The Independent Seat: Phase 2 - Follow the Movement

Before you start: everything here is general guidance to work from, not coaching or advice tailored to you. It isn't a plan built for your body, your history or your level. Scale it to your own level, work within what you can do well, and regress anything that's beyond you for now.

If you've worked through Phase 1, you can find your seat bones, your hips have room to move, and your breath reaches further than your chest. You've built the foundation. Now we ask the body to do something with it.

Phase 2 is about following. Phase 1 aimed to free what was stuck while you and the horse were relatively still - at halt, at walk, on the floor at home. Phase 2 is where the seat learns to follow a moving horse: the rise and fall of sitting trot, the rock of canter, the bigger, looser movement that asks more of you than a quiet hack ever does.

The independent seat is not a beginner's problem that you solve once and leave behind. It's a skill with no ceiling. A rider can have a genuinely good seat and still be refining the depth of it, the timing of it, the finest separation between what moves and what stays quiet, twenty years in. The horse changes, the movement gets bigger, the work gets more collected, and the seat is asked for again at a higher resolution. So wherever you are - still finding it, or polishing something already good - there's a layer of this for you. What follows isn't remedial. It's the thing we all keep working on.

The skill at the centre of this phase is dissociation. Your pelvis follows the horse while your body stays organised above it, your head stays still, your hands follow the contact, and your legs hang. Each part doing its own job, all at once. That sounds simple and it is one of the hardest things in riding, because it asks parts of your body to do opposite things at the same time. The pelvis moves a great deal. The body above it stays quiet. The skill is in holding both together, and in the timing of it - and that timing is what keeps developing for a lifetime.

What is above your seat also decides what your pelvis can do. Your upper back, your ribs, your shoulders and your head all shape what your pelvis is able to do. A stiff upper back forces your lower back to compensate, which locks the pelvis. Tight shoulders pull your hands into a brace. That's section 2.

One thing to be clear about up front. The seat we're building is for any rider, at any level. The exercises at the end are foundation-level strength training - the beginning of the loaded strength work, pitched so anyone can start slowly, whatever their gym experience. If you already lift, they'll feel like a warm-up; do them with intent and they still do their job, and Phase 3 will load you properly. The entry into the strength work is deliberately gentle.

As in Phase 1, the teaching comes first and the exercises come last. Five exercises, building on the five you already know. Riders who understand why they're doing something change faster than riders following a list.

1. What "following the movement" actually means +

Following the movement is not a feeling you can summon by trying. It's a set of things your body does, and once you understand what those things are, you can build them.

When researchers measure how skilled riders coordinate with the horse, one finding comes up again and again: the pelvis is tightly coupled to the horse - it matches the movement closely - while the body above, the head and the feet are far more loosely coupled, free to do something other than what the pelvis is doing (Wilkins et al. 2022). That separation is dissociation. Following is the pelvis moving with the horse while the rest of you doesn't.

        The thing that makes this hard: your pelvis and your lower back are used to moving together. Stand up, sit down, walk, bend to pick something up - in all of these, your pelvis and spine move as one piece. Nothing in daily life teaches them to move separately. Riding asks for exactly that, every single stride. The pelvis tips and rolls and swings, and the body above it has to not come along for the ride.
      

The difference timing makes

What separates a developing seat from a deep one? When researchers compare the muscle activity of less experienced and more experienced riders, they find two different strategies. The less experienced rider tends to tense the muscles on both sides of the body, switch on together and hold, a kind of all-on, all-off stiffness that grips and braces. The more experienced rider's body works in a finer pattern: one side switches on as the other releases, in time with the horse, so the seat follows the movement rather than clamping it.

That shift - from bracing both sides at once to a co-ordinated give-and-take timed to the horse - is a large part of what we mean by an independent seat. The timed, side-to-side coordination keeps refining for as long as you ride, getting quicker, finer and more automatic.

Why following needs movement, not stillness

This is worth saying clearly because the language of riding works against it. We tell riders to "sit still," "be quiet," "stop moving about." But the skilled seat is not still. The research is consistent: the pelvis of a skilled rider moves more than a beginner's, not less. Münz and colleagues (2014) measured over 11° of pelvic pitch in professional riders at sitting trot, against around 8° in beginners.

What's still is the body above. The head. The hands carrying the contact. The pelvis underneath is working hard. When a rider looks still and quiet on a horse, what you're seeing is a busy pelvis under a calm upper body. The stillness is in the wrong place to be the goal - it's a result of the pelvis doing its job so well that nothing above it has to react.

