There’s a certain quality to some rider’s seats that I have always admired and lusted after (in a riderly sort of way!). You see it often in the continentals riding dressage as well as our own top riders of course.  There is a stillness and an adhesion to the saddle, and the horse, but that also clearly allows the rider to be ‘soft’ in the seat and allow the horse to move.

Some time ago I discovered this missing part for myself and knew immediately that it had a major impact on my stability, my aids to the horse, the horse’s way of going and my whole position. I cannot exactly remember what led me to try this particular muscle use, but I can pass on how to achieve it! I do recall Mary Wanless’ teachings saying....riders are always too wide, they need to get narrower all the way down......or words to that effect and I can now understand what she means.

One point I should first make is that I may only have added in this important piece of the puzzle because I had got quite a lot of the other pieces in place - at long last. So, if you try this and find it doesn’t work, there may still be issues you need to address like using core strength to hold and support your torso, sitting straight in the saddle, having equal weight on both sides of your pelvis, breathing diaphragmatically, an appreciation of how your horse should be allowed to go forward. (Check out the link to the Pilates document as this beautifully sums up most of what I have discovered is the bare necessity for a good seat. All this does take time and trying to advance without these foundations in place has been the cause of many a frustrated rider.

Step one

Stand in your stirrups at halt (if you are in a safe place on a safe horse). Think of narrowing in your thigh 'squeezing' them towards the middle of the saddle at hip joint level. Feel as if you are trying to slowly make the space between your thighs much smaller. Muscles from the hips, buttocks and down the back/top but side of your thigh should feel harder and in tone. If you place your fingers on the big muscle in your buttock towards the outside, then run your hand down your thigh 6 - 8 inches, it is all this area that should be in use.

Step two

Slowly lower yourself down holding this narrowness and keep the muscles narrowing in as you sit on the saddle. Your seat bones will now not be so obviously resting on the saddle but still have some contact but through some muscle in your underneath.

Step three

Keep doing this as you ride. The feeling should be almost as if you have some suckers on your thighs where they contact the saddle. You will feel connection with the saddle more towards the back of the saddle than previously and that the horse is more out in front of you. You will be stiller and therefore a better load for the horse to carry. Weight will be spread down your thighs more so making yourself appear a lighter weight to the horse. When you give a leg aid you will find your leg(s) can be used independently of the rest of your body - how they are meant to be used (but no one ever usually can explain this to a learning rider or they have been keeping it a secret!). The knee and the front of the thigh and lower leg will not be clamped on the horse blocking movement.

Have a look at www.dressageco.com  Find Dressage for riders and click on PILATESSLIDESHOW509. On page 15 there is a diagram of this muscle use entitled Engaging the spine..’squeezing the bottom and wrapping the thighs’. this will also guide you as to how to bring up the right muscles. The other slides are of great interest too.

Hope this works for you and your horse. Give it go and if it helps, (or doesn’t) please leave a comment!

I've been working on some muscle use that seems to be another missing element in my seat - although I have had glimpses of it now and then. Now I know how to get it and how to explain it to other people. (Guinea pig tested!)

Will write up the article in next couple of days!

If you have any comments, questions or information to share, you can contact me on jane.v.christian@gmail.com

THE FORGOTTEN JOINT IN THE RIDER’S BODY AND OTHER LIGHT BULB MOMENTS

This article is about three issues that came to me today. Firstly, how impossible it is to correct your position unless you have learnt to notice what your body does. Secondly, how desperately easy it is to sit incorrectly and if I am still doing it when I’ve spent so long trying to conquer it, is there any hope? And finally, a light bulb moment when I discover a joint nobody has ever mentioned that completely transforms my seat.

Another day, another hack. I hoist myself into the saddle of my beloved cob and, as is her habit, she trundles off down the drive in a straight line (which is helpful) and I immediately notice how I am sitting. This has taken years of work as I never did it naturally in the early years. I think of my years of riding ‘pre-noticing’ as almost a waste of time in terms of improving my seat on the horse.

As I sit on my mare, I can immediately feel that my left side does not feel the same as the right. It feels different at the seat bone where it contacts the saddle and the thigh, not surprisingly, is at a different angle to the right one. The right one feels more snug and in fact I can indeed feel that the (adductor) tendon (Mary Wanless calls it the knicker tendon) in my upper thigh where it joins my pubic bone area is almost touching the saddle whereas on the left there is nothing.

I ride on, changing nothing, as I have discovered that far from making an immediate correction, its best to get familiar with the feeling. A bit like ‘know your enemy’ for then you have a chance to analyse what is really happening in your body. I wondered whether to exaggerate the feel to give me an even better idea of what was happening but I now feel that I only have to imagine, or visualise, the exaggeration - not actually do it - to put the microscope onto the errant area.

