Your Horse’s Posture Is A Reflection of Yours — What I Wish Every Rider Knew
Practical insights to improve communication, balance, and partnership with your horse.
The Truth:
Your horse directly mirrors your posture as he responds to your cues. Misalignment, tension, or imbalance in your body directly affects your horse’s movement, comfort, and willingness to engage.
The Why:
Horses are highly perceptive to subtle shifts in weight, shoulder and hip position, and core engagement. When your posture is off, it can create confusion, resistance, or discomfort in your horse—even during basic exercises.
Your horse’s shoulders will mirror your shoulders, his hips to your hips. Everything our body does, our horse repsonds to. We give them a lot of noise to sort through without even asking with a cue, so when our posture is off, our horses don’t always know how to respond and do so in the best way they can through feel. Trust me, your horse can feel your butt pucker when they can feel a fly land on a single hair on their body.
Many riders struggle with leaning forward in their shoulders. On the straight line, this makes their horse fall forward with their center of balance, often tripping or unable to respond promptly to any cue—all because the rider’s center balance is too far forward.
Now, imagine that same shoulder-heavy rider and forward-falling horse riding a circle: the horse is falling forward and in with every stride while the rider’s body hangs over the shoulders, hands in the air cuing with their arms and legs asking the horse to lean more outside, exhausting each other while fighting against true balance through connection and partnership. If this is you, don’t worry, this is everyone at some point!
Another way of putting it: when you track a circle, your horse will automatically attempt to cut the circle by bringing his inside shoulder down and in—dropping the shoulder. Most horses do not do this for any other reason than easing the task for themselves—they weren’t made to travel in repetitive circles—because it is against their primal instincts to go around the mountain to get to the mole hill. Because of the innate response on their part, it is up to us to keep them upright for better balance and strength building when they are being ridden.
The way we do this is to ensure not to drop our own shoulders, the inside especially, but to engage and lift them all the way from our elbow up. Most horses respond well to this unless they are accustomed to blowing through subtle body language in a rush to please their rider. That is another topic for a different day. You see, our shoulders influence their shoulders. It is up to our posture as to whether that influence is positive or negative.
The Application:
Ensure core engagement and use is primary while riding by pointing your belly button and chest where you want to go.
Lift yourself off your horse just enough not to push down with gravity atop his back or become too stiff in the spine.
Rotate your hips to sit just behind your seat bones, sure not to lean forward or back.
Keep your shoulders back and relaxed—not slumped—atop your hips, with your eyes forward.
Avoid using your hands or lower legs and heels before your core—this causes leaning and misalignment.
Keep your elbows in enough to frame your core, ensuring your arms follow what your core starts. *A trick you can use is touching your elbows to your hips until you gain muscle memory.
Use small, intentional cues (be sure of where you want to go and what you want to do) with your body language through connecting your seat and mirroring it with the rest of your body.
Don’t be afraid to draw your boundaries clearly to mitigate your horse’s confusion. You can do this without hanging on their mouth or digging into their sides by keeping your body language firm yet fluid.
Observe your horse’s response and adjust your posture if tension appears. *A little trick I use in lessons is to have the student close their eyes for a few strides so they can really feel what their body is doing and what the horse is doing in response.
Practice in front of of a mirror at home to see and feel your alignment and balance. Pretend like you are turning and stopping, and visualize the arena while doing so. And yes, I mean act like you’re sitting on a horse—even straddle a chair if necessary!
The Reflection
Next time you ride, before throwing your leg over, take a few moments to prepare yourself to feel your horse’s response to your posture.
Ask yourself in warm up, mid-ride, and cool down, “How does my horse feel in this moment—relaxed, loose, tense, engaged, choppy, or distracted?”
Take a few minutes after this ride to notice where your posture may have shifted and how your horse responded to it.
Ask yourself, “How did my alignment influence my horse’s movement today?”
Share your observations or experiences with the community here in the Rider Roundtable discussion thread!