Olympic eventing gold medallist, Tad Coffin explains everything you wanted to know about the Forward Seat

In the twentieth century, through the efforts of Caprilli and the Cavalry schools to ride faster across the country, the forward seat was developed. It was designed to be more balanced, more athletic, and more with the motion of the horse. The forward seat is one of the few modem developments in all of riding. It is essentially a position that has been developed to accommodate the horse at greater speed. To accommodate a horse moving at 350 metres a minute.

The fundamental idea of the sort of work we are doing in forward seat is based on the principle that practice involves taking the elements of an exercise and breaking it down and working on those elements in a number of easily accomplishable tasks. If we wait until we are galloping at 350 metres a minute before we practice forward seat, then we are either going to have to do a lot of galloping or we will have to be naturally very good riders.

What I do in my clinics is slow down the work in forward seat. So we can do forward seat in walk, in trot, in canter – at a point at which we don’t need forward seat. We work at the slower speed until we have the basic concept, the basic balance, we have developed the basic suppleness of forward seat.

The interesting part of forward seat is that forward seat, and deep seat and rising seat, are all more similar seats than dis-similar seats – they are balanced. You cannot stay balanced on the back of the horse in deep seat, rising seat and forward seat, and not adopt a fundamentally similar position. Bert de Nemethy always says he doesn’t understand all these notions of different seats, because as far as he is concerned there is only one seat, and that is the seat in which the rider is in balance and able to communicate to the horse.

In the process of working on forward seat we are not divorcing ourselves from the idea of deep seat, or idea of rising. We are actually getting three different forms of the same balance, and using one to check against the other, one to help the other. There is nothing better for a rider’s deep seat than the athletic requirements and suppleness of the forward seat. And it works the other way – if the rider’s deep seat is very good, it should not be hard to go into forward seat.

It is important not to think about forward seat as a position – it is important to think of forward seat as a balance which can change as the horse’s balance requires it to change. The balance we have in forward seat at walk is very different from the balance we have when galloping across country. It looks different – there is a different angle from the vertical, there is a different length of stirrup, the angulation of the thigh is a little more acute, but the sense of being in balance is the same!

The value of forward seat for the slow work, the work in trot and over cavaletti, is that in forward seat the rider doesn’t have to worry about catching up to the horse in the air with his balance. If we come to the jump in forward seat and are well balanced, then it is easier to develop a sense of timing for when you need to fold your hips, and when you need to go with the motion in the air. Forward seat is often a more relaxing balance for horses to jump from, because they don’t have to worry about whether the rider is going to be in balance or not. Forward seat is a very good exercise for Thoroughbreds who don’t have very strong backs. A nice forward seat at the trot, or at the canter, is a very back relaxing exercise.

It’s important to know that the transition from deep seat to any shade of forward seat, should be very easy for the rider. The rider should feel in balance, and easily able to alter that balance, to be more out of the saddle, more inclined at the hips, closer to the horse’s back. It becomes a way of riding around a course which is not limiting to the rider but gives the rider more freedom of where-to-be. If he has a stretch between fences when he needs to go forward, he can be more comfortably out of the saddle, if there is a turn that requires a little collection, he can move back to the vertical… but there should never be a consciousness of moving from one seat to another seat.

One of the most important attitudes of work in forward seat is the correct stirrup length. Trying to do forward seat in such short leathers that you feel perched above the saddle, is impossible. Trying to do a forward seat when your stirrups are too long and you can’t clear the pommel is also impossible.

Trying to do a forward seat on a horse that is completely above the bit and out of control is also impossible… so is having a nice seat of any kind. It is important that the horse is relaxed and in a nice frame, and yielding to your legs, and ready to go forward and answer your calves. Stirrup length and the quality of the way the horse is going are very important preconditions of forward seat.

Another important criteria is rein length and rein adjustment. You always feel a slight adjustment of rein length when you move from deep to forward seat, as the body moves that little in front of the vertical. When we move in forward seat we must maintain the same dialogue with the horse’s mouth that we enjoyed in deep seat. The hands must not be so low and wide and straight in the elbow that they encourage the rider to topple forward. Similarly the hands should not be so high and so far back and on the chest, that you can’t comfortably balance with the movement.

How you go from deep seat to forward seat is also important. Many people go from deep seat to forward seat by holding on with the knees and trying to propel themselves up through the muscle in their thigh, rather than going into forward seat by letting the knees and thighs slide down. If you lower your knees, it becomes very easy to get out of the saddle.

The last very important idea in riding in forward seat is the focus and the balance of the rider’s eye and head. Going in forward seat with a downcast expression; with the rider absorbed in the horse’s neck, and the balance of the head tilted forward, makes it impossible to find the balance of forward seat.