Holding the position, as wrong as it felt, allowed me to check other bits of the body that weren’t giving off such strong kinaesthetic feedback. It was only then that I noticed that the cause was a hollow just in my left back area at waist, or loin, level. Put another way, I was slightly arching my back on the left but the right side was softly rounded (effectively in the middle position between over arched and over slumped in a chair seat).

As I took the hollow out of my back on the left side by softly allowing it to fall backwards towards my waistband (so to speak), the whole angle of my pelvis changed (as of course it would). My seat bone on the left then matched the feel of the right, i.e. softer and more following, my inner thigh and adductor tendon came in snug onto the saddle and my torso felt straighter. My mare lengthened her frame a little and felt a bit more free. I felt more with the horse, more secure and, most importantly, more symmetrical with either side of my body matching, each seat bone bearing the same amount of weight. I’ve had to make this correction before so its obvious I carry this asymmetry with me on the ground and when I get on it is sometimes more prevalent than others. The problems this way of holding the back differently on each side would cause a rider when they rode on the left rein (in my case) would be predictable. It was cause blocking of the horse’s left shoulder, the rider would be unable to give and be soft with the left rein, be unable to give correct leg aids in the correct place on the horse, would overload a horse’s left side, cause a pressure area under the saddle on the left side, it would hold the horse’s back down on the left side when cantering and let’s not even talk about lateral work!

This scenario described above may happen to other riders but on their RIGHT side. Quite why this is so I am not 100% sure but I have my theory (see a previous blog article) that its to do with our innate ‘preparedness’ for action/flight and our dominant side.

So, off we go, my mare and me, the teacher and the pupil. Need I say who is who? My mare is the unwitting teacher and I am the slow learning pupil. I am thinking about what a profound effect the correction I just made has on my body and I am imagining my pelvis on the saddle and how my spine is connected to it. (My latest discovery is that trying to imagine yourself as just the skeleton on the horse is hugely helpful for straightening yourself on the horse. Its so simple it seems unlikely to work but it does).

Suddenly, I thought about the actual point where the spine attaches to the pelvis and what joint was it? The actual spine joins with the triangular bone that forms the back of the pelvis, called the sacroiliac, and I had never given it a moments thought before that instant. Nor had anyone ever mentioned it to me or focussed on it in a lesson. I don’t recall ever reading anything about it in my research into rider’s position.

Imagining the joint as I rode, I thought how vulnerable a joint it must be but also how you must surely be able to use it to precisely change the angle of your pelvis - a bit like a hinge. I imagined all the muscles, ligaments and tissues that must surround it and thought about TENSING THEM TO HOLD THE JOINT SECURE. I didn’t want to give myself a low back ache by waggling my pelvis on the end of my spine as I experimented with the joint. I then brought up into tension, strong, short muscles surrounding and across the joint  connecting with the rest of my pelvis at the back. This produced a more powerful feel in that area and changed the feel of the area from soggy rice pudding to a harder, but moveable, thick india rubber sensation that suddenly made an incredible change to my seat and the way my mare was going. I am still struggling to put into words the difference this made and am slightly in shock that I have previously been riding without this feel.  

I know I have discovered a key missing ingredient in my riding and my seat. And I can now see how this would be the missing piece of the puzzle for many other riders who appear to have so many things right but are still ineffective, too loose in their seat, unstable side to side or front to back, get left behind the movement easily and myriad other issues.

Hopefully, some of the above thoughts will spark off a light bulb moment for you! If any of the above needs further explaining, please feel free to contact me. Please let me have any ideas or suggestions you may have that have helped you and could help others with similar problems. Equines everywhere will thank you for it.

If you have any riding or position problems, this blog might be able to help you. If you find useful information or links or have 'light bulb' moments, please share them with other riders. Afterall, its the horse that ultimately benefits and we all want that don't we?   more »

Most people sit crookedly to some degree or another. This is my theory of why and how to fix it.   more »

HERE ARE SOME LINKS TO INTERESTING SITES RELATING TO THE SUBJECT OF RIDER POSITION. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADD ANY THAT YOU DISCOVER FOR THE BENEFIT OF OTHER RIDERS AND THEIR HORSES.   more »

The following is a question from a reader of this blog. Her question and my answer may be helpful to anyone struggling with asymmetries.

