 For the rising trot many people brace against the stirrup which pushes the hip back in the saddle And then they have to lead with the chest to try and get out of the saddle But they're now on the forehand they load the horse's weight onto the forehand and every stride They come back into the saddle and crash into the back of it, which is going to really Could bother the horses back after repeated rising trot strides When you brace the lower leg forward the same thing happens the femur pushes back and up into the hip and so you have to try and get over the femur But that pressure back from the stirrup is blocking that hip from swinging forward up So I have to lead with the chest You'll notice the head comes forward and then we get yelled at to sit up straight and we try to hinge back So that now we are more upright But we still have the same problem because we're on the forehand and we put the weight on the horses forehand The solution to rising trot is a swing motion Many people hear the words up down up down to rise the trot, but if I strictly do up down I'm just going up and down in a vertical plane And so I push myself up from my stirrups and I fall back into the saddle When we ride it as a swing motion, we are never unstable on the horse We are always in control of the motion and we can regulate the horses trot through our rising trot motion Swing motion is when we think of leading with the bottom of the zipper and Coming back my weight transfers to the thighs Instead of just the stirrup. I support myself and come back down. So I swing up down up down Down so let's talk about the rising trot for a moment in the rising trot The knees still go forward down over your foot and The reason for that is again to let your hip open So that your seat keeps coming through and doesn't block the horse If I push my feet forward in the rising trot, you can see how he instantly gets hollow Because I put more pressure on the stirrup bar if I go on my toe and knee pinch Now that also makes him get stuck So I have to think about the swing motion of the rising and it's a simple thing But it can be really important to a lot of horses that I just think about up up up Versus down down down down and you can see again Al's not very happy with me I'm gonna think about making my rising slower lower and there I am in walk One of the things that most of my riders have struggled with is a symmetry and they think that they'll never be able to ride in a Symmetrical way and be even on both sides But I'm here to show you that that's only held in your brain And there's lots of stuff you can do off the horse to improve your symmetry so that when you ride you're much more balanced So now that you've done the mirror exercise Here's a way to apply it and the reason I like going from the mirror to the stool Is that when we drive so many of this drive with one foot and on the gas pedal? And then we sit rather crooked and collapse in our ribs and throw our weight over to one side And since we spend so much time behind the wheel when we get on the horse We don't realize that we're still in this position So by using the mirror I've now seen that my two legs are doing the same thing at the same time And I'm going to take that into this simple little exercise on the stool Now you can do this when you're at work or sitting at a business meeting Anywhere you have a chair that you can easily rock forward And what you'll notice that I did was I simply brought the chair forward onto the front legs And as I do that my hip is opening and my knees are going forward down over my toe and this is my third rule So to recap my rules if it hurts tell me And that's because very often when people do something they actually try too hard And so they put themselves in a bit of stress and so very often just a simple fix is just you know Like if I know that it's uncomfortable, we just tweak it a little My second rule is horses get to vote because there's such good biofeedback about what we're doing And my third and only other rule is when you're riding your knees need to go forward down equally and evenly Whether that's riding walk trot canner lateral work on a western horse the jumping horse Because as my knees go forward down my hip opens and it lets my pelvis get closer to my heels So I'm always staying over my feet when I'm riding toes If I do what most people do against the stirrup embrace my foot I've now pushed my foot forward and you can see that because the stirrup leather is no longer hanging vertical If I drop my iron you'll notice that this is where it's hanging straight down And so when my foot is in the stirrup that is also where it should be it's hanging straight down The minute I put pressure on the stirrup I've now swung the leather forward like a pendulum and the biggest problem with that is now my knee has straightened And it can no longer sink down So that's going to affect my ankle my knee and my hip and more importantly, it's going to affect my horse's movement If I brace the foot forward now I block the knee and you can see that it's blocked my horse from moving forward and in this case He actually takes that as a stop because he can't lift his back and push through my seat I've pushed against him and blocked the hindquarters instead allowing him to move through my seat and go forward Now you can go back to that unmounted exercise and practice it with intent in other words You can understand why this is such an important idea And so practicing it off the horse is just something that keeps it in mind so that when you get in the saddle You automatically start to seek that direction with your knees