I stood near the barn door, half shivering because I had accidentally come an hour early, when my coach called out, “Jay! Come get your pony.” The last rider was getting off and I swapped on the saddle I normally ride on, which has the stirrup irons large enough for my feet. I mounted him from the block easily, tightening the girth and starting him around in a walk on a loose rein. Watching your horse being ridden by someone else is an excellent teaching device. I wish I had more insightful comments but he was slow and cutting corners — in short, he was being lazy. Recognizing this, I forced him into every corner in the walk. This paid off in spades later in the lesson while we were trotting because I got to focus on my form while he ran on auto-pilot.
The most important point of today’s lesson was keeping your ass in the saddle while in sitting trot. I’ve written countless blog entries about sitting trot but the heart of it still eludes me. I have this impression (perhaps its just the hope of a romantic) that when you master the sitting trot, you’re at the stage of your riding where you can finally start to learn to ride. My coach was trying to explain it to us in detail but she finally just said, “that’s it. Just sit on your horse like a sack of potatoes and try to move with them.”
And so I did. I sat on that horse like we were in some kind of stupid old western: reins loose, ass back in the saddle, sitting down as comfy as I could. Legs forward. Toes probably down. Evidently those last two points weren’t as important as the first few and my coach just watched me and asked what I was doing. I couldn’t put it into words because it was just so dumb — this wasn’t me actively riding Future, this was me sitting on a horse and just letting him go. My legs were horrible and I’m sure my upper body wasn’t in the correct position. But we were working on seat and mine was (I can’t believe I’m writing this) good. Somehow through my ridiculous motion I was able to keep my butt where she wanted it.
Clearly there’s a long way to go when you can’t sit the trot while using your legs. The point that got across to me wasn’t that I have a nice sitting trot or that my legs suck. It was that even at twenty-eight years of age, you can still show potential for learning how to sit the trot. Yes, you read that sentence correctly: potential for learning. It might sound trivial but for those of us who ride with others who started fifteen years before us, and aren’t sure we’ll ever be that good, it’s epic.