Dear Jane, I have been reading your perfect seat blog, and I have to say what a revelation! What you describe as the weak right leg syndrome is me and my riding problems. For the last couple of years I have been trying to cure my crookedness whilst riding, but to no avail. I have been to various physio`s and chiro`s, all of whom have told me that I am straight. But I know I`m not when riding because I always feel that I`m reaching for my right stirrup. My right leg is my kicking leg, and my left leg feels forced down and slightly too far forward. I get a lot of pain in my left ankle to the point it feels locked. For the last couple of months I have been doing the Pilates for the Dressage Rider exercises. This is not my first port of call, I dread to think how much time and money I have spent on various DVD`s in order to cure my problem! I wonder am I going in the right direction? Or should I be doing some other exercise regime? Do you have a system I could follow? This problem is really spoiling my riding pleasure, and of course cannot be much fun for my Horse, who is an absolute saint. I would be happy to pay you for your time and information. Please can you help? Regards, Vivienne, Yorks.

MY RESPONSE......

Dear Vivienne

So glad some enlightenment has been found from my blog. Its is so very difficult to unravel and then explain these remedial riding fixes but hope the following helps.

NB This is just the first stage of sorting out your position. Look at it as laying a foundation stone down on which to build everything else.

Back to basics. Try to clear you mind of everything you know and just think of yourself as a skeleton - more particularly just a pelvis and a spine. (Look up pictures or examine a real skeleton!) Think of your pelvis as just the bony rectangular box that it is. It rests on the saddle on two 'feet' that are slightly curved - your seat bones. Pause for a moment to consider how hard it is going to be to balance ON your pelvis and those little seatbones (continue to ignore all the soft bits of your body). The saddle is slightly curved and the horse is a barrel that is also moving! Add on top of the bony box (pelvis) a long, curved, articulated wet noodle (yes, that's our spines I am talking about) - which everything else hangs off of and is inclined to sway, collapse, droop, flop etc. Now you see the problem!

What is going wrong with riders who sit crookedly is simply that they are not paying attention to keeping the bony box ABSOLUTELY level on the saddle. Why? Because its is extremely difficult to do so. If you do not make the fixes in the right 'muscles' low down, right near to the seatbones radiating outwards, other muscles in the body will try to do if for you as your body hates to feel unsafe. Legs will grip, shoulders tense and rise up etc etc.

The bony box (pelvis) is very annoying as it can tilt from side to side and front to back at the same time AND do different variations of these on the left to the right. That's why lessons from untrained teachers often cannot solve the problem. Its almost like the best teacher for your body is you - once you start to know what to look for and read feedback from your body. Not everyone can do this I'm afraid. If you get even a bit of feedback, an ah ha moment, you'll be okay as you can build on this and get better at it.

So. Sit on your horse and walk forward. If safe to do so, take both thighs, knees, lower legs away from the horse's side so you are just resting (literally balancing) on your seatbones. This is to find them and take away compensating bracing and gripping that obscure the truth. Now imagine you have a little spirit level (with the bubble to tell what's level) in each seatbone/side of your pelvis. Feel how you have to use deep muscles low down near the seatbones and surrounding area to KEEP readjusting the distribution of weight so that, like a pair of old fashioned scales, you have equal pressure/weight/half of your body on BOTH sides of your pelvis. Keep taking your legs away and then putting them back to check that you are BALANCING and deep muscles keep firing to get you back to level. Make sure your eyes have gone 'soft' so you are concentrating only on the task of keeping your seatbones/pelvis level - as if your brain has gone down there to sort it out and your mind in currently empty!

Your spine must also do a 're-adjusting to find level' job but this is harder as you have nothing to gauge pressure against. Just think that it is not allowed to slump, flop, curve inwards or outwards but is involved in the job of keeping the pelvis level ON THE SADDLE. (I find it helpful to get a little 'angry' with my body and tell it....'Just keep level, all muscles wake up and put a bit of effort in!!!! We all often have a mindset that we should be able to ride along, doing nothing much, just sitting in a nice chair, but that's what insidiously causes the problem).

Your seat can still gently 'GO WITH' the horse's movement. Balancing is not about being 'locked' any more than a tightrope walker could go rigid on the rope and expect to stay balanced.

Think of keeping the spirit level bubble level both sides of the pelvis and this will naturally make the right core muscles come into play. You don't need to think of using them or you may become too stiff. Anyway, the mind needs to be engaged in the process of levelness/balancing/micro-compensating for gravity, missteps by the horse etc.

Do this on a few hacks so you start to understand your body. You might now start to notice what your right leg is doing. Compare it to the left leg. Do you know notice that one seatbone (your right) is angled front to back differently from the left? Lift your right leg only up and put it back down. Previously you may have been sitting more on the front of the right seatbone and that made your leg go back, your heel go up and feel as if you are reaching for the stirrup? When you hold you leg up and put it down, you should sit more on the back of the seatbone (like your left seatbone does) with your thigh more horizontal, not slipping into vertical, and this puts your right thigh more out in front of you. It also takes a bit of a hollow out of your right lumbar area, making it a bit rounder and therefore softer to the horse. This is what is causing rotation (I'm sure there is some) in your upper body but its very complicated to explain the connection at this point. However, fixing it is not too difficult if the pelvis is level.