It is interesting that in Sally Swift’s clinics, which are basically dressage oriented, she suggests that one very good exercise for developing deep seat is to ride in forward seat, not because it is exactly the same set of muscles, but because forward seat heightens the rider’s sense of balance. It is a little more of an acid test of whether you are in balance or not. In deep seat it is hard to say whether you staying on the horse purely from the equilibrium of your balance or because you are gripping or using the cantle, or using your hands? In deep seat it is very hard for novice riders to know what their balance is like.

Unfortunately there is no other way to develop a good forward seat except by practising it. There are some very good exercises to help. First get comfortable on a very quiet horse and then try to fulfill the criteria of forward seat at the halt. Feel that your ankles are relaxed and your heels are deep, you have your calf close to the horse’s side, your knees are on – without pinching or grabbing. Your thigh is close to the horse – you are not standing over the pommel, you are not sitting back over the cantle. Just try doing that at the halt – that’s exercise number one.

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Exercise number two would be doing the same forward seat work – with both arms out to the side – at the walk. That’s a very good test of balance, you can either stay in the same position, or you fall forwards or backwards.

At walk and at trot, you don’t have to be very far out of the saddle to be in forward seat.

Let’s look at some problems that can ruin a forward seat balance. Problem number one would be wrong length of stirrup. Wrong length of stirrup can mean that the rider has to stand on the toes and have to straighten their knees to get out of the saddle.

Now look at the foot. Problems can be caused by the stirrup being incorrectly placed on the foot – too close to the toe, too deep towards the heel, the outside of the foot not resting on the outside branch of the stirrup, the stirrup not correctly angled across the foot so that it is higher on the outside and slightly deeper on the inside, too much weight on the toes DOWN – raising the heels up, too much weight in the heels down with a locked ankle pushing the stirrup in front of the perpendicular, too much weight on the outside of the balls of the feet – which brings the toes in, too much weight on the inside balls of the feet – which pushes the toes out, or lack of symmetry in the development of the rider’s feet – they have one toe out, one in, or one heel down, one up.

This may all sound as if we want the rider to look pretty – but this is totally untrue. Everything to do with position is to do with effectiveness. There is not one positional correction that is ever made because it ‘looks better’ in the type of riding that I was taught. It just so happens that every correct function of position looks better. That’s just a lovely side effect.

That is just the same as saying that the horse that is on the bit has more utilitarian value, and is also more aesthetically beautiful… but you don’t create that from the basis of aesthetics, it is a result of the horse being better to ride, a result of the horse moving in the way that is most functional for him.

The position of the ankle will determine where the foot is – so as long as the foot is in place, and the heel is deeper than the toe, that takes care of the ankle. The only way you can continue to relate to the stirrup correctly while in motion is to have a flexible ankle. You have to relate to the stirrup as a skater relates to the blade he is skating on. The skater’s ankles have to be both very strong, and very flexible.

If the calf is resting quietly on the horse’s side, and is capable of different gradiations of closeness, and it is at the girth, then the calf is correct.

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Moving up the leg the next problem would be riders with too much knee grip, which forces the calf away from the horse’s side so that there can’t be any dialogue with the horse. Or the opposite – too much knee off the saddle, and no contact with the upper leg, and only a vice like grip with the calf, and no ability to adjust the amount of calf on the horse’s side.

Bert de Nemethy always said ‘You should be able to keep a pebble between your knee and the saddle’. Not so tight that you grind a hole in your knee, not so loose that you lose the pebble.’

Another problem would be the rider’s ability to adjust the amount of knee bend, so that the knee is forced open and pushes the legs forward, or where the knee is bent too much which has the function of pulling the leg too far back. The knee is one of those joints like the elbow, that has to be a pretty alert, flexible joint, continually making adjustments to keep the line right.

 

The attitude of thigh has to be such that it doesn’t give the rider the sense of riding up towards the horizontal – rather that the thigh is sliding down. It is not possible to actually slide the thigh down much, but it is a sense of motion that is going down. We look for reasonable contact through the whole length of the thigh. One of the most common problems that we find in forward seat is the wrong pressure of thigh – either the thigh is gripping and grabbing, or it is turned away from the saddle.

The next problem we see is the seat falling back into the saddle – back into the cantle or forward onto the pommel. In forward seat, the rider’s seat should hover above the deepest part of the saddle. We have riders who lean so far forward that they are resting the crotch on the pommel. Some riders are either not willing to get out of the saddle enough or they feel unable because of poor balance, to get out of the saddle. There are riders who are too far out of the saddle – standing above the saddle.

Problems can arise with riders who have too much angulation of the body from the vertical. Another problem can arise even when the rider is in a good angle, but is very rounded in the back, or very hollowed and arched in the back. The back should be straight.