The role of tone

Following is not floppy. As I said in Phase 1, "just relax" is as unhelpful as "sit still," because tone and control are needed in different amounts at different moments. The pelvis follows with a certain softness, but the body above holds with a certain tone, and the amount of each shifts constantly as the horse moves. A rider who goes completely loose collapses. A rider who braces everywhere blocks. The seat lives in between, and it's a moving target, not a fixed setting.

2. What sits above your seat, and why it decides what your seat can do +

This is the section I want you to read carefully, because it explains something that holds a lot of riders at a particular level for a long time, no matter how much they work on their hips and pelvis. The reason often isn't the pelvis at all. It's what sits above it.

Your pelvis is the meeting point. Below it is the chain of hip, knee and ankle that we started in Phase 1 and load properly in Phase 3. Above it is your lower back, your upper back, your ribs, your shoulders and your head. The reason I work above the pelvis as much as on it: if the structures above your pelvis can't do their own jobs, they steal movement from your pelvis to compensate. The pelvis ends up doing their work as well as its own, and a pelvis doing two jobs can't follow the horse cleanly.

Your upper back

Your upper back - the part your ribs attach to - is built to extend (straighten) and to rotate. Most of us have lost a lot of both, from years at desks and on phones. When your upper back can't extend, when someone tells you to sit tall, often you arch your lower back to fake the height. Often coupled with shoving the ribs forward into rib flare. Now you can't follow because a hollow lower back is a locked lower back.

When your upper back can't rotate, the rotation has to come from somewhere, and it comes from your lower back - which is built for almost no rotation at all, around 5° in total. Every time you ride a circle, ride a corner, ask for bend, or follow the horse's neck with a turning aid, your upper back should be doing that rotation. If it can't, your lower back is forced to, and your pelvis loses its stable base. It's why there's an upper-back rotation exercise in my programmes with an example in this phase.

Your ribs

Your ribs join onto your upper back at the back and your breastbone at the front, and your diaphragm attaches around their lower edge. Stiff ribs mean a stiff upper back and a restricted breath at the same time - the two problems feed each other. A ribcage that can't move means your upper body moves as one block, and a block can't stay quiet above a moving pelvis. It either travels with the pelvis (no following) or braces against it (a hard, fighting seat).

Your shoulders and your hands

Here's a chain that surprises riders. Your lats - the big muscles down the sides of your back - attach from your upper arm all the way down to your pelvis. When they're short or gripping, they pull your arm down and back, which is the opposite of the arm following the contact forward. So a rider trying to give a soft, following hand, working only on their hand, gets nowhere - because the hand is being pulled back by a muscle attaching to the pelvis. The fix is up the chain, not at the rein.

Short muscles at the front of the shoulder round the upper back forward, which - as above - forces the lower back to compensate, which destabilises the pelvis. And shoulders that hike up toward the ears travel into a tight neck, which limits the next thing.

Your head

Your head weighs about the same as a bowling ball. Where it sits changes everything below it. When the deep muscles at the front of your neck are weak, your head drifts forward, and the muscles at the back and top of your neck hold it there in constant tension. That tension limits the fine position sense in your neck - and that position sense is part of how a skilled rider stays balanced without staring down at the horse's neck. Where your head sits, and what it's balancing on, is enough of a subject in its own right that it has its own section - it's section 4, on your eyes and your inner ear.

        The short version: your pelvis can only follow the horse cleanly if the parts above it are doing their own jobs and not stealing movement from it. A stiff upper back, locked ribs, gripping shoulders or a forward head all force the pelvis to compensate. Free the upstream, and the pelvis is finally allowed to do only its own job - which is to follow.
      

3. Why Phase 2 is about control, not just range +

Phase 1 was mostly about range and awareness - getting the room to move and learning to feel where you are. Phase 2 is about control: holding position while something tries to move you, and lowering slowly under load rather than collapsing.

Here's why that distinction matters for the seat. When you sit the trot, the horse's back rises underneath you twice in every stride and drops away again - and as it rises it carries you up and forward, into each moment of suspension, not straight up like a lift. The job of your seat is not to be thrown by that - it's to absorb the push by letting your hip, knee and a little of your lower back give, then to control the return as the horse drops. That controlled giving, and the controlled return is not strength in the sense of lifting something heavy. It's the strength to lengthen under load without collapsing, and to hold position against a force.