So turn your attention to your torso, or upper body. You probably have a rotation so that your left shoulder is slightly in advance of your right although you won't feel this as your body thinks its straight!

Can you try to reverse this? Its as if your left side has been trying to push your right side off the horse! The rotation pushes your right side back but also down. Think of your right side trying to push back by rotating/easing the right shoulder with the rest of the torso forward so the left has to stay back instead. This should make you feel more secure and help 'balance' because 1. you are more straight in the torso from shoulders down and 2) you now have more equal muscle tone each side to hold you straight.

One other very important little tip. As you ride (all paces), try to hold your right knee OUT from the saddle about an inch. Sounds odd I know but you are activating a tendon that runs over the hip joint and this being in tone/holding will stop your leg and pelvis slipping off the horse and keep your seatbone securely anchored onto the saddle.

As you can see, these little, but major, corrections are quite lengthy and complicated to explain but please have a go trying them out getting a friend to read them out while you are riding if necessary.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

Regards and good luck,

Jane
HER REPLY.....

Hi Jane, Thank you so much for all your great advice. I shall start practising Today. You are right about my left shoulder, as I am forever being told that I am blocking my Horse on my left turns. I am quite happy to put in the work required to correct my position and I realise that it will not happen overnight. But to be able to ride without feeling that my left stirrup is shorter than the right would be great. Hopefully I can then progress to working on other aspects of my position.  I will keep you updated with how I get on. Any other tips you feel may benefit me would be greatly received, (by my Horse as well). Please feel free to put my question on your blog, because after speaking to various people and watching others ride I am amazed at how many appear crooked. I think some don`t realise and others don`t know where to get help. I was definitely the latter. I feel now I can make some progress, rather than just trying something and hoping for the best that it will work. Thanks again, Regards, Vivienne


Hi Jane, (reader is replying to my comments regarding some photos she sent me).

Er, wow. Now that has given me food for thought! I have spent some time analysing what you have said along with taking a good look at my photos. And of course I will keep on doing this. I understand that I need to get it clear in my head before I can fix it. I`m a little unclear as to how I can manage to have my right shoulder down and back when I am holding my right side up. How, or rather why do I do this? Would you recommend any exercises to do off the horse, either on the floor or on the gym ball? Regards, Vivienne

MY REPLY

Hi Vivienne,


Firstly, you ask how you can be 'hitched' up one side but have a shoulder held down? Its actually easy sadly. If you look at your first photo you could superimpose a letter C on your back - exaggerating of course to make the point. The spine is slightly deviating with a side to side curve with the bulge towards the left. So what does the helpful shoulder do? Try to anchor the body down to the right to counterbalance or you would feel unsafe.

Re exercises. Anything that develops both sides of the body equally is good. Swimming, yoga, pilates. Sitting on the gym ball or even just a chair and trying to connect with your pelvis to get feedback as to whether you have EQUAL PRESSURE on each bit of the bony bits (seatbones) you are sitting on. The truth is that there are no magical exercises that we can do to fix this. It has to be a slow appreciation of the finer points of balance or equilibrium. The way to do that is constantly refine your concentration on the matter and your processing of the feedback from your body.

Its a bit like our body initially sits on the horse, finds a position and says 'That's good enough. I'm straightish". What you've got to do now is say, 'No, that is not good enough'. Probably the most appropriate 'exercise' I could give you would be to say 'find a doorway or beam in your house, reach up and grab hold of it. Let your body hang down from the beam until all the kinks are out. Now as I insert the horse underneath your bottom, sit down slowly and CHANGE NOTHING'. The truth is that I could ask you to flex this muscle, elongate that tendon, tweak here and there and it might help a bit but if you don’t realise the ultimate aim is to be able to balance, really balance without grip, on the horse, I will just tie you up in knots.  My hanging exercise is not being flippant, just trying to convey what the real problem is. The old fashioned method of riding bareback and without stirrups has lots of merit. Any kinks in the body and we fell off.

It may come down to how much brain space you currently have spare while riding. If you are on a young or difficult horse, so much of your concentration will be outside your body trying to deal with what is happening it will be more difficult to 'go inside' yourself to 'listen' to the feedback and make micro adjustments all the time you are riding - each step the horse takes.

Let me give you this idea though to try, if you haven't already. When riding, think of bringing, and then holding, each seatbone nearer to the middle, i.e. 'narrowing in' your seatbones. Its actually not possible to really move the bones of course but you will find the increase in muscle tone whilst trying to do this will help stability of the whole pelvis, seatbone and thigh.

