Bouncing is caused when you get out of phase with the up and down motion the horse does when they trot. With the stride of the trot, the back comes up and lifts, then travels back down again. If you don't move with that motion, you end up not traveling down in tune with them as they take the next step forward again. If you are then only partially down, as that next stride comes forward you get popped out of tune. Then the more strides in which this happens, the more behind you become and the more you bounce.

 

So the key is to get in tune with the horse's motion and learn to move as fast as his back does with the strides of the trot. In general, this requires an up-and-down motion in tune with the strides. When you can get down at the same time as the feet hit the ground you will be in tune. This "getting down" requires the subtle pulsing action in your hips to be efficient to allow your seat bones to remain plugged in.

 

As you learn to get down and up with each stride, you will then discover it's not so one dimensional. The movement is, in fact, more of a forward/upward-backward/downward movement. To stay in tune with the horse requires your hip and knee joints to extend (open) and flex (close) while your seat bones remain stable and balanced with the saddle. Now all of this movement happens when we remain plugged into the horse with our neutral spine and balanced seat bones. Your body moves in tune with it and gravity plays a role in keeping you connected as well as your core. It's not that you are "actively" trying to open and close your hips, or grip with your legs. This movement happens with the movement of the horse. You are able to achieve this when you have correct core function stabilizing you so your seat is able to be independent and deep on the horse and the hips open and close to allow you to not bounce.

 

One way to improve your bouncing is to develop your ability to improve flexion and extension of the hip while maintaining your neutral spine. Where people go wrong is they tend to lean back when they have trouble with extension and opening of their hips and this can create tension in other areas of the body due to the body not being correctly aligned in good biomechanics to absorb the horse's motion. This also creates tension and blockages from incorrect muscle usage.

 

So from your neutral spine you are trying to improve hip mobility as well as strength to open and close in tune with the horse's movement and not affect the position of your pelvis. You are wanting to create that independent seat that is able to move with the horse. This is done by creating a stable core and improving hip function. The goal is to learn to activate the correct muscles to allow your hip to  move freely without affecting the position of your pelvis and neutral spine.

 

Some other things to be aware of when it comes to bouncing, is squeezing and clinching of the thighs or glutes. This can pop you out. You are wanting to switch on the right muscles to keep you stable and balanced, but then relax around that. It's an elastic, fluid strength with relaxation that gets created when we ride.

The reason I remember first hearing about WFFS is because this exam in 2000 coincided with the first day I performed a D-Mark into Euros conversion. I admit this bit of active knowledge did not survive its vet school exam deadline and I neatly stacked it away onto the pile that already held malign foul brood of the bees or infectious hematopoetic necrosis of salmon, labeled "diseases not requiring urgent attention". It was thus pushed down into the abyss of unused information for the next 15 years during which I didn't hear a single noise about it despite being a vet and running a stud farm in the heartland of sport horse breeding.

Fast forward to 2015 when I met Dr. Bärbel Gunreben at a convention and learned about the study she and her team had conducted in 2012. She mentioned that Laboklin had been offering commercial testing for this defect starting in 2013 and that she was surprised they had seen little to no interest from warmblood breeders and registries which she attributed to the low quota of statistically one in 400 foals being affected based on the 9.4% prevalence of carriers they had found in her work.

While I made a mental mark I did not follow up on the matter. After all the chances were marginal compared to all the more imminent things that can and will go wrong in breeding. Besides I had not encountered a clinically affected foal in my practice and locally knew only one senior colleague who reportedly had. There was no talk at any of the veterinary conventions either.

My attitude changed when Hilltop went public about Sternlicht being a carrier in the wake of Mary Nuttall losing her foal. I have since tested all my mares and learned that two of them are carriers which I immediately published in the Facebook WFFS group. After not getting anywhere asking around for n/n tested stallions I began collecting cases and test results from clients and other breeders through the internet so in order to pool them for confidential use (meaning I can do a risk-assessment without publishing an individual mare or stallion's status). From a commercial point of view this defect clearly is a non-issue: Based on the available data (~10% carriers) your cost of testing a 100k population of breeding horses will be roughly 5 million euro all included (shipping, managing your data, paperwork and laboratory expenses). The expectable number of homozygous foals out of those 100k will be 250 which means each of these lost foals would have to sell at 20k Euro above cost to compensate for the testing expense which is simply not realistic in sport horse breeding.

Nonetheless I say testing is worth the effort for a variety of reasons. Animal welfare and avoiding the tragedy of losing a pregnancy or worse yet a newborn foal are obvious and reasonable arguments. We have also learned from the HERDA-experience (a similar but not identical disease in American cutting Quarter horses) that prevalence may easily skyrocket in populations when management fails and carriers are   ... click here for the rest of the article.