There is another piece of the picture when seeing riders
with their legs forward – the saddle. So few saddles really have
the stirrup truly under the rider, especially a woman or one with shorter feet.
My best guess is that there is a fair amount of saddle
design that just copied well made saddles over the last couple hundred
years. In Europe, in the past most riders would have
been men. Their seat bones are in a different position and their feet are
longer. If you put a woman in the same saddle, she will have to fight to
keep her legs back. And then you have a lot of women trying to put their
butts in a too big saddle so they look smaller, makes the problem even worse.
In the US, western saddles
have evolved to keep “dudes” comfortable sitting on their horse,
when the correct stance is more of a standing position.
I give riding lessons in my Free’n’Easy which
has adjustable stirrup bars. It’s a 17” seat, with a seat
cover, but I can set it up for 6yo kids and overweight women and most in
between. Exceptions being those whose anatomy really determines that they
need more room because their femur comes more forward out of their hip, so the
knee roll interferes. But even someone whose thigh comes more forward
should then have a more bent knee and the heel should still be under the
hip. Same thing with jumping – if the foot is out in front,
regardless of where the knee is, the rider is adversely affecting the balance
of the horse, landing hard on the loins and stressing their own joints.
I almost think I’m doing my students a disservice by
letting them ride in a saddle that almost universally puts them in a balanced
position without working – when they go buy their own saddle that they
can afford, they have to work 10 times as hard to keep their feet under them
because so few saddles have the stirrups in a good position. This was a
lesson taught to me when I bought my first endurance horse from a lady with a ton
of miles and in trying to find the right saddle for my horse I sure got to
experience both ends of the spectrum (painfully!)
Posting is effortless when the saddle is aligned for the
body of the rider. In a balanced saddle I can usually teach decent
posting in 1 or 2 rides. When the stirrups are forward it takes weeks to
build muscle to overcome it.