The Weight Aid: Essential for Effective Riding and Clear Communication

Credits: Illustration by Sandy Rabinowitz

What Is the Rider’s Weight Aid and How Does It Improve Riding?

The rider’s weight aid a communication point between the horse and rider. When it’s light, the horse can listens to subtle balance shifts and react. When it’s forced or too deep, it’s more like a handbrake or a nutcracker grinding against the horse’s back, restricting the movement of the horse’s entire body. A lack of balance and body control can cause some riders to fall from one position to the next even at a subtle level can block the horse’s movement. Sadly, it has become a trend for some rider’s to lean back, forcing and over riding every step.

I was originally taught this concept by a coach who asked me to just think about what I wanted my seat to do. Don’t resist, overthink or force it just let it happen. Connecting my brain and seat to create a subtle aid. And still today I’m amazed by how this subtle communucation with the horse makes such a difference in our riding. It becomes a quiet conversation, a silent, subtle reaction between horse and rider.

The Independent Seat: What It Is and Why It Matters for Riders

Riding is unlike anything we do in our everyday life. We make many subtle balance shifts and joint repositioning movements while riding to follow the horse’s movement. We also bring many unique pelvic alignments to the saddle. But what is an independant seat? It is often described as:

Moving the seat independently from the rest of the body is one.

The definition of ‘independent’ is “free from outside control; not subject to another’s authority”.

However, all your body parts above the seat and below your seat affect your seat (just think about that for a moment) and the way you can distribute your weight through your seat. Your posture where your parts sit affects the forces and weight the distribution through your body, which filters through your seat, your main contact point with the horse. The weight aid isn’t isolated to the seat area; it’s the result of the teamwork from the whole body and how it individually allows and supports the many movements of the pelvis.

Rider Seat Position Is A Whole Body Event

Now think about your posture. If you, for example, have a slight head tilt, tension in the back, your ribcage slightly twists one way or thrust upward, forward head posture, etc.

All these postural changes affect your movement through your seat. You may have tension in the pelvis itself, have tight hamstrings or calves, stiff ankles. Anything in your leg and foot will transmit up towards your seat. And pull and push your body’s natural alignment.

The independant seat to me is a seat that the rider has good awareness of, control of, balance, and coordination. And this is not about a perfect visual picture. It’s not perfection its connection we need to nurture through our body. Many riders feel they don’t have the perfect rider conformation or maybe an injury has left you with restrictions. I have never met a rider who hasn’t felt that working on their own individual connections hasn’t brough surprising improvements to their riding.

The Riders Seat And Weight Aid

Many riding trainers talk of a neutral or upright pelvis and the pelvis tipping forwards and backwards, as shown in the wonderful photo above. But this is only 3 of the many postures riders bring to the saddle. Which has been crafted by the way the rider moves and don’t move through their day and the environment they do this in. Previous injuries and footwear choices to name a few.

To improve seat control, we want an upright or neutral pelvis to be our baseline that we can easily move in and out of through all the ranges we need to. This is a whole body event and you may beat yourself up because you just can’t master it.

But what I want you to realise is how you use your body throughout the day has largely given you the posture you BRING to the saddle. Your seat may not be the problem as you can now get a sense of how the rest of your body influences your seat. Often the areas we repeatedly struggle to correct are the end of a line of a pattern of adaptation not the root cause.

I am demonstrating a few on this reel.

Horse rider hip positions

Improving Your Seat

Ive put a free guide together that will give you simple layered strategies that take very little time. That will get you more connected with your seat and help your alignment. You may have some interesting finds! Comment GUIDE below to receive your guide⬇️