# Sitting trot: Do hips swing side to side?



## Shortyhorses4me (Jun 17, 2018)

I'm a bit confused on sitting trot if the motion is supposed to be both hips swinging forward and back, like a pelvic tilt? Or are the hips swinging more independent of each other, like right up- left down following the horse's hip on that side? Almost more like at the walk. This may be confusing due to what it looks like vs what it feels like, idk. My horse has a really short back and a very bouncy trot, so maybe I feel each of his hips more?


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## MeditativeRider (Feb 5, 2019)

I don't really know as I am just a beginner. But I only get to ride once a week so I try to practice lots of different things at home. I found a video on Youtube that I use. It goes through the different motions on an exercise ball. Trot starts at about 2.18, and it has both a kind of back and forward and then a side to side (at about 3.38). So maybe it depends on your horse or what sort of trot you are wanting?


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## waresbear (Jun 18, 2011)

Hmmmm, never really thought of the hips, however when you are doing a sitting trot you should let your tummy bounce. Watch some dressage riders doing a sitting trot, you'll see how their tummy bounces.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

Shortyhorses4me said:


> Or are the hips swinging more independent of each other, like right up- left down following the horse's hip on that side? Almost more like at the walk.


Yes. It is a lateral motion, so your hips reflect that by moving forward and down with each leg that is on the ground. I've heard it explained that if you have issues with following (bouncing), it's because you're not dropping down as fast as your horse does onto the diagonal that is on the ground. Sometimes on a very choppy horse I find myself reaching forward with that leg instead of just dropping in order to stay with the motion. 
This article calls it "swinging" forward with the legs.
Following the Horse's Motion at the Trot


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## TXhorseman (May 29, 2014)

The motion of a rider’s body will vary somewhat with the motion of the individual horse under various circumstances. The important thing is to keep one’s body loose enough to follow whatever movement the horse is making unless we want to use our body to alter the horse’s movement.


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## SteadyOn (Mar 5, 2017)

Yes, they do swing and drop along with the horse's back.

Apparently it's possible to overdo it though. Hahahaha. I had a lesson on a horse simulator this past winter and I had actually gotten *too* loose in the hips. They wanted me to move more forward and back -- not in a tilting way, but in a walking motion. If that makes sense.

So, some drop and swing, but also, left-right-left-right like you're walking your bum across a floor.


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## Cedar & Salty (Jul 6, 2018)

It works better for me to think of a sitting trot as "absorbing" the movement with my core instead of "following" movement with my hips. 

I think about keeping my seat bones in even contact with the saddle and finding my balance sweet spot by keeping my feet aligned under my shoulders, while also keeping my chin up, eyes forward and shoulder blades down. I allow my middle to act like a shock absorber in between seat bones and shoulders.

Honestly, for a sitting trot or a good canter, it is about feeling, and not thinking or forcing, a state of active relaxation. The more I try to force my body parts to actively move in rapid time with the horse, the more I get unbalanced and bouncy and start working against my horse. The more I focus on finding my sweet spot of body position, balance and relaxation, the easier it gets to stay with my horse.

I recently found a new trainer who focuses on rider biomechanics, and she is so awesome! A few minor tweaks to my position, and her ability to choose words that make sense to me, have made a big difference after just a few lessons.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

Cedar & Salty said:


> It works better for me to think of a sitting trot as "absorbing" the movement with my core instead of "following" movement with my hips.


That is a good strategy for a normal mover, but if you have a big trot or choppy mover, you can't simply absorb it but have to do some active "following" as well. You can see examples of this when you go from the western jog all the way up to the biggest, throwing-you-up-in-the-air type Friesian trot. 

Any basic rider can sit the western jog with any relaxation at all. As trots get bigger and bouncier, more serious relaxation is required, and eventually you could be the most absorbing human in the world and you just can't absorb that much motion. That is when following comes into play. 

In this video from 4:20 on for a couple of minutes, you can see how this rider uses the following motion to stay with this horse's big trot. Watch his knee and ankle, and you can see how he is pushing the motion down and flexing the joints to keep himself down on the horse. When the trot gets even bigger at 5:30 or so, he has to make an even bigger movement to stay with the horse. The effect is that he looks still, but he is moving more as the horse gets bigger.
When he comes toward the camera, you can really see how he is pushing down with his thighs.