That muscle action - working hard while the muscle is lengthening rather than shortening - is the eccentric phase. Your thighs do it going downstairs, not up. It's the quality the seat needs more than almost any other, and it's the one I build most deliberately. Holding still has its place, and lifting has its place, but the seat runs on eccentric control - absorbing a force and controlling the return.

        What this means in practice: the rider who bounces in sitting trot usually doesn't lack strength in the ordinary sense. They lack eccentric control - the ability to absorb the horse's push and control the return. You can't fix bouncing by gripping harder or by doing more sit-ups. You fix it by building the body's capacity to absorb and control movement, which is what this phase does.
      

Single leg, because riding is single-leg work

Riding is not a symmetrical, two-legged activity in the way standing is. In trot, each diagonal loads one side. In canter, the leading leg advances one side more than the other. Around a turn, the two sides of your body are doing different things. If you only ever train both legs together, you build a capacity the horse never asks for and miss the one it asks for constantly. Bilateral builds the base, Single-leg work exposes the side-to-side differences.

4. Your eyes, your inner ear, and why we sometimes close your eyes +

You balance using three sources of information: your eyes, the movement and tilt sensors in your inner ear, and the position sense from your joints and muscles. Most people, most of the time, lean heavily on their eyes. Take the eyes away and they wobble, because the other two senses are under-developed from lack of use.

The research on riders is clear that the skilled ones have shifted the balance. Olivier and colleagues (2017) found professional riders kept their heads stable even when vision was disrupted or removed, because they could rely on their inner ear and their joint position sense. Club riders couldn't - without their eyes, their heads moved far more. The same study found professional riders were less thrown off by a misleading visual frame, meaning they trusted their body's sense of upright over what their eyes were telling them.

This matters for riding in a very practical way. A rider who depends on vision to balance has a problem the moment they need to look somewhere other than straight down at the horse's neck - which is most of the time. They also lose their balance the instant something unexpected happens and their eyes dart to it. A rider who can balance on their inner ear and body sense keeps their seat when they look up, look around a turn, or get surprised.

        Why we train with eyes closed: closing your eyes forces the other two senses to step up. It's the most direct way to train the shift the research finds in skilled riders, and it's done entirely off the horse - on the floor, where you can build the capacity safely. You'll find the eyes-closed balance work in the exercises.
      

5. Your crooked side (everyone has one) +

Every rider is asymmetric. You have a stronger side and a weaker side, a side that bends easily and a side that resists, a more co-ordinated hand and a less co-ordinated one. This is normal. It comes from being right or left handed, from how you sit and sleep, from old injuries, from the simple fact that bodies aren't symmetrical. You are not broken. You are a human being on a horse.

Bigger movement and single-leg work expose differences that gentle, two-legged work hides making you paying attention to your body. Things you never noticed become obvious. One canter lead feels easy and balanced; the other feels like a scramble. You can sit tall turning one way but collapse turning the other. One leg hangs long and quiet; the other creeps up.

Some of what you feel is you. Some of it is your horse, who is also asymmetric, and some of it is the two of you amplifying each other. As a coach I'd untangle that with you on a case-by-case basis. For the off-horse work, the principle is simple: train both sides, give the weaker or stiffer side a little more, and don't let the strong side do all the talking.

        What not to do: don't panic about asymmetry, and don't try to force yourself symmetrical by main strength. The goal isn't to be identical left and right - that's neither achievable nor necessary. The goal is to close the gap enough that your asymmetry isn't dictating how you ride, and to be able to choose to load one side when riding asks for it, rather than being stuck on your dominant side without meaning to be.
      

6. Keeping your breath when the work gets harder +

In Phase 1 you built a fuller breath - sideways and backwards into the lower ribs, reaching the back, the diaphragm moving properly. You practised it lying down, sitting, standing, and at walk. That was the breath at rest, or close to it.

Phase 2 raises the demand. Now your body is working - the pelvis following, the upper body holding, one leg loaded, something trying to rotate you - and the question becomes whether your breath survives the work. For most riders, under load, it doesn't. The breath gets shallow or held. You'll see it in the exercises and you'll feel it when riding: the moment something asks effort of you, you stop breathing and brace instead.

Holding your breath to brace can give you a fast, cheap stability - lock everything down, hold the air in, and you feel momentarily solid. We use a form of this for intra abdominal pressure when lifting heavier or engaging the deep core. But if it's the wrong kind of solid, a held breath that locks your ribs and upper back, is exactly the stiffness section 2 told you blocks the pelvis.

