Rider Pelvic Movement When Riding a Circle

Should the Rider’s Pelvis Turn Inward or Outward When Riding a Circle

“Turn your belly button to the direction you want to go.”

It’s one of the most common phrases instructors use to help rider when they are riding a circle. The idea behind it is simple: stop riders from yanking on the inside rein and instead get them to steer with their body instead. But what riders feel they’re doing, and what’s actually happening in their pelvis and spine, are often very different things.

When I recently made a video looking at how riders rotate on a circle, I explained that many riders think they’re following this instruction, but they aren't. And often causing the problems they have with their horses such as lack of bend or falling out on a circle. As instead of rotating their pelvis and staying balanced, they lean back and arch the lower back, lead with the shoulders, and let their weight slip outwards onto the outside seat bone. The moment that weight shifts out, the horse drifts out through the shoulder - exactly the opposite of what the instruction was meant to achieve.

One person asked following watching this video is this the same as turning belly button it. The rider initially keeps the shoulder on top of hips and rotates through boy, the second clip is her doing what she finds comfortable - leaning back and moving shoulders (causing a shift to the opposite seat bone). That is what is great about the simulators- they give real time objective data so there is no guessing where the weight is going. It's a subtle difference but it's there.

One rider asked in the comments of this video it it was different or the same to being told to turn your belly button in. So I did a further video explaining how the key is keeping the shoulders aligned over the hips, being able to rotate the pelvis and thorax, and doing all of that while keeping equal weight in both seat bones. Without equal weight, rotation quickly becomes distortion, and the horse feels blocked or does what you ask it to do even though you don't realise you are asking it anything!

Thinking of a hose pipe out of belly thinking about where the water gets scattered- what nice level and equal scattering, not pushing it up towards the sky. Shoulders need to stay over hips.

To my surprise, the comments on the video included a couple of people saying the rider’s pelvis shouldn’t face the direction of travel at all - that it should actually point to the outside of the circle. Their argument was that having the pelvis face inward blocks the horse’s movement and makes the horse fall out. That 'my method' would cause problems. It's not my method- it's what the majority of instructors/coaches teach as far as I am aware. I have never heard it being explained or taught the other way. I am not an instructor or coach so I don't tell riders how to ride. I explain what the rider needs to do and how to do it, using anatomy, physics, research where able.

Sadly there are no direct studies that have specifically measured the effect of rider pelvic axial rotation (yaw) on a horse riding a circle. We don’t have a paper that proves one way or the other. But we do have plenty of research on horse biomechanics, rider synchronisation, and seat bone pressures. By bringing this evidence together, I’ll explain why I believe the rider’s pelvis needs to turn inward with the circle - and why the real skill is being able to isolate pelvis, hips, and thorax rotation from seat bone weight. Once you can rotate without losing equal seat bone pressure, the instruction “turn your belly button” starts to work the way it was intended.

Image courtsey of Bending & Geometry Lesson - The Snowman and the Egg Yolk.

When a horse travels on a circle, it doesn’t just bend sideways. The bend always comes with rotation. Clayton & Hobbs (2017) confirmed that lateral flexion is coupled with axial rotation.

So on a right circle, the right side of the spine and ribs become concave. The joints on that side close and the muscles shorten. On the left, the joints open and the muscles stretch in a controlled way. At the same time, the ribcage rotates - the inside ribs drop and rotate slightly backwards, the outside ribs lift and rotate forwards.

The pelvis mirrors this. Hobbs, Bertram & Clayton (2010) showed that the pelvis rotates forward on the side of the protracting hindlimb. On a right circle, that’s the right hind stepping under, so the right hip drops and rotates forward while the left hip rises and rotates back. Now, if you only freeze-frame that pelvis and compare it against a straight line, it can look “turned out.” But that’s missing the bigger picture. Think of a carrot stretch where the horse bends its neck all the way back to its hip. For the horse to bend through the spine, the pelvis has to rotate too. So while a snapshot might look outward, the biomechanics are inward, supporting the bend.

One of the main arguments I see for “pelvis out” is that the rider’s pelvis should match the horse’s pelvis. If we sat on the horse’s pelvis, that might make sense. But we don’t. Saddles sit between the withers (T4) and the last rib (T18), which puts the rider over the thoracic spine, not over the pelvis.

