Gravity: The Only Balance in Riding | Balance Isn’t What You "Feel" Unless Your Seat is Educated

Jane Frizzell
Aug 24
2 min read

Updated: Aug 27

The True Center of Gravity in Riding

The center of gravity in riding is not relative to what the horse “likes” or what feels familiar to the rider—it is fixed to the center of the Earth.

It is not what you sense is harmonious or intimate. This is where modern riding gets dangerously confused.

Balance isn’t relative to a horse’s opinion or a rider’s nervous system. Balance is relative to the plumbline—the line drawn from your body down through the planet’s gravity itself.

Why Gravity Matters

The point of classical horsemanship is to train him so that over time his way of going exploits natural physics. Gravity is the most reliable force we have on this planet. Educated riders submit to it and use it.

The mistake? Most riders ride to what “feels okay” to their personal nervous system. Pilots know better: they are trained to believe their instruments, not their seat-of-the-pants feelings. In fog, a pilot who trusts his feelings instead of his gauges may be in a nosedive while believing he’s level.

That is exactly what is happening in most U.S. arenas: horses are propelled downhill on the forehand, riders believe it feels “normal,” and both are in a nosedive.

Starting the Green Horse

How we back, start, and sit upon a baby green horse is not “how to sit a horse.”

In the beginning, we may gingerly adjust to the youngster’s wobbliness to reassure him. But that is a short chapter, not the book. Once trust is established, the job of classical training is to teach horse and rider to find the plumbline—together.

That plumbline must align with the horse’s most powerful structures: the coxo-femoral joints of the hindquarters, surrounded by the strongest muscles of the body. This is the seat of true carrying power. and the source of all legitimate motion.

"Motion is the element of the horse and all motion starts in the hindquarters." Gustav Steinbrecht, GYMNASIUM

The Misload and Its Consequences

Most riders, instead, drop the load in the horse’s back right under their overpriced saddles. The result is limitation, if not outright damage. Horses 'trained' this way learn to be mentally fragile, resentful, and resistant when a true trainer asks them to carry forward like adults or the professionals they could be.

Instead of knowledgeably complying, they sulk: “My mom doesn’t make me.” That “mom” is no trainer at all—just someone too lazy to teach the horse to use his body as designed.

Riding From Behind

So what does “riding from behind” actually mean? So what is the real definition of “forwards”? These are not sentimental terms. They are physics, written into every true classical manual.

Logic is required. And logic, sadly, is absent in most of today’s riding culture. No rider’s “talent” exempts them from 9th-grade physics.