        The skill to build: staying stable while still breathing. Your deep core and your breath can work at the same time - the support comes from the whole pressure system managing itself, not from holding air like a held weight. In the exercises below, the breath is part of the exercise, not an afterthought. If you can't keep breathing through a movement, that's the movement telling you it's at the edge of what you can control. Drop the load or the range until the breath comes back, then rebuild from there.  ANd keep the ribs stacked over pelvis.  Ribs flaring pull the diagphram out of it's functional pattern.  Gripped ribs (think 6 pack engaged hard) flare the ribs at the bottom.
      

This carries directly onto the horse. The rider who holds their breath into every transition, every corner, every moment of doubt is bracing through their ribs and blocking their own seat. Breathing through those moments - which sounds almost too simple to matter - is one of the most direct things you can do to free your seat when riding. It's not a relaxation tip or wellness woo. It's mechanics.

7. Putting it into your body: the Phase 2 work +

Five exercises, building on the five from Phase 1. These ask more of you - more control, more load, more attention to which side is doing what. Keep the Phase 1 work as your warm-up: the breath, the hip CARs, and the ankle work are a good way to prepare for these.

Total time: around 25 minutes.

Frequency: 3 times a week, on non-consecutive days where you can, for 6 to 8 weeks before moving to Phase 3.

Equipment: a mat, a wall, a sturdy step or low box (15-30cm), a resistance band or cable, and a light dumbbell or kettlebell (start lighter than you think - 2 to 5kg for most people to begin).

Before you load anything. These exercises add weight and single-leg balance. If you're new to strength work, do every exercise with no weight first until the movement is smooth and you can keep breathing through it. Add load only then, and add it in small steps. If you have a balance or inner-ear condition, do the single-leg work next to a wall or rail. Pain is a stop signal - discomfort of effort is fine, sharp or joint pain is not.

EXERCISE 1

Hip Airplane

Trains the standing hip to control rotation under load - the canter roll and the demands of turning and lateral work.

Why this one. Most rider leg work goes straight back and forth (lunges, squats). The horse asks your hip to control rotation, especially in canter, where the horse's back rolls away from the leading hind and your hip has to manage it. This exercise loads exactly that rotational control on one leg, which is where your glutes and deep hip muscles learn to stabilise the pelvis while it's being twisted - the thing that lets you sit a canter without being thrown sideways.

How to do it

Stand on your right leg, next to a wall or rail you can touch for balance. Soften the right knee slightly.
Hinge forward from the hip, sending your left leg straight out behind you, until your body and back leg form roughly one line, tipped forward. Hands can reach down or stay near the wall.
From here, slowly rotate your pelvis open - let the left hip turn up toward the ceiling - then slowly rotate it closed, turning the left hip down toward the floor. The standing leg stays still; the movement is your pelvis rotating over the fixed hip.
Move slowly. 6 to 8 rotations, then switch legs.

Progression: start with no weight and a hand on the wall. Progress to no hand. Then hold a light weight across your lower back. The slower you go, the more your hip has to control.

Look out for

The standing knee rolling in or out. Keep it pointing the same way throughout - the rotation comes from your pelvis and hip, not your knee. If the knee tracks around, reduce the range.

Sensation cue

Deep work in the side and back of the standing hip - that's your glute med and deep rotators doing their job. Burning in the standing thigh alone usually means you've stopped using the hip and are holding with the quad.

When to stop

Sharp pain in the standing hip or groin, or balance you can't control even with a hand on the wall. Build the standing-leg strength with the step-down (Exercise 3) first if balance is the limit.

EXERCISE 2

Half-Kneeling Pallof Press

Builds the capacity to hold your body still against a force trying to rotate you - with one hip in the riding position.

Why this one. When riding, your body is constantly being asked not to rotate when the horse moves under you. This exercise trains exactly that: a band pulls you sideways and you resist, keeping your body square. Done in a half-kneeling position, your back hip is in extension - the same shape it's in when you ride - so you're training the resist-rotation skill in a position that transfers. It also lengthens and loads the hip flexor on the back leg, the one that pulls so many riders into a tipped pelvis. Start standing bilaterally as a regression.

How to do it

Anchor a band or cable at chest height to your side. Kneel on the leg nearest the anchor - right knee down, left foot planted in front, both hips and knees roughly 90°. Sit tall, back hip pushing gently forward so you feel the front of that right hip lengthen.
Hold the band with both hands at your chest. There's a sideways pull toward the anchor.
Press the band straight out in front of your chest and hold. The pull now tries to twist you toward the anchor. Don't let it - stay square, hips and shoulders facing forward.
Hold for 2 to 3 seconds, bring it back to your chest, repeat. 8 to 10 presses, then turn around and do the other side.

