PHASE 1 OF 3

The Independent Seat

Find Your Seat
Sonya Brotherton
Onya Equi · The Independent Seat Series

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 ever been told to "sit deeper," "stop gripping" or "let your leg hang" and found that knowing what you should do doesn't change what your body actually does when riding, this guide is for you.

The independent seat is the most talked-about and least taught skill in equestrian sport. It gets described as if it were a position - sit here, in this way, with this much weight on these bones - when it is actually a coordination skill that unfolds in layers. You can't get to it through better instructions. You get to it by building, in order, what your body needs to be able to do.

This series takes you through three phases, each built on the last. Phase 1 is the foundation: pelvic awareness, hip range, breath, and the dissociation that lets your pelvis move freely on your hips. Most rider-fitness work skips this layer and goes straight to "core strength." That's why the strength doesn't transfer when you ride.

Before we get to what to do, I want you to understand what the research actually says about the seat - because most of what's repeated in coaching language and on social media is either incomplete, contested, or flat wrong. The interactive menu below walks you through each layer, in plain language, with the evidence sitting behind it. Then, at the end, you'll find five exercises that apply what you've understood. That order matters. Riders who understand the mechanism change faster than riders who follow instructions.

How to use this guide: tap any section below to expand it. Work through them in order the first time - each layer builds on the last. After that, come back to whichever section you need. The exercises are in the section "Putting it into your body."
1. What the independent seat actually is (and isn't) +

The most repeated misconception about the independent seat is that it means stillness. It doesn't.

When researchers put motion-capture markers on competitive dressage riders and compared them to beginners, the skilled riders' pelvises moved more, not less. Münz and colleagues (2014) found professional riders had over 11° of pelvic pitch range of motion in sitting trot, compared to around 8° in beginners. The pelvis is doing more work, not less.

What changes with skill is which parts of you couple to the horse, and which parts stay free.

Your pelvis follows the horse. Your upper body stays tall above it. Your head stays still in space. Your hands follow the bit through articulated elbows. Your legs hang. Each part is doing a different job, and the job each part does is what the others aren't doing.

This is why "sit still" is bad advice. So is "just relax" really because tone and control are required in different levels at different moments. A still pelvis blocks the horse. A still body above a moving pelvis is exactly what you're trying to build. The instruction matters less than which part of you the instruction is aimed at.

What it isn't

Worth getting this out of the way:

  • It isn't stillness. Covered above.
  • It isn't gripping. If you have to hold on with your legs, your seat isn't independent of them.
  • It isn't core bracing. Uldahl, Christensen and Clayton (2021) tested 20 experienced riders on their ability to balance statically on a gymnastic ball versus their ability to actively roll the pelvis side to side. The active pelvic mobility correlated with ridden harmony. Static balance trended negatively. The "core" that helps riders is dynamic, not held.
  • It isn't a neutral pelvis at all times. Wilkins (2020) found that static pelvic posture at halt doesn't predict how the pelvis moves at trot or canter. You can't tell from how a rider sits how they will ride.
  • It isn't a deep seat as a position. A deep seat is what you get when your seat works properly. It isn't something you can press into. Trying to push your seat down usually blocks it.

What it is, then, is a coordinated relationship between segments: a pelvis that follows precisely, a body that stays organised above it, a head that stays stable, hands that follow, legs that hang. That coordination is built. It isn't a position you can adopt.

2. The pelvis: what it has to do to follow a horse +

The horse's back doesn't just move up and down. It moves on six axes simultaneously: three rotations (pitch, roll, yaw) and three translations (vertical, side-to-side, fore-aft). Your pelvis has to manage all of them.

At walk, the dominant signal is the alternating side-to-side swing of the hindquarters - each seat bone is alternately advanced and weighted. At sitting trot, the dominant signal is vertical: the horse's back rises into suspension and drops into diagonal stance, twice per stride. At canter, you get the biggest pelvic pitch demand of any gait - the pelvis tips through 15-16° of pitch range every stride, plus a significant roll asymmetry as the horse's back rolls away from the leading hind.

That's a lot of work for the pelvis. Three things have to be true for it to do that work:

One: it has to be free on the hips

The pelvis can only tip on the hip joints if the hip joints have range available. Restricted hip extension, restricted internal or external rotation, restricted abduction - any of these limits what the pelvis can do. The pelvis ends up borrowing range from the lumbar spine (which doesn't have much rotation available - about 5° total) or from the thoracic spine (which compensates by collapsing forward), and the seat hardens.

This is why hip mobility shows up so consistently in the rider biomechanics literature as a precondition for a following seat. Not as a nice-to-have. As the floor below which nothing else works.

