Riding without stirrups, and why we use it

Ask a room of riders about work without stirrups and you will get a groan before you get an answer. Most people met it as the bit at the end of a lesson when there were ten minutes left, and it went on until somebody's thighs gave out.

That version does very little. It is not that the exercise is wrong, it is that it was being used as filler rather than for anything in particular.

What it is actually for

Your stirrup is a resting place for your foot. It is not meant to be holding you up.

The trouble is that it will, if you let it. Push down into the iron and you can brace yourself into something that looks like a riding position from the ground, and stay there through a fair amount of movement, without your seat doing any of the work. It is stable. It is also completely disconnected from the horse, and the moment he does something unexpected the whole arrangement pops.

Take the stirrups away and there is no bracing point left. You are down to your seat bones and the way your leg hangs from your hip, which are the two things that actually keep you with a horse. That is the whole of it. You are not building grip, you are removing the option to cheat.

The strength people talk about is a side effect. It arrives, but it is not the reason.

Two minutes, not twenty

Here is the part that changes how useful this is.

Work without stirrups is only doing anything while your position is still good. The second you start gripping up, rounding your back or gritting your teeth, you have stopped practising a good seat and started practising a bad one, with a great deal of feeling. Repetition is repetition. Your body does not know that you meant the first half.

So the rule I use is simple: go until it starts to go wrong, then stop.

For most riders coming to it fresh that is somewhere around one to two minutes of rising trot, and rather less of sitting trot. That sounds like nothing. Do it three or four times inside a session, with a walk on a long rein in between, and you have done six good minutes instead of twenty bad ones. Six good minutes, twice a week, will change your seat inside a couple of months. Twenty bad ones will mostly make you sore and put you off.

The other advantage of short sets is that you can do them anywhere in the session rather than saving them for the end, when both of you are already tired and the work is at its worst.

How to set it up so it is safe

Three things before you start, and none of them is optional.

Deal with the stirrups properly. Cross them over the withers, and pull the buckle down out of the leather block first so the buckle is not sitting under your thigh. If they still swing, take the leathers off altogether. A stirrup banging against a horse's side is not just annoying: it is an aid he did not ask for, given at random, and a horse who learns to tune that out is a horse who starts tuning out your leg as well.

Pick your horse and your day. This is work for a horse who is settled and warmed up, in a space he is relaxed in. It is not the exercise for the first ten minutes of a windy morning.

Have a neck strap. A stirrup leather buckled round the neck does the job. It gives you something to hold that is not the reins, and the reason that matters is that a rider who wobbles will grab, and if the only thing to grab is the mouth then your horse pays for your balance. A neck strap means he does not.

Ideally, especially early on, do it on the lunge with somebody controlling the horse so you can put everything into how you are sitting rather than into steering. If that is not available, a 20-metre circle on a quiet horse in walk is a perfectly reasonable place to start.

What good looks like, and the fault everybody has

The picture you are after is boring, and that is the point. Long leg, hanging from a soft hip, knee relaxed, toe roughly where it was, shoulders over hips, and a back that is upright without being rigid.

The fault I see more than any other is gripping with the knee. It is a completely natural response to feeling loose, and it does precisely the opposite of what you want: clamp the knee and you pivot on it, your lower leg swings back and your seat lifts out of the saddle. You end up further from the horse than when you started, working twice as hard.

The way out of it is not to try harder. It is to let the leg go heavy. Think about weight dropping down the inside of your thigh and out through your heel, and let the knee stay soft even though every instinct says to hold on. It feels less secure for about a fortnight and then it feels much more secure, permanently.

The second fault is the chair seat, where the leg slides forward and you end up sitting behind the movement. If that is happening, come back to walk. Trot is not going to fix it.

A sensible progression

There is no need to hurry any of this. Roughly:

1. Walk, on a circle, no stirrups, until you can sit there and still steer and still breathe. Longer than you think is worthwhile at this stage.
2. Rising trot without stirrups, in short sets. Harder than sitting for most people, and very good for making you use the leg you have rather than the stirrup you have not.
3. Sitting trot in short sets, on a circle, on a horse with a kind trot.
4. Canter, once the other three are genuinely comfortable and on a horse whose canter is easy to sit. Canter is often easier than sitting trot, which surprises people.

Move on when the previous step is dull, not when you can survive it.

When not to do it

Some honest limits, because this exercise gets prescribed far too generally.

If you have a back, hip or pelvis problem, ask the person treating you before you take your stirrups away, not afterwards. If your horse is young, green, sharp or sore through his back, this is not the week. If you are on your own with nobody about, keep it to walk. And if you are a rider whose confidence is the thing you are working on, there is no rule anywhere that says you have to do this at all. There are other ways to build a seat, and being frightened teaches you nothing except to be frightened.

I would rather a rider did two useful minutes than dreaded the whole lesson.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I ride without stirrups? Twice a week is plenty, in short sets rather than long ones. Consistency does far more here than volume, and overdoing it makes you sore enough that you skip the next one.

Will it make me a stronger rider? It will make you a more independent one, which is the thing worth having. Strength comes along with it, but a rider who has stopped depending on the stirrup is better than a rider who can merely endure not having one.

Should I do it in a jump saddle or a dressage saddle? Whichever you normally ride in. A dressage saddle is easier because of the straighter flap, but the point is to improve the seat you actually use, so there is no sense borrowing a saddle for it.

My horse speeds up as soon as I drop my stirrups. Why? Usually because your leg has gone quiet and still while your seat has got busier, and he is reading that as an ask. Come back to walk, settle, and start again with less. It also tends to sort itself out as your position stops moving about.

Is it safe to do without an instructor? In walk, on a settled horse, in a space you know, yes. For trot and canter I would want somebody on the ground, at least until the position holds up on its own.