The thoracic spine doesn’t rotate the same way the pelvis does. In the thoracic region, the spine is more aligned with the direction of travel. So if the rider points their pelvis outward, they’re working against the spine they’re actually sitting on. If the pelvis turns inward, they’re aligning with the thoracic bend and allowing the back to move.

This is where rider biomechanics research is useful. Lagarde et al. (2005) showed that expert riders synchronise their pelvis to the horse’s movement with less variability than novices. That doesn’t mean they sit like statues. It means their pelvis moves in harmony with the horse’s spine. When the horse’s pelvis rotates inward, the rider’s pelvis rotates inward too. If the rider rotates outward, synchronisation breaks down, which Lagarde linked to reduced stability and could be a reason for the gripping/tightness we see in riders.

The next piece of the puzzle is seat bone pressure. De Cocq et al. (2009) measured seat and stirrup forces and found that riders who maintained more symmetrical weight distribution, especially medial balance in the foot, had better pelvic stability. Egenvall et al. (2022) used sensors to measure how riders’ pelvises rolled and pitched on circles, and while individual patterns varied, the consistent finding was that skilled riders adapt their pelvis without losing balance.

The key here is that rotating your pelvis inward must be done without dropping weight off the inside seat bone. Horses are sensitive to weight distribution. If your weight shifts outward, they step out to stay underneath you. It’s exactly the same as if you were carrying a backpack that suddenly slid off to one side - you’d step sideways to stop yourself tipping over. Horses do the same thing with the rider’s centre of gravity- they move to try and get under it - it's how weight aids work.

Dropping a shoulder and weight shifting out compared to rotating from pelvis and trunk. The SymmFit clothes are great for making movements like this more obvious to both coach and rider.

This is why telling riders to “pelvis out” can sometimes look like it works. If a rider always collapses weight to the outside when trying to turn in, asking them to turn out may push weight back onto the inside seat bone. To the coach watching, the horse suddenly tracks better. But that’s cause and effect - it’s not the pelvis pointing out that’s correct, it’s just a trick to reverse the weight aid mistake. It’s a short-term plaster, not a long-term solution.

The long-term solution is to teach riders how to rotate pelvis inward while keeping weight equal in both seat bones.  When the pelvis rotates inward, the inside hip goes into internal rotation. If the rider doesn’t have that hip mobility, the pelvis won’t rotate correctly. So the rider compensates - maybe leaning the shoulders back, maybe twisting through the trunk. That compensation usually pushes weight onto the outside seat bone. And if the shoulders turn more than the pelvis, the inside elbow drifts back and pulls on the inside rein, creating too much neck bend and leaving the horse to fall out.

When a shoulder drops to compensate for lack of body rotation, on the horse this was noticeable by a lean back and dropped left shoulder, but more obvious in the difference left to right rotation when on the floor. This rider needs to work on learning the correct movement pattern aswell as some mobility/strengthening exercises for her hip.

The outside leg is also a factor. When the pelvis turns in, the outside hip needs to extend further back. Without that mobility, the outside leg shoots forward. The outside support vanishes, and once again the horse falls out.

So the process isn’t: “turn pelvis in and the horse is fixed.” The process is:

1. Learn to stabilise pelvis and keep equal weight in seat bones while rotating the upper body.

1. Then practise keeping equal weight while rotating the pelvis itself.

   
   

2. Only then combine rotation with controlled weight shifts, to apply deliberate weight aids.

   
   

This is why asking riders to simply do the opposite and “pelvis out” might tidy up a circle in the moment, but it avoids the actual skill-building. It’s correcting spelling mistakes with spellcheck instead of learning the alphabet.

And this is the danger of anecdotal evidence. A coach sees a horse move better when a rider points their pelvis out. They conclude that’s “the right way.” But what’s really happening is a compensation that covered up a deeper weakness. I’ve even had people tell me that science and anatomy don’t matter when explaining this - that they prefer tradition or “classical” explanation. And that’s where equestrianism needs to catch up with other sports, where biomechanics is embraced as a tool to explain why things work, not just that they do.

If a rider rotates their pelvis outward, the horse will find it harder to bend, the inside hind will find it harder to step under on an arc, and the rider will likely compensate with inside rein and shoulder twist. The horse ends up overbent in the neck and stiff through the body.

