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hello everyone i'm amelia today we are talking about stirrups and stirup length
i get a lot of questions asked about this be sure to give this video a thumbs up and
subscribe if you want to learn more about riding and dressage tips so
the best way to determine whether or not your stirrups are the correct length i get
this question asked so often from people um is that what you're going to do is you're going to
take your foot out of the stirrup and just let your leg hang long and what you want is that
you want the bottom of your stirrup to be about level with your ankle bone so you can see here
how when i take my foot out of the stirrup my my leg is just a little bit longer than the stirrup
the bottom of the stirrup is level with my ankle bone so that if i were to get my stirrup i just
bring my toe a little bit up and get my toe in the stirrup like so and then i make sure when once i
get my foot in the stirrup a couple of things is that the stirrup should be perpendicular to your
foot so the stirrup goes across the ball of your foot you don't want the stirrup to be like this
or you might lose it or too far on your toe so you want that syrup to be across the ball of your foot
and then when you're sitting here in the saddle i would say that about 80 of your weight is in your
seat so basically like the weight of your upper body should go into your seat bones
and the weight of your legs should go into your stirrups so some of the most common mistakes that
i see people make as far as their stirrups is one is people put way too much weight into their
stirrups so if you put like all of your weight into your stirrups it makes you do this you see
how like my lower leg is jammed too far forward and i'm actually pushing my seat out of the saddle
so you don't want to do that the other mistake that i see happen a lot especially at the canter
and riders that tend to grip with the saddle is they draw their legs up and they lose their
stirrup so they actually draw their feet out of the stirrups so ideally you want to have the
weight of your legs into your stirrups you want to make sure that your heel stays underneath of
your hips so let me show you this while i'm going around is that i'm always kind of aware
of the feeling in the bottom of my foot so i always have a little bit of pressure in my
stirrups this allows me to stay grounded and balanced in the saddle so that's why
we have stirrups is that they help us to stay a little bit more balanced in the saddle now
if i need to use my leg like if i need to give my horse a little kick i give my horse a little kick
and then i push my heel down again so that i make sure to keep the weight in my stirrup
if for whatever reason you happen to lose your stirrup so if your foot accidentally slides out
of the syrup what you want to do is you want to lift your toe up and then you have to kind
of fish around and like when you when you feel the stirrup hit your foot you know you're close so you
have to kind of fish around and find your syrup again what you don't want to do is if you lose
your stirrup you don't want to like lean over the side of your horse because that could cause
you to fall off if you have to stop at first to pick up your stirrup then you can do that
so the reason that your stirrups are important is that they allow you to post the trot so
if i'm going here
basically the stirrups are what allow me to get my seat out of the saddle
and so i'm putting a little bit of pressure in my foot every time i come out of the saddle
and that's a lot of why we have stirrups is because they give us better balance
and better coordination in our ride good girl mama so as far as stirrups length if you're a
jumper rider or a hunter they have their stirrups a little bit shorter dressage riders tend to ride
with a little longer syrup depending on your horse and your comfort level like for example with her
because she's kind of small and my legs are really long i tend to have just a little bit of a shorter
stir up than i might have on a bigger bodied horse also if i'm riding a young horse that i
feel a little nervous about like that i'm worried that might try to like jump around or do something
unexpected sometimes i'll have a little bit of a shorter stirrup i'm going to show you quickly here
what happens if your stirrups are too long so if you need to adjust your stirrups in the saddle
first of all you want to make sure that your horse is not going to freak out and like run
away with you i trust this horse you take your foot out of the stirrup you slide your leg back
you pull down on the top of of your stirrup now i'm going to lengthen my stirrups two holes
and show you guys what happens when your stirrups are too long
so you can see how now like when i have my foot out of the stirrup you can tell it's too long
and when i put my foot in the stirrup i just feel like i'm kind of reaching a lot for the stirrups
let me lengthen the other one also okay so now you can see like my syrup is way too long you see
how basically i'm having to like really reach for my stir up and unfortunately with my stirrup this
long i'm gonna have a really hard time getting my leg on my horse because like in order to
get my leg on my horse i'm gonna have to really draw my heel up now let me show you what happens
if i try to post the trot like this so if i ask her to go up to trot she's not even going to trot
but you see what my leg is doing like you see how my leg is like all over the place and my body is
all over the place like i have no stability in the saddle whatsoever so
that's like really perfectly illustrates why your syrup length is so important now let me show you
what happens if your syrups are too short so i'm gonna just quickly shorten my stirrups okay so
now my stirrups are too short and you see a couple of things are happening here one is that
my my knee is pushing up against this thigh block so i'm no longer able to really keep my my low
my thigh behind the thigh block where it's supposed to be the other thing is i feel
like my lower leg is like way back here in her flank so if your stirrups are too short like this
it's going to cause you to pitch a little bit forward and your butt to go far
too far out behind you and your lower leg to go too far back it's also gonna make it so that when
you post you like are posting way too far out of the saddle like this so you really don't want
to have your syrups this short especially if you're trying to ride dressage if you're a jumper
rider and you need to be like in a little more of a two point like this then it's okay to have
a little bit of a shorter stirrup but in general the general rule is that when you take your feet
out of the stirrups you want that stirrup to be right at the ankle bone here on the inside of your
boot and that's gonna give you a lot of security and balance in the saddle so let me know in the
comments if this is helpful play around a little with your stirrup length try like a little shorter
a little longer make sure your stirrups are even sometimes the left stir up will get stretched out
more because you're always getting on and off on the left side so you do sometimes need to switch
your stirrup leathers to make sure that they stay even so hopefully this was helpful check out the
description i have a free mini course on rider position that's awesome and i know it will help
give you some more details about your entire rider position and thanks so much for watching
you