September 2007 • VOLUME 25 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

Trotting Hands: Do you have problems keeping your horse going in the trot?

Does your horse have problems with impulsion?

Do you find you need to keep using your legs every stride to keep your horse going in trot?

When we first begin to learn how to trot, the very first thing we notice is the bounce!

So for most instructors, when choosing between sitting and rising, also called posting trot, most instructors choose to teach the rising trot first. No one is sure when the rising or posting trot was invented, but a common story is that one day a bakery boy doing a delivery on a rough cob, tired of getting his backside bruised, decided to get his back end out of the way at least half of the time! Not having had formal lessons on what to do, just trying his best to hang on and not drop his deliveries, he just didn’t know any better. And thus the rising/posting trot was born.

Or so some say. Others attribute it to the Hungarian and Polish armies.

Whenever it was born, the rising trot was quickly adopted by the many riders whose bottoms had been crying out for relief!

Most horses at this time were used as driving and carriage horses, not riding horses. It was the elite that learned to ride, on horses already well broken-in, horses that were trained in collection, horses that were already easy to sit. Collection made it unnecessary to post to the trot.

With the advent of the posting trot, a new problem arose that had never been a problem before.

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