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## Shortyhorses4me (Jun 17, 2018)

Cool! The reason I ask is I was riding by myself, supposed to be practicing posting trot but I was thinking about a CRK video I had just seen where she talks about "jumping" with the motion for sitting trot. So I was trying that out while sitting, thinking about core muscles, and after a bit, all of a sudden things felt very different. I thought wow this feels so weird, but my butt was glued to the saddle, and all the motion was going through my hips and down my legs. I was like, is this sitting trot? Am I doing it? I wasn't expecting to feel it so much in my hips, like belly dancing plus super floppy legs. I'm assuming that was the start of it, just needs to be tuned. I hope I can do it again when someone is there, lol.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

I'm not sure what is meant by 'pushing his thigh down'.


you can't really 'push' it down, since to push, you must have something to push AGAINST. you can 'pull' it down by tightening the muscles along the back of the the thigh, and the buttocks, which will pull it downward..


What I see in the intensified trotting in the video is him leaning further back and having more obvious core engagement. . . . I think.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

tinyliny said:


> I'm not sure what is meant by 'pushing his thigh down'.
> 
> 
> you can't really 'push' it down, since to push, you must have something to push AGAINST. you can 'pull' it down by tightening the muscles along the back of the the thigh, and the buttocks, which will pull it downward..
> ...


I slowed down part of the video to make it easier to see. I guess in my mind you can push against gravity, and against the stirrup. If that's not technically pushing, I'm not sure. Do you push your leg down when you are lowering it toward the ground when walking? Perhaps you are technically flexing the muscles on the back of the leg.

Look at the rider's knee on the flap and at his foot. When the near front hoof is on the ground, the rider "pushes" into the stirrup and his foot lowers in the stirrup, and his knee goes down to a different position on the flap. You can see how the ankle joint with the stirrup is helping absorb the horse's impact on the ground. 

This feels like a walking motion, because it alternates from side to side with the rider's leg going down with the horse's leg that hits the ground.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

oh. I get it. I thought you meant the rider pushed only the thigh down, but you mean the whole leg, down through the stirrup. Got it.


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## TXhorseman (May 29, 2014)

I would describe the rider's leg motion more as a rising and falling. The down position could be considered the more normal position. As the rider is being propelled upward by the horse's movement, you can see his seat rise in the saddle as well as his legs rising. The rider may be consciously pushing his heels down as his feet move slightly forward and outward.


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## bsms (Dec 31, 2010)

This is a short clip. Start it at about 20 seconds. Watch Bandit's feet at a trot. He trots with his feet under his centerline, to the point he swings his feet out and around the foot ahead.






Bandit's trot is almost all up/down. Cowboy is our stocky 13 hand mustang. His feet stay spread apart, underneath the side of his shoulder instead of under his centerline. His trot is very side to side, almost more so than up/down.

I assume most horses are somewhere in between. I can't guess how to sit Cowboy's trot. His trot is so choppy that I feel like I'm going to pee blood. If I ride him at a trot, I stand in the stirrups to reduce the odds of my becoming a soprano. His canter is smooth as glass and I think we both prefer it to a trot.

A still shot from the video:








I would describe that as leaning back to put more weight in the hips and to allow him to absorb more motion thru the waist.


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## Cedar & Salty (Jul 6, 2018)

I agree that he is not necessarily pushing with his legs, but is leaning back and sitting deep in order to absorb and follow the motion with his hips. I think that a following seat is possible for a well trained dressage horse with a highly suspended and extended trot. I think it would be much more difficult with a horse with a short striding, rapid, jackhammer trot.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

I was told , long time ago, that there is a big difference between 'following' with your seat, and absorbing the motions by leaning back and letting it go up through your WAIST by sort of curling your waist , and uncurling it.



If you lean back too far, you are no longer stacked up and balanced over your pelvis, and you are forced to let the motions go through your waist, looking a bit like the undulations of a worm. This will always put you slightly behind the motion of the trot, always on the BACK SIDE of the wave, so to speak. (watch a surfer. the long rides are always on the FRONT side of the wave)



You want, ideally, to absorb motion with your pelvis/hips, with the thigh angle opening and closing You can try it in a seat;


sit upright. lean your body back ward from your seatbone, with your whole spine staying more or less straight.


then try it the other way: keep your spine upright from the pelvis to the waist, but lean backward. It will put a big 'C' curl in your spine. I realize this doesn't describe the feeling of riding a big trot, or canter, but thinking of absorbing through your waist is , according to what I was taught, incorrect.