When the pelvis rotates inward, the opposite happens. Both seat bones stay in contact, the inside hip internally rotates and improves leg contact, the ribcage is freed to bend, and the inside hind can engage with the outside leg staying where it is.

We also can’t ignore physics. Circles always involve centrifugal force - the outward pull of moving in a curve. The horse deals with this by stepping the inside hind further under. The rider has to deal with it by keeping their own centre of gravity aligned with the horse’s.

Think about a motorbike cornering. If the rider stayed bolt upright while the bike leaned, they’d topple off the outside. They have to lean with the machine to keep the combined centre of gravity balanced. Horses aren’t bikes, of course, and we don’t lean into circles the same way. But the principle is the same: if the horse bends on an arc and the rider stays straight or rotates outward, the balance shifts outward. Rotating inward keeps the rider’s centre of gravity travelling in the same arc as the horse, neutralising centrifugal pull.

What I see regulalry in my rider physio sessions is that riders often can’t separate pelvis rotation from thorax or shoulder rotation. Sometimes they lack hip mobility, so when they try to turn their pelvis their outside leg comes forward. Sometimes they don’t have enough control through the spine, so their shoulders over-rotate instead. And that’s why I use simple but targeted off-horse exercises. Side to side pelvic tilts/rotations and seated rotations build awareness. Thoracic mobility exercise free up upper body movement.. Hip dissociation teaches each hip to move independently. Strengthening and body awareness whilst maintaining weight on seat bones helps give the stability needed in the trunk to stop that shoulder dropping/leaning and weight shifting.

The more control you have off the horse, the more you can rotate inward on the horse without losing your balance or blocking the horse’s back. And once riders master that, it’s not just circles that improve - it’s the foundation for lateral work, collection, and advanced movements where precise isolation of pelvis and thorax is everything.

So where does all this leave us?

Clayton & Hobbs (2017) showed that side flexion and axial rotation go hand in hand in the horse’s spine. Hobbs, Bertram & Clayton (2010) showed that the pelvis rotates forward on the inside when the hindlimb steps under. Lagarde et al. (2005) showed that expert riders synchronise their pelvis with the horse. De Cocq et al. (2009) highlighted the importance of equal seat bone loading. Egenvall et al. (2022) confirmed that rider pelvis motion adapts systematically on circles.

Taken together, the evidence strongly supports this:

• The horse’s pelvis spine bends inwards on a circle

• Skilled riders synchronise with their horses movement

• Equal seat bone pressure is essential for the horses balance

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So yes, asking a rider to point their pelvis outward might sometimes help as a short-term correction for a weight shift mistake. But the long-term biomechanics - for both horse and rider - rely on the pelvis turning inward.

Circles aren’t about pulling the inside rein or twisting shoulders. They’re about pelvis-to-pelvis harmony. The rider’s pelvis is the base of balance. When you rotate it inward, you align with the horse’s natural bend, you free the ribcage, you support the inside hind, and you keep the combined centre of gravity balanced. That’s when circles stop being a fight and start to flow. What help with your circle or riding? Book in for a Rider Physio session or sign up to the Video Subscription.

References

Clayton, H.M., & Hobbs, S.J. (2017). The role of biomechanical analysis in equine locomotion research: Past, present and future. Equine Veterinary Journal, 49(5), 560–568.

De Cocq, P., Duncker, A.M., Clayton, H.M., Bobbert, M.F., & Muller, M. (2009). Vertical forces on the horse’s back in sitting and rising trot. Equine Veterinary Journal, 41(3), 280–285.

Egenvall, A., van Weeren, P.R., & Roepstorff, L. (2022). Kinematics of the rider’s pelvis and trunk in rising and sitting trot on a circle. Comparative Exercise Physiology, 18(3), 187–198.

Hobbs, S.J., Bertram, J.E.A., & Clayton, H.M. (2010). An exploration of the influence of diagonal dissociation and speed on locomotor parameters in trotting horses.

Lagarde, J., Peham, C., Licka, T., & Kelso, J.A.S. (2005). Coordination dynamics of the horse–rider system. Journal of Motor Behavior, 37(6), 418–424.