Hope this helps, keep me updated.

Jane Christian

Sitting crookedly on a side to side plane, back to front plane, or indeed, both at the same time makes true balance impossible. Discomfort and injury to horse and rider, plus slipping saddles, are just some of the resultant problems.

The typical ‘weak right leg’ syndrome is something that I can see in nearly all (right hand dominant) riders to a greater or lesser degree. It has taken some years of studying, riding and teaching, and ongoing training with biomechanic coaches like Mary Wanless, to finally decipher what is really happening in myself and to find a way to overcome it.

I have noticed that riders have a ‘hanging off side’ and a ‘pushing off side’. If they are right handed, and therefore right side dominant, their hanging off side is actually the left side. Looking at the left side of the rider from behind you will see they sit a little more over to the left and therefore the right seatbone is nearer to the midline of the saddle. The right leg, from the front or back, looks shorter and at a different angle, than the left. From the side view the left side looks to have a good shoulder, hip, heel alignment. However, it is fairly immobile but the back stays in neutral spine and the pelvis is held with seatbones pointing straight down. This does put the rider’s weight much more to the left of the saddle with predictable results of slipping further off left. There is also a C curve in the spine as the rider tries to counterbalance and lean right!

The left rein hand is often a little ‘blocky’ and can restrict the horse via the rein on that side but doesn’t always pull backwards. Its the right rein that often gets pulled backwards as the torso, which now has a slight twist, cannot stack up/balance above the pelvis on the right and collapses at the waist. I believe that it is the angle of the pelvis relative to the spine and weak muscles here that causes the problem on the right and the rider will often go from hollow backed to round backed on this side and the pelvis cannot be held stable. As a result the right seatbone points forward or back, not straight down, the right thigh cannot remain in contact with the saddle and rotates outwards. However, the right is often the ‘kicking’ leg.

To compensate, the right leg starts to grip, the knee and the heel come up and push the left side further off the side of the horse. This in turn pushes the right side of the pelvis backwards causing a chair seat on the right with the ‘bum’ back and foot forward so the leg and foot are not a stable base of support for the rider. The rider then gets left behind the movement and cannot stay in balance. The horse will often speed up out from under the rider and the rider will then try to fix balance, speed and bend with the inside hand. Legions of traditional riding teachers shouting ‘Give the inside rein!’ waste their breath as the rider simply cannot comply. The rider's weight tends to be on the front of the left seatbone with the left thigh being held too vertical to the ground. It then has to gripped to keep stable.

It is a complex combination of muscle use that is needed to resolve this problem and it does take some detailed explaining and demonstration to the rider.  If I am explaining this to riders, I need to show anatomical diagrams to educate them on their own body (as I had to myself) and also use a gymball to demonstrate balance and asymmetry.  To straighten up the rider I suggest breathing work using the diaphragm, the use of core strength, isometric use of muscles to stabilise, how to notice (kinaesthetic sense or ‘feel’) and use visualisations and feedback techniques.

When the major alignment and muscle tone problems have been addressed, at the core of the asymmetrical rider is the incorrect or lack of use of the iliopsoas muscle, also the muscles under the seatbones and their connections with the adductor muscles in the inner thigh. Bringing these up isometrically and pulling them forward so the bottom of the pelvis goes slightly forward and the top (iliac crest) falls back is often the final and most dramatic piece in the puzzle of an independent, balanced seat - but not in all cases!

Next time you ride, try to get a kind person to video you and see if you can diagnose this fault in yourself.

Go to www.mary-wanless.com for info on her courses, books, tapes, demos etc. She is publishing a new book in April that will be a must-buy for any rider who wants to improve themselves and their horses.

The irony of this subject is that the riders who most want to ride well, to ‘get it’, are the type that breathe the worst! As riders get more focussed, verging on panicky, about making the horse go right, so their breathing becomes the exact opposite of how it needs to be to get the changes they want.

However, mention ‘breathing correctly’ to many riders and their eyes glass over. The thought goes through their mind “I think I can breathe okay and there are surely more clever things you need to tell me”. Actually, no. Believe me, it is so important, it could completely transform your mental and physical abilities on a horse.

Just for a minute consider other athletes. A runner, swimmer, archer, golfer. At top level their coaches ensure their athletes are breathing correctly - that is to say using their diaphragm and abdomen and not the top of their lungs only. Riding is no different.

(If you are not sure where and what the diaphragm is, you may like to look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoracic_diaphragm)

Its the basis of the independent seat and hand

Breathing correctly is not only to do with having enough ‘puff’ to keep riding. Its more important than that. Unless you are breathing in a way that allows you to release certain muscles and ‘hold’ with others, you cannot have a balanced and independent seat.

