a good seat bareback riding

i cant keep a good seat! help?? tipss??

My best advice is to practice, practice, practice. Winter is a great time for it because it is a pain to saddle up anyway.

Try to relax your body while still sitting basically properly. Spend a lot of time riding all around at the walk. If you can go around obstacles and such at the walk to challenge yourself, that might be good. Just try to enjoy it and relax...the more you do it, the easier it will get.

Remember to sit nice and tall with your legs underneath you. Your pelvis should be sort of centered...sitting as if you came straight from a standing position (that is your nuetral). If you tip forward a bit...that is the forward cue..if you tip back a bit (a little more on your butt), that is the stop/back cue.

It is a lot of fun...just keep working on it :)

kk thxs cause i got a new horse and she has a really nice back no high withers or anything but my last horse did so i had to use a bareback pad which sorta helped but now i can ride with out one with her so ill try and keep practicing but when to the barn i board at ill ask to make sure she approves cause she use to give me lessons

yep practice makes perfect lol think about it this way i could barely ride in a lope last year bareback and now i can great

Ya must agree. Practice. Also if you can going up and down little hills will help. You dont have to just stick to the flats.

Lol i used to go up pretty step hills in one of my paddocks, id hold on to the mane for dear life, lol would end up slipping back heaps, legs dangling. haha. Was heaps fun tho Helped make you really want to stay on

haha yea i got better because one day i was going up a hill and Junior broke out in a gallop i squeezed on for dear life but i stayed haha.

and boy were my legs in pain after that. Thats another good thing as long as your legs are hurting after you ride then you did a good job in building muscle lol.

All the advice is true. Ride, ride ride. Daughter rides bareback 99% of the time (despite having 6 saddles in the tack shed!) She has gone on 4 and 5 hour trail rides bareback. Past fall did pole bending and barrel racing bareback. She felt she was at a bit of a disadvantage . She did stay on but horse slowed herself down a bit to keep from losing rider. Still, bareback, placed first in pole bending!

Word of caution: if you do LOTS of bareback riding, make sure the pants you wear do not have a bulky inseam. (seam that runs inside the legs) Daughter rides in blue jeans, the seam wore the hair off the horse's back and it all grew in white! Horse has a little ,white, butt shaped patch on it's back! I think you need pants that have a smooth finish or flat seam construction if you want to do extended bareback. Or make sure your horse has a fat back (ours didn't she was quite lean and it literally rode the hair off her. Poor horse. Daughter used a saddle while hair grew back.)

What I do is I pretend I have a saddle anyways and move with the horse. Like whenever they trot you can feel them move side to side, am I right? Well my horse does, and I just kind of sit there and move with him, side to side. Also you could play this game some friend and I used to play, you take a barrel, put it on a trampoline and they bounce you while you ride it and only hold on with your legs, thus improving your grip.

Do you use a bridle when riding bareback? Rope halter? What do you use?? Regular reins? I want to try bareback but not sure what to use......do you use a pad or ride truly bareback? Thanks :)

I ride truly bareback, never have used a bareback pad. Usually I have a bridle, or a halter and chain lead, or a rope halter. But for starters I would use a bridle.