Every time you fold into two-point, shorten your stirrups for a course or give a release over a fence, you are riding the way one Italian cavalry officer insisted was right, more than a century ago, against the wishes of his own army.

Federico Caprilli died in 1907 at the age of 39. In a short career he overturned centuries of riding tradition and gave the world the "forward seat," the basis of how hunters, jumpers, eventers and equitation riders still jump today.

In the 1800s, riders jumped in what is now called the backward seat. They rode with long stirrups, pushed their legs out in front, leaned their bodies back as the horse took off, and held firmly on the reins.

The reasoning made sense at the time. Horsemen believed a horse's hind legs and hocks were better shock absorbers than its fragile front legs. By leaning back and lifting the horse's head, riders hoped to make it land hind feet first and spare the forelegs.

It didn't work that way. The rider's weight sat on the horse's back, the pull on the reins hit the horse in the mouth over every fence, and the horse could not round its back and stretch its neck the way it naturally would. Jumping became harder and often painful, and many horses learned to hate it.

Caprilli was born in Livorno, on Italy's Tuscan coast, in 1868. He entered the Military School of Modena in 1886 and was posted as a second lieutenant to the Piedmont Royal cavalry regiment at Pinerolo, near Turin, home of Italy's cavalry school.

Instead of accepting the riding he was taught, he watched horses. He studied them jumping loose, with no rider or tack, and used photographs to record their shape over fences. The camera showed what the eye could miss: horses always landed on their front legs. The whole theory behind the backward seat was wrong.

Caprilli's answer was simple: the rider should stay out of the horse's way. His system rested on a few ideas that sound obvious today but were radical then. Shorter stirrups, so the seat could hover just above the saddle with the thigh and lower leg carrying the rider's weight. Lean with the horse — fold slightly forward over a fence, keeping the centre of gravity over the horse's. Follow the mouth, letting the hands move forward with the horse's head and neck instead of pulling back. Stay forward on landing. And let the horse think, approaching fences in a natural, flowing stride rather than a tight, collected one.

The position held over everything: upright fences, banks and ditches alike. Horses freed from interference jumped more willingly, and after a year of his teaching, students at the cavalry school were completing their training course without reins.

Caprilli's rebellion did not win him friends at first. The army establishment was hostile to his ideas, and after rumours about his love life with aristocratic women, he was transferred to a regiment in southern Italy. He kept experimenting and kept winning competitions.

Eventually the army's own leadership came around. The Inspector General of Cavalry and the commander at Pinerolo brought him back as chief instructor at Pinerolo and its advanced school at Tor di Quinto, near Rome. Italian cavalry riders began to dominate international jumping, and officers from other countries came to Italy to learn the system.

Caprilli did not live to see most of it. In December 1907 he fell from a horse he was testing in Turin, apparently after losing consciousness, and died of a head injury.

His ideas outlived him. After the First World War, the Italian team used the forward seat to dominate jumping at the 1919 Inter-Allied Games. U.S. cavalry officer Harry Chamberlin studied at Pinerolo and Tor di Quinto in 1923 and 1924, then blended what he learned with French training from Saumur into what the U.S. Army called "the Chamberlin military seat". Chamberlin went on to win an individual Olympic silver medal in show jumping, and through riders like him the forward seat became the foundation of American hunter and jumper riding.

Walk through any hunter/jumper show and you will see Caprilli everywhere. Two-point and half seat — the light, balanced position between fences is his hovering seat. Crest releases and the automatic release are refinements of his rule that the hands follow the horse's mouth. The hunter ring rewards a horse that jumps in a natural, rounded shape from a flowing stride, the kind of jumping he wanted. And hunt seat equitation, the whole discipline, is built on a forward-seat position.

Modern riders have not frozen his system in place. Today's jumper courses are tighter and more technical, so riders use more adjustability, more contact and more input to the horse's stride than Caprilli liked. But the core idea — that a rider should balance over the horse and stay out of its way over a fence — has never gone away.

A new way of riding needed new clothes. Shorter stirrups and a folded position put far more bend in the knee and hip than the old long-legged seat. Bulky, baggy breeches bunched and rubbed in that position, so riding clothes gradually moved toward a closer fit through the knee and lower leg.

The forward seat also put the rider's knee and inner leg in steady contact with the saddle, which is where grip matters most. That is the reason knee patch breeches became the jumping standard: the grip sits exactly where a forward-seat rider needs it.

Today's slim, stretchy breeches and riding tights are the end of that line. They are made for a rider who folds, hovers and follows — the rider Caprilli imagined.

Caprilli's real breakthrough wasn't a position. It was an attitude: watch what the horse does naturally, then get out of its way. A century later, that is still the best advice in the sport.

We're designing riding tights for riders who fold, follow and stay with their horse. Our first collection is on the way, followed by breeches, shirts, gloves and some very unconventional socks. Join the launch list for first access.