09/07/2025
Learning good basic standards of balance and horsemanship is the best way to keep you and your horse safe. Shortcuts never last and cause injuries and damage to the horse and rider.
Morris fans who comment on my posts about his Hunter Seat Equitation say have a grudge against him. I don't. My objection is to his method that has damaged authentic horsemanship. Morris published his Hunter Seat Equitation book in 1977. It seems that he intended it to create a streamlined learning process for student riders. However, with human nature being kind of lazy, people mostly picked up on the shortcuts like the crest release that he first intended to be used as "training wheels" to get riders jumping sooner.
Eventually his "training wheels" because the universal standard for jumping and the balanced independent seat, as shown at the top, went out the window. When this shortcut driven decline began to happen, his fame was growing and, on its way, to being godlike. I had an exchange with him then regarding how horsemanship was degrading, and his innovations were largely to blame.
Since Morris and I were trained by US Cavalrymen and learned the same standards, I thought he might listen to the cavalry perspective. He didn't. Instead, he bragged to me about how he had brought more people into riding than anyone else ever had before. It became clear to me then that his only goal at that point was making money, and the horses did matter.
I took the time to type up (the tech of attaching images online had not happened yet) a section of the US Army Horsemanship manual and I sent it to Morris. It was a few paragraphs that explained how shortcuts don’t work because in the end they cause more problems than they solve. He didn't care.
To be clear, he didn't personally advocate for jumping positions like those in the bottom row. But his followers "evolved" his innovations to the level of those awful, unbalanced positions we see today in the bottom row.
Morris remained silent as his "training wheels" became the dominant jumping position in America. His sin was not one of commission but rather one of omission. His silence, as the riders became increasingly off balance in that static too forward position, allowed what the Fort Riley Cavalry manual predicted to happen.
Today, even in equitation classes, we see riders falling off, some being injured or dying. This is because when a horse stumbles on landing a jump with their rider in a fixed position so far up the neck, riders are extremely vulnerable to falling off their horse and being crushed by their horse.
I chose the jumping hip angle for the post's images because George was a stickler for hip angels, often yelling "More hip angle!". But as hip angle began to disappear, he said nothing.
I don't hate Morris. I do hate the effect he has had on American riding. That is separate from his "personal problems" that are despicable. What a sad legacy he has left. It will take years to correct the impact of his method, if it ever can be corrected.