Two: it has to be able to move independently of the spine

This is the dissociation skill. Your pelvis can tip anteriorly without your lumbar following passively into extension. Your pelvis can tip posteriorly without your upper body slumping. Your pelvis can rotate one direction while your shoulders stay where they are.

Most riders move pelvis-and-spine as one unit, because that's what daily life trains. Standing, walking, sitting at a desk - none of these demand pelvic-spine dissociation. Riding does, every stride.

Three: it has to know where it is

You can't control a body part you can't feel. This is proprioception - the sense of where your body is in space without looking. Most riders have poor pelvic proprioception, not because something is wrong with them, but because they've never had a reason to develop it. "Tip your pelvis" doesn't mean much if you can't feel where your pelvis currently is.

What Phase 1 builds, specifically: hip joint range that you can actively use, dissociation between pelvis and spine, and proprioceptive awareness of where your pelvis is in three planes. These three things together are what makes the pelvis available to follow the horse. Without them, no amount of strength work or core training will give you a following seat.
3. The breath: why your diaphragm matters as much as your hips +

If you've worked on your hips for years and your seat still feels stuck, the missing layer is probably your breath. This is the connection that almost no rider-fitness content addresses properly.

The diaphragm sits at the top of a pressure cylinder. The pelvic floor sits at the bottom. The deep abdominals wrap around the sides. The lumbar spine is at the back. Together they form a system that manages the pressure inside your torso, and it's the system that lets your pelvis move freely while your upper body stays organised.

Here's where it gets interesting for riders. The diaphragm has a direct fascial connection to the psoas - the deep hip flexor that runs from your lumbar spine to the inside of your thigh - via something called the medial arcuate ligament. When the diaphragm doesn't move through its full range (which happens with upper-chest breathing, with stress, with held breath in tense moments), the psoas gets pulled into chronic tone.

A psoas in chronic tone tips the pelvis anteriorly, holds the lumbar in extension, and - through reciprocal inhibition - shuts off the glute on the same side. The glute is what stabilises the pelvis when it's following the horse. If the glute isn't firing because the hip flexor is locked, the pelvis can't do its job no matter how mobile the joint itself is.

The chain effect: shallow breath → short diaphragm → tonic psoas → tipped pelvis + inhibited glute → unable to follow the horse with the seat. You can work on your hips and your glutes forever, but if you haven't addressed the breath, the system is held shut from above.

The other half of the pressure cylinder - the pelvic floor - matters here too. The pelvic floor isn't a separate piece of anatomy that only matters for incontinence or postpartum recovery. It's the bottom of the system that lets your pelvis sit on the saddle without bracing. A pelvic floor that's holding (often because the diaphragm above it isn't moving) translates into a rider who can't soften into the seat.

This is what people are actually pointing at when they say things like "breathe into your seat" - which is anatomically odd, but the instruction is reaching for something real. You're not breathing into your pelvis. You're letting the diaphragm move enough that the pelvis can.

The 360° breath in the exercises below is the entry to this work. It's not a nice-to-have or a cool-down. It's structural.

4. Why your leg won't stay still (and why it isn't your leg's fault) +

If your leg swings, slips forward, creeps back, grips, floats off or pinches, the instinct is to work on your leg. Strengthen the inner thigh. Push the heel down. Concentrate on keeping it still.

None of this works in the long run, because the leg is doing what's happening above it.

The leg hangs from the pelvis. If the pelvis is tipped forward, the leg slips forward and the heel comes up. If the pelvis is tipped back into a chair seat, the leg comes forward to compensate for the rider's centre of mass having moved behind the motion. If the pelvis is gripping with the hip flexors, the thigh comes off the saddle. If the glute isn't firing, the leg has nothing to stabilise it from above, so it grips wherever it can - usually with the adductors or the knee.

This is why every Phase 1 exercise is about the pelvis, the breath, the hips, and the ankle - and not about the leg itself. The leg is the symptom, not the problem. When the pelvis can sit where it needs to sit and the hips have range, the leg drapes. It doesn't need work; it needs the conditions to be right.

The one piece of the leg we do work on in Phase 1 is ankle dorsiflexion at the bottom of the chain. This isn't to make your heels go down. It's because restricted ankle dorsiflexion - which is extremely common in modern adults - kicks up the chain and disrupts hip and knee position. Zhang et al. (2024) showed in stop-jumping tasks that progressive ankle dorsiflexion restriction increased patellofemoral contact force and disrupted hip and knee kinematics. The same principle applies in riding: a stuck ankle changes everything above it.

