Riding with fender style stirrups vs. english stirrups and leathers

Hi guys, I was wondering if I could get some advice.

I've always ridden English, but after a fall I lost a bit of confidence and bought a stock saddle with fenders for a more secure ride. Its pretty good so far, but I am having a few troubles with my stirrups. Whenever I do rising trot I feel like my foot isn't securely in the stirrup and that I can't get a secure "heels down" position that I could easily get in english. I'm not sure if its the stirrup type, or maybe its not sitting quite "straight across" and twisting back to the normal postition?

Anyway has anyone has problems like these when switching to a fender saddle? Any solutions?

My saddle isn't anything special, just a synthetic, but I didn't want to shell out a fortune if I didn't like this style of riding.

Here's a pic of my saddle:

It may be your stirrup bars are farther forward on this saddle, which makes you reach for it with your feet and bring your heel up. It would be more noticeable when posting.

A lot of English riders use the jack in the box style of posting, like my daughter used to do in our western saddle:



You can see the fenders are too far forward for her body size, although she always insisted in riding THIS saddle. So in posting, she's pulled the stirrups back to get them under her but the force of doing that raised her heel.

I have always preferred a more subtle way of posting. I think of it as rolling onto my thighs and barely getting my butt out of the saddle. Done like that, it doesn't matter how far forward the stirrups are, because you don't end up standing in them.

A video of your riding would help, but that is my guess from the picture. Good luck!

Stock saddles by design put you in more of a chair seat. Adjust the stirups so your thighs are the same angle and a couple inches from the poleys. Then sit back and enjoy the ride.

Thanks for the replies. I think the leg position is certainly a factor, and just something that I have to get used to. But part of the problem is that the stirrup almost feels like its twisting away from my foot, so I can't put the ball of my foot in because the stirrup isn't straight across? Does that make sense? Or am I going a bit crazy?