Looseness in Riding (Losgelassenheit): The Educated Seat, Throughness, and True Contact

Jane Frizzell
Aug 31
7 min read

Updated: Sep 3

Introduction

Looseness in Riding (Losgelassenheit) is not jacuzzi relaxation or a vague “mellow feeling.” It is the deliberately trained, conductive softness of horse and rider that makes every other mechanical feature and beautiful quality in gymnastic (classical) riding co-act.

The Educated Seat is, in and of itself, loose. Without looseness there is zero throughness, zero true contact.

In this lecture from Class 108: Rider Position – The Independent, Educated Seat, Jane Frizzell explains how trained Losgelassenheit gives the rider more hinges, elasticity, resilience, conductivity, glue, and mass — the literal driving power of engaged hindquarters.

🎥 Watch the full lecture on YouTube here →

Watch Lecture 4 from Class 108: why trained looseness (Losgelassenheit) is the foundation of throughness and true contact.

Why Looseness Matters

Without looseness, horses and riders become stiff, resistant, and metabolically compromised.

Looseness is the gateway to Throughness ([Glossary: Durchlässigkeit]) and the condition that makes Contact possible.

Looseness must be deliberately trained in situ, not 'hoped for'.

This is why looseness is central to Class 107: Through-the-Back, Throughness & Contact and Class 108: The Educated Seat.

The Four Benefits of Trained Looseness

1. More Hinges and Rideability: Joints and their angles.

“That he has more hinges.” – Major Anders Lindgren

When Major Lindgren spoke about hinges (and he did so nearly every morning during the trot warmup on the oval), he meant the joints of the body — both horse and rider. Hinges are what allow freedom of movement, independence of body parts, and ultimately: true rideability.

“Every single joint in the rider’s body must be relaxed to allow the rider to sit in a supple position and in balance with the horse. Only then can the aids be applied effectively.”– PRINCIPLES of RIDING, Warendorf, p. 49

The more hinges that are available to the system, the greater the athletic advantage. Looseness makes these hinges operable. When muscles surrounding the joints are decontracted, the bones of the hindquarters — and our own bodies — can align, adjust, and vary their angles freely.

That adjustability is what makes a horse “rideable.”

Without looseness, the joints seize up, parts of the body move in stiff sections and blocks, and both horse and rider become like Frankenstein — stiff, uncoordinated, and resistant to motion. With looseness, every joint contributes; every hinge is available.

This independence of body parts is one of the most valuable athletic qualities a rider can bring to the saddle, and one of the greatest gifts we can cultivate in the horse.

More hinges = rideability.

Walk to Canter strikeoff showing rider looseness: plumb seat, inside weight, vanishing rein. Horse responds loose instant.

2. Elasticity & Resilience

“Riding is faster than speech.” – BMR

Elasticity is what gives riding its resilience. When a body — horse or rider — is stretched, bent, or displaced, elasticity is the quality that allows it to spring back into place immediately, without hesitation. It is not just flexibility; it is flexibility with memory — the ability to return to neutral instantly so the next stride can begin without delay.

This is why Major Lindgren reminded us constantly that riding is faster than speech. The exchanges of motion, momentum, balance, and impulse (including information) happen at light speed — faster than words can narrate.

Snap your fingers. How long was it from your mind to your fingers snapping? That’s the speed we’re dealing with in riding — instant communication from thought to action, from nerve to motion. In that rapid speed, only resilient, elastic tissue can keep up.

Looseness is the context for this resilient, rapid quality. The looser we are, the more resilient we become. Soft tissue — muscles, sinews, nerves embedded through the flesh — must be both conductive and resilient. They must return to their home spot, again and again, ready for what comes next.

Without elasticity, a body becomes stuck. Stiffness accumulates, movements take too long to recover, and both horse and rider lose their readiness. Moments take too long! Over time, lack of resilience alters the body at a metabolic level: stiffness does not just hinder motion, it changes the entire system.

Elasticity keeps the rider rapid, the horse receptive, and the dialogue between them alive. It is the unseen conductive springiness that makes looseness dynamic rather than limp, and it is why a horse with true elasticity feels both powerful and effortless at once.

Elasticity = Resilience = Readiness.

Slow motion as a loose-jointed horse spins on the haunches showing perfect connection: hindquarters and forehand, rider and horse, turn as one organism, bound by looseness and elasticity.

3. Glue:Throughness CONTACT

Softness does more than make motion possible — it also makes connection possible. When tissues and muscles are elastically loose, they act like glue within the system. This glue is what binds rider to saddle, what binds propulsive power to carrying power in the horse’s hindquarters, and even what connects the hind end to the front end. It is the connective glue between all the co-acting active elements.

