It has been some time since I’ve used the posting trot extensively, but I am planning a sort of personal revival in the use of it with both of my horses so I figured this is a great time to talk on the subject. I was out riding with my cousin Kelly yesterday and we played leap frog with our two horses and both took the opportunity to practice our posting. Since Jobi has returned home there has been a plethora of new habits that he has which need to be overcome in order to bring him back to the level of riding he was at when he left – of those habits I’ll include his complete lack of forward, tracking up at any of his gaits and sensitivity to my leg aids (and even the crop when I use it to back up my ignored leg aids).

But wait, I’m getting away from myself a little bit so I want to take a step back and address the posting trot in a more methodical order…

Why posting trot?

The posting trot has specific purposes, pros and cons; just as the sitting trot does. Specifically the posting trot is useful for –

• Young Horses – to reduce the amount of work they have to do at the trot and minimize stress to their back.
• Conditioning – working at a faster pace of the trot than is able to be ridden in sitting trot.
• Long Distances – and large periods of trot work to again reduce the amount of work the horse must do; and the rider as well.
• Rehabbing – horses who have issues with their gaits, balance and suppleness the posting trot can help reduce their work load while they develop in these other areas.
• Jumping – work over varying sizes of rails brings you closer to 2-point position.

Why not posting trot?

For many riders the posting trot becomes a default mode and they rarely withstand the unpleasantry of sitting the trot because they have not yet learned to move with the horse. There are instances however when posting trot is not a wise decision; usually in the case of horses which are known for spooking, evasions, etc and caution should be used when posting the trot on young horses. Why? The posting trot done correctly requires your upper body to be positioned towards the horse’s neck, when the safest place in the saddle is to lean back – the position that forces your weight back into the seat of the saddle and helps secure your position. Not only that, but when you are posting you are purposefully allowing your seat to leave the saddle, an action which common sense says is not wise when riding a horse who could maneuver in a way to further disrupt your balance.

Personally, I recommend riders learn the posting trot only AFTER they can successfully follow the horse’s movement while sitting the trot. From this position they will tend to approach the posting trot with more caution since they have become accustomed to being in balance sitting back into the seat of the saddle and the idea of leaning forward out of the saddle is unfamiliar. When the opposite is done – posting trot learned before a solid sitting trot has been accomplished – it is common for the rider to struggle in following the movement of the horse in sitting trot while fighting the comfortable tendency to lean towards the horse’s neck rather than sitting upright and slightly back to become solidly settled into the seat of the saddle.

How to correctly post the trot . . .

Believe it or not, the posting trot is very easy and less work than many make it out to be. The horse should do most of the work for you, but it is important that you are in the correct position and riding in the proper equipment if you expect to post the trot for more than a circuit or two around the arena comfortably and safely. Some key points –

1. Your Saddle is Important!
   Posting the trot in a dressage, western or australian style saddle is more tiresome than when done in a saddle designed for a more forward leg position such as a close contact or jumping saddle; or even an all-purpose english saddle. Your leg should be positioned so it can act as a sort of lever, but if your leg is too straight it cannot function properly to help you post the trot. English saddles with a forward flap position are designed so you ride with shorter stirrups, closing the angle between your knee and hip joints – imagine it like transforming your body into a spring coil.
2. Your Horse’s Speed Is Important!
   There are three types of posting trot that a rider can experience – the posting trot where you work very hard to push yourself out of the saddle, the posting trot that is easy as butter where the horse pushes you out of the saddle perfectly and you bring your seat back to the saddle with minimal effort, and the posting trot where you are launched out of the saddle and fight hard to pull your butt back down. The causes to these, respectively, is a too slow trot, the ideal trot for posting, and the fast trot. There are reasons to work in any of these variations of the trot but it is helpful for you to know which one you are dealing with.
3. Timing Is Everything
   Just as the sitting trot requires a certain rhythm in order to match the horse’s gait so too does the posting trot.
4. Always Check Your Position & Balance!
   Posting the trot is more dynamic than sitting the trot because you are making more motions than in the sitting trot. Because of this it is easy for us to lose track of what our legs are really doing underneath us, just how far forward we are leaning (or not!), if our elbows are poking out to the sides, if we are pinching with our knees, so on and so forth. Doing a regular mental check of our position can go a long ways, just as using mirrors and video taping our rides can help us improve. Practicing posting trot without stirrups goes a long ways for improving balance too.