Now, you dressage gurus, please feel free to correct or modify the above as you see fit.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

bsms said:


> Bandit's trot is almost all up/down...
> 
> ...I would describe that as leaning back to put more weight in the hips and to allow him to absorb more motion thru the waist.


Horses can feel more up/down or less so. However, all horses that are doing a two beat trot are necessarily doing some lateral movement through their body. One foreleg must be in the air, and the other must be on the ground. So no trot is simply up and down. Understanding that lateral movement is very helpful for both two pointing over long distances and also for the sitting trot.

Agree with @tinyliny that the motion must go down through the spine in order to get absorbed properly. Absorbing the motion, staying loose, that is very important. Leaning back a bit is one part of the sitting trot, because it opens the hip angle and allows the leg to go down more.

However, I've read many articles describing this walking/lateral/pushing motion like the one I linked to, and also had an instructor tell me about how to think of the lateral motion and push down slightly with the leg on the ground, and it is _the_ secret for me, to not get pushed off the saddle if I want to sit a very big trot. 
If you don't think the guy in the video is pushing down into the stirrups, try just relaxing and following with a very big trot and see if your feet naturally flex down into the stirrups at the ankles. They don't unless you have your weight down there. He is keeping some weight down even on the up beat (see @bsms' photo), keeping his heel down. That is difficult to do with a trot that big. 

I'd suggest if you're skeptical, try it on a horse with a big trot that you can't seem to stay completely down on the saddle with even if you are very loose and absorbing. It really helps you stay down with the horse. 
You can do it on a short, choppy trot too, but you just have to move faster with the rhythm. :smile:


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## bsms (Dec 31, 2010)

gottatrot said:


> Horses can feel more up/down or less so. However, all horses that are doing a two beat trot are necessarily doing some lateral movement through their body. One foreleg must be in the air, and the other must be on the ground. So no trot is simply up and down...


Based on Bandit, I have to disagree. WHERE the horse positions the foreleg is important in an side to side motion. Try jogging where you intentionally keep your footprints at least 12 inches apart. You will generate a lot of side to side motion. Now jog with your feet near your centerline. There will be very little sideways motion.

Unlike Mia, Trooper and Cowboy, Bandit's front feet at least land almost on centerline. Like a jogger. He goes up, his right leg goes around the front left leg and lands almost directly in front of it. He goes up and his left leg then swings around his right, landing almost directly in front. There may not be ZERO sideways motion, but there isn't much. Not enough for me to feel, and certainly not enough for me to compensate for.

Cowboy is at the other extreme. His trot beats you back and forth sideways.

Mia and Trooper are in between, although Mia's western jog was much like Bandit's trot. We joked it was her "Happy Feet" jog, as if she was jogging with just her feet and not her body. It wasn't particularly fast - short and very flat strides - but utterly relaxing to ride. Like getting a massage while riding! Looking at the one photo taken, it seems her front legs were almost under centerline at her Happy Feet jog:








Walking with my daughter, front legs angled in toward her centerline:








Bandit's trot, almost from behind. Notice how his legs angle in underneath him:








I cannot rule out ANY side to side motion, but Bandit's rider would waste his time trying to detect and compensate for any that exists. Cowboy, OTOH, would probably require a lot of compensation to sit his trot. But none of us who have tried have ever wanted to sit his trot more than a couple of strides!

Just a theory. I couldn't quickly find very many good videos of a horse trotting toward someone. The desert ground is too hard for hoof prints, and our arena is too chewed up. I'll try to get a good video in the next couple of days.


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## charrorider (Sep 23, 2012)

I sit the trot by letting my hips slide back and forth with the movement of the horse and tensing my stomach muscles. Don't put too much weight on the stirrups. The slower the trot, the easier to sit.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

@bsms, I think Bandit is pretty unusual because he is a combination of base narrow along with being a leg mover. Many base narrow horses would still lift and swing their barrel in order to get their leg underneath their center so there would be more lateral motion. For Bandit, you probably can just keep your weight even on the seat bones if you wish to sit the trot. 
For Cowboy you would probably need to exaggerate the lateral walking movement I am talking about in order to sit, if you should want to try. 

For any big mover, riding a sitting trot requires a lot of feel to understand how the rider can stay with the motion and not get pushed off the saddle. The idea of lateral movement has helped me, but may not apply to every horse. On some horses also if you get into a very big extended trot and you want to two point over a long distance, if you get into their lateral rhythm with a sort of walking motion it can make it very easy on your body. Does Bandit become more lateral in a very extended trot?