A note on heels. Heels down is not a position you force from the ankle. A lowered heel results from organisation higher up the chain plus available ankle range under load. A forced heel jams the joint, pushes the leg forward, and breaks the chain you're trying to build. For dressage, the heel is lightly weighted and the foot is roughly parallel to the ground at rest. For jumping, the heel is deeper because the ankle is accessing more dorsiflexion to absorb landing forces - but it still isn't forced. The ankle exercise in this guide is about giving the joint range, not training the heel to be down.
5. Why static "core" work won't give you a seat +

This is worth saying directly because so much rider fitness is built around it.

The dominant model in rider fitness for the last 20 years has been: ride better by building a stronger core, where stronger core means holding planks, doing crunches, sitting on a gym ball, or doing static balance work. The evidence that this transfers to a better seat is weak.

Uldahl, Christensen and Clayton (2021) ran the cleanest study I've seen on this. They scored 20 experienced riders on three exercises on a gymnastic ball, including static balance, and on the quality and harmony of their riding. The rider's ability to actively roll the pelvis side to side on the ball correlated highly with ridden harmony. The ability to statically balance on the ball trended toward a negative correlation. Horses ridden by better pelvic-mobility riders showed fewer conflict behaviours and worked at higher heart rates - more impulsion produced with clearer aids.

The conclusion: dynamic pelvic mobility predicts ridden harmony. Static balance does not. The two are testing different things, and the seat needs the mobile, moving one.

This doesn't mean strength is irrelevant - it matters enormously, and we get to it in Phase 2 and Phase 3 in specific ways. What it means is that the strength has to be built on top of mobility and dissociation, not instead of them. Strengthen a body that can't yet dissociate pelvis from spine, and you make the lock-up stronger. You don't fix it.

This is why Phase 1 has no planks, no crunches, no static holds. The job in Phase 1 is to free what's stuck. Strength comes after.

6. What's different between dressage, jumping and going cross-country +

The seat is the same skill expressed differently. What changes between disciplines is which part of the seat is loaded most.

Dressage: the three-point seat

In dressage, the two seat bones plus the pubic bone form a triangle of contact with the saddle. The pubic bone is in light contact - not pressed into the pommel, not lifted off. Weight is primarily on the seat bones. The stirrups are long, the hip angle is open, the knee is barely flexed. The pelvis follows the horse through all six axes, with the pitch and lateral demands relatively even across gaits.

Light three-point: show jumping flat work and between fences

Similar to dressage but with the stirrups shorter (one to two holes), the hip angle slightly more closed, the shoulder slightly ahead of vertical. The seat bones are in light contact but not weighted as deeply. The rider is poised to come off the saddle for takeoff. Used in working canter on a jumping course, in show hunters, in much of cross-country preparation work.

Two-point: gallop, cross-country, jumping flight

The seat bones come off the saddle. Weight is carried through the knee, thigh, lower leg, and stirrup. The pubic bone is not in contact. The hip angle is closed, around 110° behind the knee. The pelvis is suspended above the saddle by the leg chain - hip, knee and ankle absorbing in coordination. This is where reactive ankle qualities and chain stiffness matter most. We address those in Phase 3.

The point for Phase 1: regardless of which discipline you ride in, the foundations are the same. You need pelvic awareness, hip range, dissociation, and a working breath, before you can express the seat in any position. A jumper with no pelvic awareness will struggle to organise their two-point. A dressage rider with no breath pattern will struggle to follow.

Eventers, who switch between all three seats in the same competition, need the foundation more than anyone.

7. Putting it into your body: the Phase 1 work +

What follows is the off-horse work that builds what we've just talked through. Five exercises. The breath work first because it underwrites everything else. Then the floor-based mobility and dissociation work.

Total time: around 20 minutes.

Frequency: 3 to 5 times a week for 4 to 6 weeks before moving to Phase 2.

Equipment: a mat or carpeted floor, a wall, a sturdy chair or low step (about 30-40cm), a small cushion or rolled towel.

EXERCISE 1

360° Diaphragmatic Breath

Restores diaphragm excursion, releases psoas tone, allows the pelvic floor to respond rather than hold.

Why this one first. Every other exercise in this guide is undone if your diaphragm is locked. Doing hip mobility work with a short diaphragm gets you transient range that disappears the moment you ride. Get the breath working first, then the body can change.