Progression: move further from the anchor or use a stronger band. Keep breathing the whole time - if you have to hold your breath to stay square, the resistance is too high.

Look out for

Twisting toward the anchor as you press out, watch you are not hollowing the low back, keep a slight posterior pelvic tilt. Stay tall, keep the back hip open, keep your shoulders and hips pointing forward.

Sensation cue

Deep work through the side and front of your body as you resist the twist, and a stretch through the front of the down-leg's hip. That hip stretch is the bonus - it's lengthening the muscle that tips your pelvis when riding.

When to stop

Any lower back pinching. Usually it means the back hip has collapsed and the lower back is arching to compensate - reset, lengthen the back hip, try again with less resistance.

EXERCISE 3

Slow Step-Down

Builds eccentric strength through hip, knee and ankle together - the absorbing quality the seat runs on.

Why this one. This is the eccentric control from section 3, trained directly. As you lower slowly off a step on one leg, your hip, knee and ankle all have to absorb and control the descent together, on one side, while your pelvis stays level. That is almost exactly what your seat does absorbing the horse in sitting trot - one side at a time, controlling a downward force. The rider who bounces is missing this. This builds it.

How to do it

Stand on a step or low box on your right leg, left foot hanging off the edge. Hold a rail to support if needed. Stand tall, pelvis level.
Slowly bend the right leg and lower your left foot toward the floor (keeping the toes up towards shins in dorsi flexion). Take 3 to 5 seconds to come down. The aim is to just touch the floor with the left heel, light as you can, then come back up.
The slow lowering is the exercise. Don't drop - control every centimetre. Keep your pelvis level the whole way; don't let the hanging hip drop.
6 to 8 slow lowers, then switch legs.

Progression: start with a low step (15cm) and no weight. Increase the step height toward 30cm, then hold a light weight. Start with a weight in the same hand as the working leg or in front of chest. Always keep the lowering slow - speed defeats the purpose.

Look out for

The knee caving inward, or the hanging-side hip dropping. Knee tracks over the middle of the foot; pelvis stays level. If either fails, lower the step or slow down further.

Sensation cue

Work through the whole standing leg - hip, thigh and around the knee - and into the standing glute keeping the pelvis level. This is meant to feel like controlled effort, not strain.

When to stop

Sharp knee pain, particularly at the front of the knee. Reduce the step height, check the knee is tracking over the foot, and build up slowly.

EXERCISE 4

Half-Kneeling Reach and Rotate

Frees the upper back to extend and rotate, and frees the shoulder to follow - the upstream work from section 2.

Why this one. This is section 2 made practical. In a half-kneeling position - back hip in the riding shape - you reach overhead and rotate through your upper back. It opens the upper-back extension and rotation that, when missing, force your lower back to compensate and lock your pelvis. It frees the shoulder and lengthens the lats. One exercise, working the whole stack above your pelvis, in a position that holds your lower body in the shape riding asks for.

How to do it

Kneel on your right knee, left foot planted in front, both at roughly 90°. Sit tall, back hip gently forward so the front of the right hip lengthens.
Hold a light weight (or nothing to start) in your right hand. Reach it up and slightly back, opening through the front of your shoulder and your upper back - feel your upper back straighten rather than your lower back arching.
From the reached-up position, slowly rotate your upper body toward the planted-foot side, turning through your upper back. Reach the weight up and over, following it with your eyes. Your hips stay facing forward - the rotation is in your upper back, not your pelvis.
Slowly return. 6 to 8 reaches, then switch sides.

Progression: start with no weight, learning to find the movement in your upper back rather than your lower back. Add a light weight once you can feel the upper back doing the work. Keep it light - this is mobility under a little load, not a strength lift.

Look out for

Arching your lower back to fake the height, or rotating from your waist instead of your upper back. The give should be felt high - between the shoulder blades - not low in the lower back. If you feel it in your lower back, make the movement smaller and keep the lower back quiet.

Sensation cue

An opening through the front of the shoulder and across the chest, and a working stretch between and around the shoulder blades. A lengthening through the front of the down-hip as well.

When to stop

Shoulder pain at end range, or any lower back pinching. Reduce the reach and keep the movement within a range your upper back can actually produce.

EXERCISE 5

Eyes-Closed Single-Leg Balance

Trains the shift from balancing by sight to balancing by inner ear and body sense - the skilled-rider pattern from section 4.

