Hi it's Josie and today i'd like to talk to you about your weight aids if you like
these videos i would love it if you'd give us a thumbs up subscribe to the channel and hit the
notification bell i pop a video out every friday and i'd love to share them with you so by the end
of today's video you will know what your weight aids are and how to use them and if you stay right
to the end i'm going to show you how they really benefit you when it comes to a canter transition
all right so what are weight aids weight aids are basically what happens in our seat and our
seat runs from really our knee all the way over to the other knee but today i'm going
to specifically talk about literally your upper thigh through so what i'd like you to think about
is think about your seat as if you're looking down on it or your saddle is a clock face so
the pommel the front of the saddle is 12 o'clock the cantle the back of the saddle is six o'clock
your right hand side is three o'clock and your left hand side is nine o'clock now you
need to know where your seat bones are for this exercise if you don't go and find yourself a nice
flat chair put your hand underneath yourself or you can do it in the saddle if you feel
safe enough put your hand right underneath and sit on it and you'll feel a bony bit
poking down that's your seat bones your seat really is those two seat bones and the bit between
up towards your pubic bone so that becomes a triangle of your seat so what do our seat aids
do our seat aids form part of the symphony of our aids and they're never usually given
on their own they're given with your other aids as well so when i want a horse to come to a halt
or to come down a transition from a trot to a walk a canter to a trot i will use my seat aids along
with my rein aids so seat aids and weight aids are an interchangeable term and i'll probably use
both of them in this video today sorry but that they are interchangeable they're the same thing
so this is one of the reasons you need to work on having a very good stable
seat that you have control of a good position in the saddle because if you're moving all over the
place like this how can your horse understand that if I do that I want him to come that way
to the right now you didn't hardly see me do anything because I used my weight aids so our
weight aids are part of a symphony they help the horse understand what you want him to do
they're used for basically go stop and turn which are basics of what a horse should understand and i
use my weight aids even when I'm teaching a very green horse so when my horse is really green I'm
still using my seat aids I always use them I can't stop using them they become such a habit that it's
an unconscious thing that I do but obviously on a younger greener horse you will use a little bit
more of your other aids and you want to finesse the horse down to understand your weight aids
so if you're just going to go and do this on your horse and he hasn't learned this don't expect him
to just do it it's part of the foundation you put on your horse nobody told him that when you move
your seat to six o'clock he should stop or slow down but if you do that every time before you use
your rein aids or if you go to 12 o'clock before you use your leg aids your horse will put that
together and then you will have a horse that moves off your seat aids so when you're thinking of that
clock face if you think of how a clock face looks and then there's the center bit where the hands
sit when i'm sitting in neutral i am sitting on that spot there all my weight should be evenly
distributed around that clock face if i want spider to stop i will shift my weight towards the
six o'clock mark like i just did then i did not even close my fingers on the rein but i would have
if he hadn't have listened to my seats so i always put my seat on first and then i will use my rein
aids for stop if i need to if i don't need to i won't and there i did not need to i didn't even
need to close because my rein aids start with a closing of my fist i didn't even need to do
that he stopped from me putting my weight at six o'clock and if you go back and have a look
you probably won't even see me do it but horses are so sensitive that they feel it
which is again why you need a very good seat if you don't have a good seat you giving your horse
a lot of white noise and he doesn't understand any of the aids that you're trying to give him
so to ask spider to come from a trot to a walk i sit back on the six o'clock spot i'm trying to
keep my hands forward so you could see that he did a down transition without the reins
so if i want my horse to go forward i will use my seat and move a little bit more weight onto
my thighs onto my stirrups and this is tiny guys you won't see it hopefully and as i do
that i may or may not use my legs if spider will go just from my forward aid let's see if he will
so i'm just warning him a little bit now i'm going to go forward a little bit with my yeah
on the 12 o'clock spot and then he went forward
if he hadn't gone forward from just my weight I would have added a little bit of leg
so three o'clock and nine o'clock what are they for they are basically to help your horse to turn
so I'm sitting in the centre of the saddle here over the hands for want of a better way to put it
and now I'm going to weight my right seat bone a little bit more my right hip drops and my knee
drops and you can see what spider is doing here I'm trying not to steer him so that you can see
that he is following the weight now I'm going to weight my left one and see if I can get him
to turn left we're going to run into the fence so I'll just help him good boy to turn so we'll ride
straight and I'm just shifting weight from the centre where the hands are to at nine o'clock here
my hips dropped a little my knee drops a little tiny little bit more weight in that stirrup and
you can see I can possibly get him to come all the way around I'll see if I can change the rein
we might run out of video camera here we go
good boy i want you to remember when you do this you don't sit slumped you need to sit yourself up
tall and carry yourself on your horse if you take your legs off of the saddle like this coming mine
are coming away right from my hips as you can see my upper thigh you should settle right into
the center of your saddle and that should be if as long as you're symmetrical or reasonably
symmetrical that will be sitting on your on the hands the clock face the center of the clock face
so now i'm going to show you how you can use this in canter
i've done another video about canter aids and i'll link that up here and i'll link at the end
of this video so you should understand the aids for canter because there's multiple aids that
help your horse as i said the seat weight aids are just part of the orchestra of your aids
i'm going to ask for left canter and part of your aids are to weight your inside seat bone
and the way i think about that using the clock face analogy is i will put a little bit more
weight on my inside seat bone but i will move it towards 10 o'clock rather than the actual nine
o'clock sideways so it's sort of in that direction there which is actually where i want the horse
to go if i'm on a curved line and i want him to jump into canter you do it from sit trot because
you actually can't have that much seat aid when you're rise trotting because you're in and out of
the saddle you can have weight aids because you can weight your stirrups so i will move
my seat from its central position towards six o'clock that's part of the half halt that's part
of the listen move your weight backwards it'll be for one stride and then i will weight my
inside seat bone around about the ten o'clock mark and we'll see how we go on the left rein
so sit six o'clock canter good boy he just needs to be a little more
forward in the transition but that's something I'll work on
half halt and canter good good boy try that again
good good boy and that's it I hope you've enjoyed that hope you go out and play with that
don't forget to like and subscribe to the channel and I'll see you next time
you