How to do it

  1. Lie on your back with knees bent, feet flat on the floor about hip-width apart. Rest one hand on your lower side ribs, the other on your belly.
  2. Inhale through your nose for 4 counts. Send the breath sideways and backwards into your ribs - your side ribs widen under your hand, your back presses gently into the floor. The belly hand rises a little but doesn't lead.
  3. Exhale through pursed lips for 6 counts. Let everything soften without forcing the ribs down.
  4. Pause for 2 counts at the bottom of the exhale.
  5. Repeat for 10 breaths.

Progression after a week: do the same breath crook-lying, then sitting upright in a chair, then standing. The goal is being able to access this breath in any position - eventually when riding.

Look out for
Shoulders rising on the inhale. That's upper-chest breathing. Rest your hands on your collarbones; they shouldn't lift. If they do, make the inhale smaller and lower.
Sensation cue
By breath 5 or 6, your jaw and shoulders should feel softer. If you feel dizzy or lightheaded, you're overbreathing. Slow down and shorten the inhale.
When to stop
Any chest pain, sharp dizziness, or pelvic floor pressure or heaviness - stop and speak to a clinician before continuing.
EXERCISE 2

Supine 90/90 Pelvic Tilts

Builds the dissociation between pelvis and spine that the seat depends on.

Why this position. Most riders are taught pelvic tilts standing or on a ball, where the legs and gravity hide what the pelvis is doing. In 90/90, the hip flexors sit in mid-range and can't pull on the lumbar. You get pure pelvic motion, separated from the spine and legs. This is where you learn what your pelvis actually feels like when it moves.

How to do it

  1. Lie on your back close enough to a wall that when you put your feet flat on the wall, your hips and knees are both at 90°. Arms relaxed at your sides.
  2. Press your feet gently into the wall - just enough to feel your hamstrings engage. No more.
  3. Exhale and tilt your pelvis posteriorly: imagine pulling your pubic bone toward your nose. Your lower back presses into the floor. Don't push harder with your feet.
  4. Inhale and tilt your pelvis anteriorly: tailbone reaches down toward your heels. A small natural arch appears in your lower back. Don't arch dramatically.
  5. Move slowly between these positions for 10 cycles. Find the middle - neutral pelvis is where neither end is held.

Progression after a week: add the breath. Exhale into posterior tilt, inhale into anterior tilt. Then reverse it. The pelvis and breath should be able to move together or apart, by choice.

Look out for
Gripping with your hip flexors or quads. If your thighs are working, you've added leg movement. Soften the feet against the wall and try again. The motion comes from the pelvis, not the legs.
Sensation cue
You should feel the difference between your lower abdominals (posterior tilt) and your lower back (anterior tilt) clearly. If both feel the same, slow down and make the movement smaller until you can separate them.
When to stop
Lower back pain, sharp SI joint pain, or pubic symphysis discomfort - particularly in pregnancy or postpartum. This exercise can be done with smaller range and clinician guidance if there is a known pelvic condition.
EXERCISE 3

Quadruped Rock-Back with Neutral Spine

Builds hip flexion range under load that you can actually use when riding.

Why this over a hamstring stretch. Passive stretching changes transient range that disappears under load. This loads the hip in flexion in a position close to the seat's demand, and asks you to maintain spinal position while the hip moves. The point at which your lumbar starts to round tells you where your usable hip flexion ends. Training to extend that point under control is what makes the range useable when riding.

How to do it

  1. Start on hands and knees. Hands directly under shoulders, knees directly under hips. Find a neutral spine - small natural curves, neither hollow nor rounded.
  2. Maintaining that neutral spine, slowly rock your hips back toward your heels.
  3. Go only as far as you can without your lower back starting to round. The moment your lumbar flexes, stop and rock forward to the start.
  4. 10 slow reps. Each rep, notice where your range ended.

Progression after a week: add the breath. Exhale rocking back, inhale rocking forward. Then try widening the knees slightly - this changes the hip joint angle and may reveal different range.

Look out for
Lower back rounding. The most common error. Use a phone camera beside you or rest a stick along your spine. The moment the stick lifts off your lower back, you've gone past your usable range. The goal is to slowly increase the range over weeks. Not today.
Sensation cue
The work is in the front of your hips and around your sit bones, not in your lower back. If your lower back is doing the work, you've gone too far.
When to stop
Knee pain in this position: put a folded towel under your knees or do this standing with your hands on a chair, sliding your hips back into a hinge. Same principle.
EXERCISE 4

Hip CARs (Controlled Articular Rotations)

Builds active hip joint range with neural control - the range you can actually use.

Why active rather than passive. Passive stretching gives you range you can't access when it matters. Active range work builds the neural ownership of end-range that determines what range you actually have available when riding. This also addresses the chronic hip flexor tone that inhibits the glute on the same side - which no amount of glute strengthening will fix until the flexor lets go.

