Ride Every Stride | Horsemanship And Personal Growth With Van Hargis

There is a student of mine who has been taking lessons from me for years, and before that, her grandparents plopped her down in a saddle at the age of six. She can ride well. She doesn’t bob around in the saddle and flail her arms. She has good posture as well. But something I noticed time and time again is that after riding a horse a few times, the horse starts resisting her commands. She may want to move up to a trot but the horse wants to grind down to a walk. What I realized through observing her is that she needed to work on her seat—meaning to work with the horse rather than have the horse do all the work. Working on your seat means working on being a leader. Key Takeaways The student I just mentioned suffered from a condition I call Dead Butt. This means that you aren’t setting the rhythm for your horse, you are literally just riding along, letting the horse do all the work for you. You need to lead your horse, not just sit dead up on them. Laura’s husband is a musical genius—you can bet that whatever