Can A Horse Change How Well You Ride??

UnaB

UnaB

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Hi There,

I was just wondering this given recent events and thought i may as well post, share my madness!

Anyway, i've always had a really good, stable seat and very good lower leg position, it was always commented on in dressage tests and by instructors. However, when i got Charlie that all changed pretty muchovernight. My seat suddenly wasnt as tidy and stable and my lower leg wasn't so good. In more recent years the lower leg problem with my right leg has got worse due to a very severe injury to my knee though it is improving very slowly with ongoing physio. Anyway, i'd assumed that this was just me suddenly having lost my ability to ride lol I had all sorts of lessons trying to improve my seat stirrup-less and saddle-less! One instructor at a PC event said it was due to my saddle not having very good support for my leg but that was really all anyone suggested, and that excuse is a bit far fetched IMO.

Anyway, since riding Una i have noticed my seat has improved drastically! I met up with an old friend on a hack t'other day and we had a short canter and she even commented on how good my seat was and how still my lower leg was (she knows this has always been an issue for me so particularly noticed it!) and asked what i had done to improve it. When i go back to riding Charlie the problems come back again. I use the same saddle on both. When i have watched other people ride Charlie he has very, very choppy, bouncy paces and i've noticed other peoples seats arent necessarily as good as i would expect and i've started to wonder if it is Charlie that thew my seat a bit!! It has never been a huge issue, its something i've worked at and did improve over time, but never to the point of being really comfortable sitting his paces, especially his canter.

So what do you think? Is it possible that its him and not me?? lol
 
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I think there is something in what you say. Are Charlie and Una comparable in height, size and breed?

I think some horses are very easy to ride well/classically and others often the short bouncy striding ones need lots more work!

Poor Charlie might get a complex ;)
 
Charlie is a 14.2 connemara, Una is a 16.2 friesian so... no lol!

Charlie has the perfect canter for SJ which is mostly what we did, short striding with lots of impulsion which helped him in the senior BSJA classes when distances werent right, but its incredibly uncomfortable!!
 
I know you are using the same saddle, but IME the same saddle can be completely different on different horses.
 
I find the same sometimes. On some horses I have a good position and a stable seat. On a loan mare I had, part arab...my position went to pot. leaning forward, legs way too far in front, less than stable seat etc. I blamed her barrel belly and the saddle :)

Shame as she was lovely to ride but my dressage was horrible! No matter how hard I tried I just couldn't get my position right. My instructor didn't believe me until she got on!
 
I had a similar problem in a sense with the mare I had. I could sit just about anything when jumping, but for some reason, even when she jumped NICELY I just couldn't go with it! Since watching videos of her, even with other riders, she does just have a slightly odd way of jumping although bascules nicely etc but seems to 'pause' at times which was perculiar!

I've also found that on some horses I can ride with long stirrups, others, no chance! It's all very odd xD
 
A poor rider can look a lot better on a well schooled and well conformed horse.
I ve also seen really good riders look pretty bad on short striding badly put together horse. Seems pretty obvious to me, its six of one and half a dozen of the other in the overall impression!
Something with a short choppy stride and no flexibility will make most riders look fairly awful.
 
Definately different :D

I can sit beautifully to both Big Cob's and Little Cob's canters, but the Dizz..., well let's just say I'm learning lol.

The saddle I'm currently using was wonderfully comfortable in Tiggy, but on Dizz much less so (have a Heather Moffat seat saver on it now!). On Dizzy, as she's changed shape, the saddle feels different and my seat has changed.

Horse move differently, are different shapes and sizes, different builds - it's all bound to have an effect on the rider :)
 
I think sometimes yes...my sister's pony is a 14.2hh connemara cross and I swear he's as comfortable as a rocking chair. Having a bad seat on him is near impossible. But my old horse had paces that were bloody hard to sit and resulted in almost everyone who sat on him struggling to get a good seat..
 
Thanks for the input guys, you have made me feel a lot better!! :) My plans with Una the friesian are to have a go at a bit of dressage so it would be nice if i could look a bit neater on her!!

The strange thing is, when jumping Charlie, especially XC in "XC seat" (which i have NO problem with on him!!) he is brilliant, and i have no troubles at all with riding him. Its as soon as he's schooling he just is so uncomfortable to ride, or if he is being particularly choppy on a SJ course.

He does have good overall conformation (was used as a stallion by a top connie stud in Ireland before i bought him so he must be pretty good lol) but does have a rather short forearm which possible contributes to the jack-hammer canter!!
 
I definitely think different horses and different saddles can massively change the way you ride - for better in some cases, for the worse in others.
 
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