Breathing incorrectly means you are using only the top part of your lungs and not expanding your ribcage lower down. Top breathing, especially combined with mouth breathing (as opposed to breathing in and out through your nostrils), will limit your ability on a horse more dramatically that you will ever realise.

How to do it

Correct diaphragmatic and abdominal breathing is not difficult but it does need you to put some of your concentration on it until it is more ingrained. This is best done off the horse to start with.

Sit on a chair or lie on the floor - wherever you can relax. Put your palms flat either side of your waist as if you are trying to feel where the bottom of your ribcage is. Now breathe in and feel like you are pushing your hands away from your sides outwards. You may see your tummy move outwards as well. This is because your diaphragm is moving downwards to draw air into your lungs like a pair of bellows being opened. On the exhale the diaphragm rises up again to push all the air out.

If you have a friend nearby, they can help you by standing behind you and placing their hands either side of your body at waist level, just under your ribs. They can tell you if you are breathing in the right place (low down) as they will feel their hands move outwards a little. They may also notice initially, until you get it, that your shoulders are lifting when you breathe in and when you have practised a little, that your shoulders stay down.

Light bulb moment.....?

Now you can start to see how essential this is for riding. A large muscle - the diaphragm - is going downwards towards the saddle to keep you down, your shoulders are not heaving up or tense as you try to gulp air in which makes you top heavy. Your arms are now loose and can operate independently. Plus a larger amount of air (which is fuel to the body) now flows through your blood stream and increases your stamina.

Hopefully, by now I don’t need to sell the idea to you anymore and would implore any riders who seriously want to ride better to take this on board. This is not ‘hippy stuff’ - its what top riders/trainers do already and don’t realise that you are not doing it too!

Do it for your horse

An added spin off benefit is that mentally you become more serene and patient as a horse trainer. Many riders who are desperate to improve or to make their horse learn something new can become quite angry and quick to get after their horse if they think it hasn’t responded instantly to their request. Even assuming the rider was sufficiently trained themselves to try to train the horse, the horse may take a few seconds to work out what is required and comply with a try.  Deep, low and rhythmical breathing helps the rider stay calm and gives the horse a chance to react to your instruction.

Try it for a week when you are riding (and off horse too if possible) and see if you ever want to go back to the old way!

I believe ignorance of the use of these core muscles is the cause of most of the frustrations for the rider and a lot of suffering for the horse.

If you don’t use your deep postural ‘control centre’ muscles located within your torso (between your diaphragm and pelvic floor), the outer muscles in the shoulders, arms, hands, hip, thigh, knee, calf, ankle WILL take over the job. You cannot then move your arms and legs independently and freely. Stiffness and tenseness are then the result. (see ‘Want to ride better - read this”)

TO RECAP - WHY YOU NEED TO USE THESE CORE  MUSCLES

Consider for a moment the force that a horse, no matter what size, exerts when moving forward. Add in gravity and the up, down, side to side movement of a horse and you can see the rider’s body needs to use some muscles somewhere to avoid being flung off! What tends to happen is that, when we first learn to ride, we naturally use every other muscle but the correct ones (because we don't use them much in day to day life) to avoid falling off - its simply an instinct for survival.  These habits then tend to stay with us forever unless we are specifically taught how to locate and use core muscles or we discover them by chance.

FINDING AND DEVELOPING YOUR CONTROL CENTRE CORE MUSCLES

A good image to use for visualising the important core muscles is to think of your torso as a box sitting on end on the saddle.

The top of the box is your diaphragm (starts just below your last ribs) and this needs to feel like it is held down whilst still breathing in and out (will cover breathing later!).

The sides of the box are from your underarm to your hip both sides and your psoas muscle* needs to be switched on or 'in tone' to support the sides of the box.

*(the deep core muscle that runs either side of your spine - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psoas_major)

The front of the box is your abdominals that run down the front of your torso and these need to be switched on or 'in tone' to support the front of your torso.

The bottom of the box is the pelvic floor which runs from the front of your ‘seat’ to the back and needs to be in tone or switched on to keep yourself level..

GET ALL YOUR GUY ROPES WORKING

Now, when all these muscles are brought ‘up’ into tone (you may need to be shown how to do this) they work in opposition to each other and hold you stable. However, beware, its very like the guy ropes that hold a tent up - if one part of the system is weaker, the stronger side will pull the weaker side over (more on asymmetry later).

This article explains why I think riding is so complex, reveals a ‘secret’ you may never have been told and shows you how to start to become the rider you always wanted to be.