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

the side to side feel of the trot is not based on the front legs. It is based on the hind legs. When the right hind is weighted it is just a split second AFTER it has reached as far forward as it will reach. When it reaches forward, it also reaches UNDER the centerline of the belly, thus an 'inside' angle. It hits the ground, and then, fully weighted,  the horse uses it to push off and up for the next moment of suspension. When the horse pushes off that right hind, the hip that is bearing the most weight is the highest of the two hips, then it is lowest (at the point where that rear leg is thrust furthest backward.)


the result is a side to side feel.


In the case of a horse that is base narrow, like Bandit, verses one who has wide set front legs (like my lease horse X), you will feel a more rolling feel at the walk, where the shoulder movement has more apparent and different affect to the rider based on this shoulder width placement.


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## gottatrot (Jan 9, 2011)

tinyliny said:


> the side to side feel of the trot is not based on the front legs. It is based on the hind legs. When the right hind is weighted it is just a split second AFTER it has reached as far forward as it will reach. When it reaches forward, it also reaches UNDER the centerline of the belly, thus an 'inside' angle. It hits the ground, and then, fully weighted, the horse uses it to push off and up for the next moment of suspension. When the horse pushes off that right hind, the hip that is bearing the most weight is the highest of the two hips, then it is lowest (at the point where that rear leg is thrust furthest backward.)


So you're saying the tilting of the horse's barrel to the inside when the horse has the inside fore on the ground is because the inside hind is high in the air (and that hip lower than the outside one)? 

That makes sense, but it is easier for me to relate my body position to what the front leg is doing, just like when posting to a diagonal. 

So then would that mean a horse like Bandit would still have a lateral feel to the trot, regardless? I have never ridden a horse yet where I didn't feel some lateral movement of my body at the trot. Even posting, you can feel it. Which is why it is recommended when posting over long distances in a straight line, a rider should change diagonals every so often, since one side is being weighted more by the rider. If you're up with the inside front leg (around a circle), your inside stirrup will carry more weight. This is the same on a straight line.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

gottatrot said:


> So you're saying the tilting of the horse's barrel to the inside when the horse has the inside fore on the ground is because the inside hind is high in the air (and that hip lower than the outside one)? the barrel rolls to the opposite direction of the hind that is stepping forward. It rolls , in effect to the outside as the inside , hind leg, reaching deeply forward and slightly inward toward the horse's midline, pushed the large barrel abdomen out of its way; toward the outside. While the rear leg is doing this, reaching forward in the moment of susupension, that hip is lowered. Once it hits the ground, it becomes weight bearing, and will thrust upward as the horse pushes with that leg against the ground.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I believe that as you say, all horses have some 'lateral' feel to the rider. A better word might be 'diagonal' feel, since it isn't really a total sideways motions, but rather like a wave rolling, or how a rope moves if you 'throw' a wave down its length.


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## tinyliny (Oct 31, 2009)

oh, and as to posting on a diagonal, and circles (using the 'rise and fall with the leg on the wall' axiom helping you synch with the front, outside leg moving forward . . . 



I was told we do this because as the outside leg is moving foward, the inside hind is 'thrusting', making that hip go up, as described above. If we rise with THAT motion, we take a bit of the effort off of that leg, which must work harder than the outside hind's thrusting when trotting on a circle.


make sense?


I will admit that I have a TERRIBLE habit on the trail of posting incessantly on the same diagonal; the right diagonal (rising with the right fore). My horse seems to WANT me on that diagonal. No matter how many times I sit for a bit, I always start back up on that diagonal , and that's without looking or thinking about it. It jsut happens. Posting on the left diagonal feels bad to both he and I. It makes him slow down.


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## bsms (Dec 31, 2010)

Given that I am crooked, I may not be the best judge of side-side motion. But I strongly suspect a horse built like Bandit doesn't generate strong side to side motion because it is extremely obvious on Cowboy, even to me. This is Bandit, shaggy still and looking around, but the best recent photo I could find of his build:








I still remember the first time I tossed a leg over him, thinking, "Where is my horse?" Mia was slender, but Bandit far more so!

I also suspect his background and why he was bred plays into it. He was bred for relays races, with 10-15 mile legs. The F-4 was my first love in planes, but I only did one tour in it. Much later, I found myself in the EF-111. I came to love it almost as much as the F-4 (Internet picture of the EF):








The EF-111 didn't have big enough engines to accelerate quickly. But she was streamlined as all get out and could, with time, haul butt at impressive speeds.

