Do You Remember? Posting Trot

I was told to sit a trot for a few laps around the ring, and watch the shoulder. The shoulder should move forward when you rise, and move backwards when you sit. Once I was told this, it changed everything. :_)

My instructor has her beginners practice posting at the walk then when they trot she runs beside them and tells them up down up down until they get the hang of it.
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I first "learned" how to "ride" on my uncle's horse, and he did the generic, "up, down, up, down..." thing but I could NOT for the life of me do it. At all. Then one day, I got on this laid-back, quiet QH mare and BAM, I could post. Once I could post, I was taught to "rise and fall with the leg on the wall." And that was it. They would bark at me I was on the wrong diagonal and I would switch. I always had to look.

Then I had a marvelous instructor [at least in this situation] who had me post on the wrong diagonal for a million laps with lots of circles. Something ridiculous like that. Then she had me sit the trot, close my eyes, and rise when it FELT right. Bingo. Then we did a lot of trot transitions, and she told me to start rising when it felt right, not just because my horse started trotting. Pretty soon, it was pretty easy to just start posting on the right diagonal.

I think the only reason my instructor had me do this was because she was so tired of me always watching my horse's neck. I didn't need a REASON to look down, lol.

"rise and fall with the leg on the wall" and "hips to hands." :)

I learned it in a western saddle, because I had always shown/ridden western, but my trainer was smart enough to know it would come in handy after a while. And it did when I started playing around on my own riding english. Joby, my trainer who taught me to post, was such a cowboy and had been riding all his life... he always told me I would *feel* it when it was right, but I just now within this past year of posting have begun to understand what he meant.

I remember I'd always look down and see if I was on the right diagonal, or look down in general in a lesson, and he'd yell "I'M going to PUT YOU ON A BULL CAUSE YOUR RIDING WITH YOUR CHIN TUCKED LIKE A BULL RIDER!" hahaha

I learned how to pick up the correct diagonal by feeling the movement of the horses shoulders. You can feel the rise and fall of the horses shoulders at the trot and once you feel the rhythm, pick up the correct one. This, however, took me a few months to learn to feel for it without looking. :)

I was 12 when I started taking lessons, so I might have been able to comprehend what my instructor was explaining better than a younger kid.

I was on a lunge line, and went through the same "Up, down, up, down, 1, 2, 1, 2". Then she made me count myself. I had the up/down rhythm figured out the second lesson I posted in.

As far as the diagonal, she basically explained that I should be rising when the front leg closest to the wall was stepping forward. She had me stare down at the shoulders and told me when to rise and sit until I could tell which leg I was rising with. After that, she would just remind me to "check my diagonal". Sometimes it was wrong, sometimes it wasn't. It was a good way to drill it into my head!

I dislike double posting lol...errrr

When I first started riding I didn't have the privilege of a riding instructer. So at the outride centre, everytime we trotted, I would look how the other semi-experienced riders would post and I would try and imitate them. After lots of bouncing, I eventually could rise with the horse.

I only learnt about the correct diagonals when I moved to a riding school.

I just learned to stay in the rythym. It was completely self taught for me....But then again, I learned posting trot in a western saddle so when I started showing english classes it was the same but without a horn.