Does this scenario seem familiar? The professional rider glides around the arena, she appears to be very still, hardly moving but going with her horse. (You think: “She must be taking the movement in her back - that’s what I’ve been told to do but I just bounce”).  She looks very relaxed and soft and appears not to use any muscles. (You think: “I’ve been told to relax so I do but then get told to ‘sit up’ and not get behind the movement. Then I force myself to keep still and feel stiff and unsafe - its very confusing”). As you watch you notice that her legs stay still, with the toes pointing forward and the heel down but mobile. (You think: “I know I must keep my leg like that. I’m always being told to turn my toes in and get the heel down but they spring out again”).

The rider muscles you cannot see

The truth is that what you think the rider is ‘doing’ is merely the outward appearance of a completely different set of actions going on internally. The rider is far from ‘doing nothing’ but is strenuously using core muscles, particularly the postural and psoas muscles, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psoas-major and http://www.somatics.com/psoas.htm) abdominals and lower back muscles in a way that the amateur rider has never tried.  In fact, the novice rider usually has absolutely no idea these muscles exist let alone is able to use them in opposition against each other for every second they are riding whilst still breathing and keeping a soft hip joint!

Without this unique muscle use you can never ‘get it’

Not engaging these key muscles will mean that the novice rider will never be able to ‘take the movement in the back, sit still, look relaxed or have a soft hanging leg that can be independently used without disturbing the pelvis and torso - in fact, be balanced”. To add to the problem, the top rider who does  all this has no idea what they are doing either! It was so long ago they ‘got it’ they can’t work out why you can’t get it. And what is more, they are too busy being good riders, professionals or competitors to analyse what they are doing deep down and explain it to you. (This has been mine and many others’ experience though there are exceptions of course).

Core stability must come first

Core stability is the first and most important concept that a rider needs to understand. You can start on the ground with several exercises (see below) designed to locate the relevant muscles and see/feel their relevance. Some people instantly ‘get’ a demonstration or visual image that leads them to the right feeling, others need the same idea presented in several different ways. You may need to see an anatomical drawing of the relevant muscles so you can feed that into your imagination. The muscles can be located by pushing them outwards or ‘bringing them up’ inside you. Try sitting on the very edge of a chair or upturned plastic water tank and use these muscles to tip the back of the chair/tank off the floor - the same way you would work a playground swing but WITHOUT using your shoulders or legs. Sit on the edge of the seat, legs slightly apart and arms in the riding position. Slowly raise one leg off the floor and hold it in the air without moving the pelvis or putting extra weight one side or the other on your seatbones. After some practising off horse, the rider can try this in the saddle and imagine that now, just for a moment, you have ‘no legs’ and all that exists is your torso. Instantly the legs lengthen, the hip relaxes and you are ‘forced’ to work out how and where to balance the upper body, neck and head.

Legs that get in the way

My experience is that when most people, especially adults, first sit on a horse it is entirely natural that they use their legs to feel safe by locking or holding them on to the horse. Let’s be honest, many riders initially use the reins to balance with as well and add to the feeling of security. As we learn to ride we give up the necessity of using the reins for balance but surprisingly few give up the leg hold pattern entirely. However, it is only when the rider can be persuaded to give up the legs as the main means of security that true balance can be attained. And it is only possible to convince the rider that they do not need to rely on the legs for balance when they have been given something better to replace the security of ‘holding’ with their legs - hence the core stability work.

You have to throw away the trainer wheels!

Many riders do not really trust their sense of balance because of nasty experiences on a horse and this can make them nervous which, of course, makes them more likely to tighten muscles and tendons producing a vicious circle. The key to breaking this is convincing riders that they do in fact have a perfectly functioning, inbuilt, entirely trustworthy sense of balance (they can stand up can’t they?) but locking with the leg (hip especially) actually stops their sense of balance working for them. Its a bit like a ballet dancer trying to learn to balance on her points but never actually letting go of the bar. Or learning to ride a bike but never taking off the ‘trainer wheels’.

Mastering the use of core muscles opens the door

It is only after the core muscles have been engaged and their use mastered that (as if by magic) most other faults can be eliminated, for instance: sitting more to the left or right, leaning forward or back (with the resulting incorrect leg position), incorrect rising trot technique, bit contact problems. These and many other issues often resolve very easily as they are usually symptoms of a lack of core stability.  It also becomes very obvious that it is only when the rider is ‘fixed’ that the horse has any chance of complying with the rider’s ‘requests’.




 


 

It had always perplexed me - why do some people have so little trouble with riding but some struggle making frustratingly slow progress or, worse still, never ‘get it’ and resort to gadgets or give up after one too many falls. The ones who ‘get it’ and find it easy are called talented or a natural but what part of the mind or body made the job so easy?