Posting in a Dressage Saddle

This rider demonstrates the straight leg position forced in a Dressage saddle. As a result of the long leg and stirrup length she is forced to push herself out of the saddle to post – which results in her toe pointing towards the ground as she tries to keep her stirrups.

Posting Trot Tips & Tricks!

I want to relay some of the areas I struggled with through my own learning curve, as well as those which I have helped my students to overcome since – in hopes that they may be useful for you too. My initial education in the posting trot is vague at best – there were some lunge lessons at a very young age and group lessons where we practiced the posting trot. What is certainly sealed into my memory of those times is just my sheer horror at riding on the lunge without stirrups and reins, and in the group lessons was riding large horses who I was not terribly comfortable with and having to (in my mind) stand up and sit down in the saddle at their big scary trot.

The reformation of my posting trot skills did not come for some time – even my traditional Dressage instructors did nothing to address the horror that could only describe my posting trot. I was given the chance to learn to sit the trot properly for the first time through intensive lunge work and seat lessons, following which came the posting trot – sans stirrups. I was terribly off in my timing and behind the motion of the horse which meant I kept falling back into the saddle and admonished terribly for the pain I must be causing to my horse’s back. I improved, but the big turning point came largely with jumping lessons where we would warm up at the posting trot – still without stirrups! – for a half an hour, practice lenghening the stride on the long side of the arena and shortening on the short side, round and round and round. My calves have never experienced such pain!

The results were well worth it though and over time posting the trot became second nature. Some things I learned in the process however, which were not always explained to me plainly and clearly included the following –

• The posting trot is done with the Hamstring Muscles, NOT the Quadriceps.
  Your hamstrings are on the back of your thigh, the quadriceps on the front. Your quadriceps help you rise out of the saddle and the hamstrings pull you back into the saddle. Often when we start posting the trot we feel the need to rise out of the saddle – but in truth the horse’s trot should push us out if we are in the proper body position for posting trot. From there the only work we need to do is to bring our butt back to home base. The key here is being in the PROPER BODY POSITION which includes your upper and lower body.
• Your lower legs must find the widest part of the horse’s barrel.
  We can have a tendency to allow our lower legs to sit forward from underneath us, rather than bringing them back underneath us – whether we are sitting or posting the trot. Watch most riders and this is the basic position of the leg is for the calf/heel/foot to hang down straight below the knee or slightly forwards. In order for the hamstrings to be effective in bringing us back to the saddle in the posting trot our lower leg has to be behind the vertical below our knee. And to create a solid leg position if our calf is pulled back until it naturally stops against the widest part of the horse’s barrel means our lower leg will no longer be moving forwards and backwards with every posting stride.
• The knees have to be relaxed.
  If you are pinching with your knees in the posting trot it pushes your lower leg away from the side of the horse and restricts your ability to bring your body back down to the saddle while posting the trot. A great way to combat this is to practice opening your knees away from the sides of the horse when you rise out of the saddle.
• Stirrups are not for pushing against.
  This is very common – riders using the stirrups as a means to push themselves out of the saddle in the posting trot. The best solution for this issue is to post the trot without stirrups altogether – an exercise I recommend regardless as it reveals any weaknesses or imbalances in your position, posting timing and rhythm and any tensions in your legs.
• Stirrups can be a crutch.
  If you’ve ever lost a stirrup (had your foot come out of the stirrup) while posting the trot this is precisely what I am addressing. What did you feel or experience when that happened? Were you off balance, out of sync, feeling panic as you tried desperately to find the stirrup with your foot again? Did you have to bring your horse to a walk or halt in order to regain your stirrup and your position in the saddle before resuming? This is a sure sign that you are using your stirrups as a crutch for balance and this is dangerous in the posting trot… Solution? Practice posting the trot without stirrups and once you are confident with that practice posting with stirrups while you drop them at the same time and separately and pick them back up again without losing your timing, position and balance.

I’m set for my journey back into posting trot work and invite you to join with me! I’ll be practicing all of these tactics to keep improving myself and catch any bad habits that may creep up before they have a chance to become ingrained.