

The balanced rider sits over the horse’s center of gravity. Center of gravity depends upon the style of riding, the skill of the rider and the degree of collection that the horse is capable of producing. An example would be the uncollected forward seat rider vs the Grand-Prix dressage rider. The forward seat rider sits in a spot closer to the withers and the GP rider sits a little farther back, because as collection is developed, the center of gravity moves more toward the rear.

Good Posture
In order to have good heels the rider needs to sit up. When a rider rounds the back or rolls onto the buttocks and slops the shoulders down, it’s no longer possible to to let the weight sink into the heels. This is because as soon as these actions occur the muscles are blocked and the flow of weight is diverted to the buttocks.

This beginner needs to be encouraged to sit up. When she sits up, her weight will be able to go down to her heels instead of into her tailbone.

Correct Saddle Fit

In order to sit correctly the saddle must fit the rider and the horse, and be correctly positioned on the horse. The rider needs to sit in the deepest part of the saddle, right behind the pommel.

This saddle doesn’t fit this young rider. She doesn't have the depth of seat and leg for a dressage saddle yet and her knees protrude beyond the flaps making a good leg position difficult to develop.

Some Heels Look Like They’re Down, but…..

This rider forces heels down by pushing them forward, riding behind the balance, displacing the weight to her tail bone (or buttocks).

She’s bracing off her stirrups and hands to sit the trot. She’s not sitting over her feet. and her ankles are not acting like relaxed shock absorbers. This produces a rigid rider who "rides" off of her horse's mouth.

To illustrate sitting over the feet, have your student sit in a chair with her feet pushed ahead, making her calves go past the perpendicular, like the rider in the picture above. Now ask her to get out of the chair without using her hands. She’ll see the only way to get out of the chair is to lean her body forward over her feet in a rather lurching motion. Have her try it a second time and ask her to notice what happens to her hands. If the rider in the picture were to try to post, she would have to lean forward over her feet or pull on the reins to get out of the saddle. She might have to do both. We can see by the picture that she is sitting the trot and is braced against her hands and feet.

The rider that doesn’t keep the weight in the heels raises his own balance point and displaces (shifts) his balance forward, either pinching with the knees, leaning on the horse, or falling off , or all three.

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And if you’re interested in horsemanship history, why not visit my other blog “U.S. Horsemanship” at http://ushorsemanship.com/

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