Why this one. Section 4 explained that skilled riders balance on their inner ear and body sense, not their eyes. This trains that shift directly and safely, on the floor. Standing on one leg with your eyes closed forces the senses that don't rely on vision to step up. Add a slow overhead reach and you're also asking your upper back to stay tall while your balance works - linking it to the upstream work.

How to do it

Stand on one leg near a wall or rail you can grab. Find your balance with eyes open first.
When you're steady, close your eyes. Stay standing on the one leg. It will feel much harder - that's the point, your eyes were doing more than you realised.
Hold for as long as you can keep it controlled, up to 30 seconds. Touch the wall whenever you need to; just take your hand off again and continue.
Switch legs. Most people find one side much harder - that's your asymmetry showing.

Progression: floor first, eyes open, then eyes closed. Then eyes closed on a folded towel or cushion (a softer surface makes the body sense work harder). Then eyes closed with a slow overhead reach. Build gradually - this is a skill, and it improves faster than you'd expect.

Look out for

Holding your breath to stay balanced - very common here. Keep breathing the Phase 1 breath while you balance. If you're holding your breath, you're bracing, which is the opposite of what we want.

Sensation cue

Lots of small adjustments through the foot, ankle and hip - that's your body sense working, and it's exactly right. Over weeks the adjustments get smaller and smoother as the senses sharpen.

When to stop

If you feel genuinely dizzy or disoriented (not just wobbly), open your eyes and stop. If you have an inner-ear condition, keep a hand on the rail throughout and progress slowly, or skip the eyes-closed element and check with a clinician.

8. What you may notice as Phase 2 works +

These are things riders often notice as the off-horse work takes effect. They're signs to look out for, not a checklist to chase or anything to go and drill.

In your body

You can sit short spells of trot without bouncing or gripping, and the spells get longer over the weeks - many, not a few! Remember this progression never stops over years of riding
Your upper body stays tall and quiet while your seat does the moving - the dissociation from section 1
You can keep breathing through effort instead of holding your breath and bracing
You're aware of your stronger and weaker sides and the gap between them is closing
Looking up and around no longer costs you your balance the way it did
Your hands follow the contact instead of blocking it

In your horse

The trot gets easier to sit because you've stopped blocking it or pushing it out of rhythm
Your horse may go more steadily into the contact as your following hand stops catching the mouth
Transitions get smoother as you stop bracing through them
The canter on your harder side may improve as your seat stops being thrown sideways

You're now hopefully following better. What you can't yet do reliably is hold all of this when something unexpected happens, when the movement is bigger than you're ready for, or under the pressure of a competition or a fence. We approach that in Phase 3 - the chain under load, and the reactive strength that keeps the seat when things get fast or surprising.

Ready for Phase 3?

Move on when:

You can hold the half-kneeling Pallof press square and still breathing, with meaningful resistance
Your slow step-down is controlled and level-pelvis from a 30cm step on both legs
You can balance on one leg with your eyes closed for 20-30 seconds on both sides
You can keep breathing through effort across all of the exercises, without holding your breath to brace

If you can do all of these, you're ready to load the chain in Phase 3.

Phase 3 is where the seat holds under pressure

Phase 3 loads the chain: the hip, knee and ankle producing and absorbing real force together, the reactive strength that lets your ankle work like a spring, and the capacity to keep your seat when the movement is big, fast or unexpected. This is the work that holds your seat together over a fence, through a spook, and in the ring when it counts - and the same work builds bone strength, which matters more for riders than most realise.

Interested in my rider-specific online programmes in the Onya app, with full instructions and videos? Click the link below.

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Disclaimer

This guide is educational and is not medical advice. It does not replace assessment or treatment by a qualified physiotherapist, doctor, or other clinician. If you have pain, recent injury, are pregnant or postpartum, have a known pelvic floor condition, have an inner-ear or balance condition, have been advised against specific movements, or are unsure whether any of the work in this guide is appropriate for you, work with a qualified clinician before using this material.

Everything here is general guidance, not coaching or advice tailored to you. It is not a programme designed for your body, your history or your level. The Phase 2 exercises add load and single-leg balance - start with no weight, build the movement first, and add load only in small steps. Work within what you can do well and regress anything that is beyond you for now. You know your body: if something hurts or feels wrong, stop.

Sonya Brotherton is a Level 4 Strength & Conditioning Coach and holds the BHS II Senior Coaching qualification and a UKCC Level 3 Show Jumping Coach qualification. She is not a physiotherapist or a medical doctor. This guide does not diagnose, treat, or rehabilitate any condition.