How to do it

  1. Stand next to a wall or chair for light balance support. Stand tall with a light brace through your middle - imagine you're about to be poked in the stomach.
  2. Lift your right knee up in front of you to hip height (or as close as you can while keeping the pelvis level).
  3. Without dropping the knee height, take the knee out to the side. Keep the pelvis level - the temptation is to hike the hip up. Don't.
  4. From there, rotate the lower leg backward so the foot points behind you. Knee height stays the same.
  5. Extend the leg backward (hip extension), knee still bent.
  6. Reverse the motion to return to the start, going slowly through each position.
  7. 3 to 5 reps each direction, then switch legs.

This is slow. Each rep should take 20-30 seconds. The goal is not how fast or how far, but how cleanly the hip joint moves without the pelvis or spine compensating.

Look out for
Pelvis hiking, rotating, or tipping. The pelvis stays still while only the hip joint moves. If you can't keep it still, reduce the range until you can. Range without control isn't the same range as range with control.
Sensation cue
Deep in the hip joint, with intense engagement of glute med and the deep hip rotators. A sharp pinch in the front of the hip means you've gone past your active control range - reduce range and continue.
When to stop
Hip impingement or labral history: do this in smaller range with clinician guidance. Sharp groin pain is a stop signal.
EXERCISE 5

Weight-Bearing Ankle Dorsiflexion

Opens the bottom joint of the chain so it stops disrupting everything above it.

Why soleus matters more than gastrocnemius. A standard calf stretch with a straight leg targets gastrocnemius. When you ride, your knee is bent, which puts gastrocnemius on slack and leaves soleus as the relevant muscle. Weight-bearing dorsiflexion with a bent knee drives soleus mobility and ankle joint range under load - the position the heel needs in riding. This isn't about forcing heels down. It's about giving the ankle range so it doesn't have to be forced.

How to do it

  1. Stand facing a wall in a half-kneeling position - right foot forward, left knee on the floor (cushion if needed). Right foot is about a hand's width from the wall.
  2. Keeping your heel firmly on the floor, drive your right knee forward toward the wall, aiming for it to touch over your big toe.
  3. If your knee touches easily, move your foot further from the wall. Find the position where your knee can just touch the wall while your heel stays down.
  4. From that position, 10 slow reps of driving the knee to the wall and returning. Heel stays down every rep.
  5. Switch legs.

Progression after a week: increase the foot-to-wall distance by half a centimetre at a time. You're making this harder progressively, not holding a static stretch.

Look out for
Heel lifting. The whole point is range with the heel grounded. The moment the heel lifts, you're outside usable range. Move closer to the wall.
Sensation cue
A stretch through the back of the calf, possibly into the achilles. Pressure in the front of the ankle is the joint working. Sharp pain in the front of the ankle is different and means too much range.
When to stop
Ankle injury history, achilles issues, or pinching pain in the front of the ankle - reduce range and check with a physio about modification.
8. What you may notice as Phase 1 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 find your seat bones at halt and walk without thinking hard about it
  • Your breath reaches your lower ribs and back, not just your chest
  • Your hip joints feel like they have somewhere to go - you can actively move them, not just be stretched
  • Your jaw and shoulders aren't holding tension by the end of a ride
  • Your standing posture changes - usually you find more space through the front of your hips and through your back

In your horse

  • The walk gets bigger and more swinging - because you're no longer blocking it
  • Your horse may seek the contact more honestly because your seat has stopped pushing them off balance
  • You may notice asymmetries in your horse that were masked by your own

You're not yet riding through the seat. You're not yet sitting trot without bouncing. That's Phase 2. What you've built here is the room for those things to be possible.

Ready for Phase 2?

Move on when:

If you can do all six, you have the foundation Phase 2 needs to build on. If two or three are still rough, stay with Phase 1 for another two to four weeks. There's no rush. What you build here determines how much Phase 2 will give you.

Phase 2 is where the seat starts to follow

Phase 2 takes the foundation you've built in Phase 1 and layers on dynamic control: the pelvis under the demand of trot and canter, eccentric control of the body over a moving pelvis, sensory weighting, and the beginning of independent hands. Phase 3 builds the chain under load - the reactive qualities that make the seat hold when the movement is big, fast or unexpected.

Interested in my rider-specific online programmes in the Onya app, with full instructions and videos? The full structured programme for each phase is in the Onya Equi On-Demand Plans.

View the on-demand programmes

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 exercises in this guide are low-load and floor-based. 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.

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The Independent Seat Series · Phase 1 of 3