Rui Almeida & Jenny Almeida
03/03/2025
“Today, the School’s Riders and First Riding Masters, who have served a long apprenticeship in their profession, are such guardians of tradition. They started as pupils in the stables wearing a simple gray uniform. They then learned their trade, and a good seat in particular, on the so-called “Professors”, the old, tried stallions of the School, because learning to sit comes before learning to ride, and only from a secure, pliant, well-balanced seat comes a feeling for the correct aids. Those fine, invisible signs by which the rider communicates with a horse were in fact learned from well-ridden horses who would not dream of acting upon a false aid.
The seat – the rider’s weight which must at all times be fully balanced with the horse that bears it - is of fundamental importance because an incorrect seat will cause the rider’s weight to distort every movement of the horse.
The last word on this, the true basis of all riding, comes from the Director of the Spanish Riding School, Kurt Albrecht, in his book Dogmas of the Art of Riding (1981).
It sounds almost too simple: “The rider must seek to distribute his own center of gravity over the horse and maintain it there throughout every movement, whatever the gait he may require of the animal…”
However, it is no easy thing when the horse canters, gallops, turns, bends, and rising on its hind legs, or even makes a frightened sideways jump. In all circumstances, however, Albrecht says, “…security of the seat is not a matter of keeping a grip with the legs or holding the reins, but entirely of maintaining balance in the saddle.”
Quote courtesy of the book THE SPANISH RIDING SCHOOL: Four Centuries of Classic Horsemanship by Hans Handler
Photo of Oberbereiter Klaus Krzisch and Siglavy Mantua I courtesy of the book The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dressage (Martin Diggle)