Bandit is more like an EF-111 than an F-4. Not a lot of thrust, but I'm told he was quite fast covering 10+ miles. If you are right, @tinyliny, then part of why he doesn't create sideways motion is HOW he moves. Not a ton of thrust, although he can build up good speed. Low, flat strides. He gives an elevated, floating trot once in a while, but his normal stride is meant to cover the most ground with the least energy - as makes sense for a horse who grew up carrying 200-300 lbs on 10+ mile legs of relay races!

A QH would generate a lot more thrust. In airplane terms, the hind end is the engine and the front legs the wings. Larger thrust generated at wider distances from centerline would create more lateral motion - particularly if the rider values an elevated trot, so the front legs engage to lift the withers. Bandit's front legs mostly are used to keep his body level. Elevated strides are a waste of energy crossing the desert.

"_When the horse pushes off that right hind, the hip that is bearing the most weight is the highest of the two hips, then it is lowest (at the point where that rear leg is thrust furthest backward.)_"

When I compare a horse to a plane, I'm being very simplistic. An airplanes engine is bolted in and only generates thrust directly behind it. The leg of a horse, like a humans, can pivot and create sideways thrust as well. We do that all the time when walking and running. A close-up of Bandit's rump at a trot. I'll delete this rather inelegant picture in a week or so, but...or "butt":








His hind legs still are close to centerline because he angles them in. I have no way of knowing how he angles any thrust. It looks like one side of his hips may be a very small bit higher as you mentioned and for the reason you gave, tinyliny. But there is no reason this small elevation must cause his entire body to rotate. Our hips can pivot easily without affecting our shoulders. I've never seen a study, but I'd bet money the pelvis of a horse can rotate without affecting the rest of his back.

In the end, so to speak, I guess it boils down to this: any lateral motion Bandit generates is too small for me to care about. If I cannot feel it then I cannot compensate for it. Nor need to. On Cowboy, ANYONE will try to compensate SOMEHOW for the rocking side to side, while probably wanting him to transition to his very smooth, easy to ride canter. And a lot of horses will fall somewhere in between.

And we haven't even started discussing how a horse trots on UNEVEN ground, which is 95% of Bandit's trotting. Much of our trotting (and cantering) is done is washes. All the theory goes to heck when the horse is trotting in one of our favorite spots:








As for diagonals when trotting in the wild...I don't think it matters. Jogging in the desert is a motion utterly unlike jogging on a track. At long distance - an endurance racer - it may matter a lot. How much exercise each leg is getting on uneven terrain is impossible to calculate, so I figure the horse will have to adjust based on how he feels.


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## Spanish Rider (May 1, 2014)

I have not read all the responses, so perhaps I will repeat what someone else has said. 

In questions of pelvic movement, I would ask you whether you are male or female. I say this because the size and mechanics of the pelvis are completely different between males and females, not to mention differences in strength and flexibility. Look online for comparative images, and you'll find a large difference in the distance between our respective seatbones and pelvic joints.

As you advance in your riding, you will (hopefully!) start developing increased flexibility and strength of the pelvic joints (there are 4). Beginning riders tend to simplify their pelvic movement, as their main goal is simply to stay on their horse, but as you advance in stability and balance, you will start to differentiate between the right and left sides. It does take time, though, depending on age, number of hours in the saddle, and gender/sex (for those of us who work in modern medicine, this is now not the same thing).

So, as a beginner, it is normal for you to move your pelvis as a single unit. Typically, riders start with that "scooping" action to follow the canter, but as you progress you'll develop independent movement of each side, so that your inside seat bone is actually slightly more forward. You'll realize that your "scoop" is not equal on both sides, nor should it be. 

Now, when this independent movement translates to the trot, your pelvic movement will largely depend on the horse's trot - a collected trot on a rounded horse is far different from that of an extended trot on a big mover or on a hollowed-out horse. That is where it gets complicated, even more so if you are riding an older lesson horse, whose movements are typically less fluid and engaged. For this reason, you must also be patient with yourself as a beginner. As you gain in strength, flexiblity and skills and start moving up to younger, better-trained horses, at some point you will find yourself sitting on an active mover with suspension and swing in the trot, and you'll have that 'ah-ha!' moment when it all clicks.

Until then, try finding that independent right-left movement to follow the horses shoulder's at the trot, and keep riding!


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