Some riders cause problems by looking down instead of looking forward.

Riders cause problems when the elbow is not slightly in front of the body, but either in the middle of their body, or slightly behind the body. There are real problems for riders whose elbow joint does not serve as an adjuster between the horse’s mouth, the rider’s hand and the elbow. Another problem is riders who have a stiffness in the shoulders that brings the elbow to right angles to the body, so that they don’t flex along the line of the body properly.

All these seemingly little problems and faults ARE important because when working in forward seat we need to be in balance with the horse – not ahead of the motion or behind. And we need to know what those balances feel like and what the consequences are.

If you are ahead of the motion, it feels as if the rider’s body mass is collecting onto the horse’s shoulders – or that the rider needs the horse’s shoulders to support his balance. It usually comes as a result of the rider’s heel coming up and calves that are sliding back, with the angle of the back of the knee over-flexed, too much weight on the inside of the knee and too much knee grip, a seat that seems to be resting on the pommel, hands that seem to be going low and wide, a back that tends to round and crouch over the position of the hands.

Being ahead of the motion is a very dangerous position – we know that ahead of the motion is dangerous, because what is called ‘a safe seat’ is the opposite of being ahead of the motion, with the feet well braced out in front and leaning right back. That way you didn’t fall off if the horse coughed.

Ahead of the motion is very unstable. Any time the horse stops, at best you end up on his neck, at worst, over his head. Ahead of the motion means that you are in no position to influence the horse, you are simply not in the driving seat if you are ahead of the motion. In order to be ahead of the motion, it is unlikely that the rider has the calves anywhere near the horse’s side – when the rider is ahead of the motion it is also unlikely that the horse is going forward for any reason, other than nerves or speed.

The other sense of loss of balance is left behind the motion, where the rider’s feet zoom out in front of him, with a very depressed heel, and the back of the knee joint is too straight. The rider has the feeling that his seat is going back towards the cantle. The hands are usually drawing back towards the rider’s body as he endeavours to use the horse’s mouth to stop falling too far back.

Getting behind the motion usually has to do with too much weight on the heel, too much straightness in the back of the knee, not feeling that our hips are staying with the movement of the horse. One of the best criteria for feeling a good balance in forward seat is to feel a continuous contact with the horse’s mouth. Most novice riders, without balance, cannot maintain a steady contact – they are either pulling back, or dropping and falling on the neck. If you can keep a very steady contact, then that is usually a good indicator of balance.

It is very important that whatever the rider does with his hands in the air, that he doesn’t time after time, pull the horse in the mouth – and you can do this by grabbing the horse’s mane, or a neck strap … or crest release.

I think that if a rider has a dressage background, and made it a way of life to constantly relate to the horse’s mouth by maintaining a contact and having a dialogue – then if that same rider gets very comfortable in forward seat on the flat, keeping a nice contact, and is very supple in the arm, then the amount of time that rider would need to use crest release would be minimal if at all. Such a rider should easily be able to develop the sensitivity of touch to follow the horse’s mouth quite nicely.

If you need to use crest release for any period of time, then I would argue that you are jumping before you are ready to jump.

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Another test of balance in forward seat is to go over a pole on the ground in trot and in canter, keeping that same nice contact. In fact, one of the best ways to teach balance is to teach forward seat over cavalettis, over poles, up little inclines, down little hills, through turns, changes of rein – ’til the rider feels at all times that he is comfortable about making the tiny· adjustments that are necessary to maintain that forward seat balance.Throughout all this work, the criteria remain the same. That is what is interesting about forward seat work – if the fundamentals are correct, there aren’t usually any new problems – just the re-occurrence of old problems.

Joe Fargis and Mill Pearl

One of the ideas of forward seat is that nothing has to change except the angle of the hip joint. The rider doesn’t have to relate to the stirrup differently, he doesn’t have to change his calf or his knee … all he needs to do is to close his hip angle more to be able to follow the motion. If you watch photos of the best riders, the classicists, Nelson Pessoa, Conrad Homfeld and Joe Fargis, over enormous fences, there is a tremendous sense of balance and being very quiet and close to the horse. Maybe their leg has slipped back two or three inches, which is understandable when the horse is making that kind of enormous effort, or they might be a little higher out of the saddle, but basically that forward seat has not altered. The basis of forward seat is that it is a very economical motion.

The forward seat doesn’t require any large degree of motion, or any sudden change of balance on the part of the rider – and any dramatic moves are not conducive to the Thoroughbred’s relaxation while jumping. Thoroughbreds have a tendency to read any sign of extra motion on the part of the rider as incentive to go faster. The aim of the forward seat is to develop a style that is very harmonious with the temperament of the Thoroughbred.

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Coffin, Tad