“The rider/trainer has achieved his aim and fully trained his horse when both forces of the hindquarters – the propulsive force and the carrying power – bound by elasticity, are fully developed, and when he can use and balance the effects of these forces at will and in precise ratios.” – Gustav Steinbrecht, GYMNASIUM des PFERDES

Think about a postage stamp on an envelope. The stamp will go on a very real journey until it reaches its destination, but it adheres securely without squeezing, gripping, or clamping. That is the model for the rider’s contact — both the leg at the girth and the seat’s base of support, what Podhajsky called “the triangle of the seat.” Like glue, not like grip. Grip requires force. Glue just adheres. One imposes on the horse; the other connects you to him.

(Major Lindgren, with his Swedish accent, pronounced it as “Pohstaj Stomp.”)

The glue adhesive of the postage stamp is the same binding and wedding Steinbrecht and the other masters of every nation describe: the forces of the hindquarters are united by the glue of elasticity. Without that glue, the forces split apart — the horse may thrust but not carry, or carry without thrust. With the glue of elasticity, the rider’s ideas go through to the horse, and the horse himself can govern both dynamic forces of the hindquarters in precise ratios — in the twinkling of an eye.

Softness is literally adhesive. It keeps us in the saddle through contact, not pressure. It binds the horse’s powers together so they are easy for him to coordinate, and so they are accessible to the rider’s ideas through the natural aids. And it ensures the entire system remains one living organism rather than two foreign, clashing parts.

Glue = Connection. Adhesive, not grip.

BMR warning: written words are forensically indexed and digitally watermarked. Influencers copying without citation will be exposed. Riders: vet everything, use BMR — the litmus.

4. Mass: The Weight of Looseness in Riding

Softness, when it is real and trained, does not make the body lighter — it makes it heavier. Relaxed, resilient tissue has density. It yields mass.

The horse feels this mass more vividly when the rider is loose. A tight or braced rider feels scattered, sharp, and confusing to carry — even if she is literally fewer pounds per square inch of surface area. A loose rider feels whole, present, and clear to the horse. The looser the rider’s body tone, the more obvious this plain living weight becomes. And this sensation of mass is what the horse knows to carry — and his sensation of load is precisely what he desires to advance. This IS the forward thought.

There is another feature that amplifies the sensation of mass: its location.

Mass is most discernible when it rests within the plumb line of gravity—the line where weight naturally wants to be. This is the origin of the term aplomb—from the French à plomb, ‘to drop,’ as with a plummet. In riding, this plumb line runs ear shoulder hip heel, as coined by the dead horsemen of history. When the rider’s mass is aligned ear shoulder hip heel, the feeling is obvious to the horse—easiest for him to carry, and most harmonious with natural law.

True mass is not heaviness for its own sake. It is centered weight aligned with the plumb line. [Read the article on GRAVITY]. Only in that alignment does the horse feel the purity of the load: not pushing him down, not blocking his motion, but settled where balance and physics make sense. He will start to use it. A great athlete will exploit it.

The well trained horse organizes himself to carry this mass forward -- to advance it deliberately on the line of travel chosen by the rider. The horse uses it to govern, adjust, and direct his own propulsive force. It becomes the literal driving power of engaged hindquarters: weight he understands, load he accepts, weight he wants to, and can, carry with ease. It is what engages.

Softness, therefore, is not emptiness. It is substance. It is mass. And this sensation of weight — the weight of the seat — is the primary, instigating, and most influential part of the entire adhesive relationship between rider and horse. And this only exists in the context of LOOSE.

Mass = The sensation of true weight in the plumb line = CARRYING.

***

Looseness, Throughness, and Contact

REMEMBER: Without Looseness, there is no Throughness. Without Throughness, there is no true Contact.

Looseness (Losgelassenheit) is prerequisite for Schwung, which in turn enables Durchlässigkeit ([Glossary links]).
Without looseness, the natural aids cannot “go through.”
With looseness and practice, horse and rider become conductive and fully transmissive of motion, momentum, and impulse — including information.

Classical Gymnastic Discipline

This doctrine is not new. It runs straight through Steinbrecht’s Gymnasium des Pferdes, the cavalry schools of Saumur, Ft. Riley, Tor di Quinto and Warendorf, through all Iberian tradition (the root of Vacquero), plus the Spanish Riding School in Vienna. It's used daily always every moment by legitimate riders/trainers.

As Major Anders Lindgren said: “Horses go as they are ridden."