A light seat is a bit more than that. It's whole-body control, and a lot of it is your torso and especially your stomach muscles. It's how you put your bum in the saddle and transferring weight to your legs would just change the strain point on the saddle. Stirrups are semi-irrelevant, since your thighs are more important than your lower legs. As are your buttocks - you can tell a horse a lot with a buttock twitch astride.
Biggest riding compliment I ever got was "I reckon you ride two stone lighter than you weigh." And since it was from people at a racing stable, I was really flattered.
ETA: definitely not the leaping horn on a sidesaddle. That's security for jumping - you only ram your leg up there properly when you need a more secure seat.
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Date: 2016-10-04 06:39 pm (UTC)Biggest riding compliment I ever got was "I reckon you ride two stone lighter than you weigh." And since it was from people at a racing stable, I was really flattered.
ETA: definitely not the leaping horn on a sidesaddle. That's security for jumping - you only ram your leg up there properly when you need a more secure seat.