I knew balance, good balance, must play a part but why did some people have ‘it’ and not others. I have spent the last 20 years slowly unravelling the components that make a good rider. Its an ongoing process and I would like to share everything that I discover with other riders for the benefit of their horses.

Its how you sit - doh!

It turns out the answer to the secret of riding is...(drum roll)... how you sit on your horse or your ‘position’. The word ‘position’ is often used as a shorthand to describe the complex subtleties involved in how our bodies interact with the horse when we ride. Yet many riders find that following the conventional instructions on position (often repeated by an instructor at an ever increased volume) to lower heels, sit up, keep hands still, look forward, use leg, keep elbows soft, give inside rein, SIT UP FOR PETE’S SAKE doesn’t help them. Yes, the secret to riding is ‘position’ but that doesn’t really begin to describe what is actually going on.

Rider’s faults a symptom of trouble elsewhere

The trainer, not being blessed with x-ray vision, is unable to see what intricate and very personal mechanical problems you have in your body and can often only try and make adjustments to the superficial overall impression. Usually the obvious fault, let us say heels coming up or toes turning out will be greeted with an instruction to lower heels or turn toes in.  This rarely works for long because the problem does not originate in the feet - they are merely a symptom of a fault elsewhere, often in the torso and pelvis. Things get even more difficult because we are all constructed so differently, have had different life experiences and whilst we all have the same muscles, some are longer, shorter, weaker, stronger, mismatched, never used or over used. Any combination of them could be causing a major positional and balance problem.  And that’s before we even get in the mind zone and consider fears, tension, unrealistic expectations, lack of knowledge, over trying etc.

Even minor positional faults affect  your horse

Great advances have been made with new methods of teaching such as those by Mary Wanless, Joni Bentley and Sally Swift. All these authors help to give the rider useful insight and the knowledge needed to analyse why their particular combination of body parts doesn’t produce the result they want.  But, before you can even make use of their teachings, you have to take on board and wholeheartedly accept a major ‘biggy’.  That is that even minor faults in your position and therefore balance matter hugely to your horse. They matter beyond your wildest imaginings and it is something many riders never understand.

The Catch 22 situation

Some riders are lucky to own perfectly balanced and conformationally correct horses which makes the job of riding so much easier.  Expensive warmbloods bred specifically for their rideability or Iberian horses bred generation after generation to be light in front and carry a rider means at least one half of the combination has natural balance.  But many of us, for economic or myriad other reasons, own and train horses who are less than the perfect equine athlete.  They may be on the forehand, stiff on one side, less supple in hock joints, tight in the shoulder, slack in muscle tone and so on.  Each one of these faults will make the horse and rider’s job much harder and often put the rider into a Catch 22 situation - they cannot get the horse to go better because they cannot sit better because the horse is not going correctly.  How does the unbalanced rider improve the unbalanced horse particularly when the horse is often adding to the struggle of the rider to keep a balanced and effective position!

Learn to develop ‘body feel’

Clearly the rider is the only person in the partnership who can help get them out of this dilemma.  To do this the rider needs to develop a sixth sense. Not intuition, although that is always handy, but ‘body feel’.  We absolutely have to be able to detect what it is that we are actually doing now to have any chance of changing it to something that works better.  The great advantage with riding horses is that they immediately give you feedback if you do make a change to your position for the better (or worse).  Again, with heightened body feel attenae you can pick up this improvement in the horse’s carriage and get an instant reward for your efforts. You then know what you need to repeat and what is not working.  This body feel is remarkably difficult to develop and may be another aspect of the talented rider - they have it naturally.  I have found  that once you have developed this ability to observe in a detached way which part of your body is doing what at a certain point (say on a circle in left canter), the correction to a long held fault often pops into your mind as if by magic. You start to have a feel for what is out of alignment but also what is working well. It is as if your subconscious really does know how to make things feel better but our brains block much of it out.  Perhaps this is why children often find riding so easy!

Lack of tone in postural muscles affect inside hand

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of riding, and being trained, is that the body part that is often identified as a problem, is not the problem at all.  How many riders are sent down the wrong track on the issue of the inside rein for instance.  I used to be told repeatedly to give the inside rein and I have seen many, many trainers tell different riders to do the same, even at the highest level.  The instruction seems doomed to failure because the problem does not originate in the hand, arm, shoulder, wrist, rein or any other of the obvious places.  The cause of the inside hand drawing back and causing problems (horse’s outside shoulder falling out, jack-knifing of neck, ribcage on inside disappearing from rider’s seat bone and thigh and lower leg etc) is often lack of tone in the rider’s torso, or postural muscles, and inability to stop the rider’s body twisting in an exact copy of the horse.  Merely letting go of the inside rein does not automatically result in the rest of the rider’s body making the subtle alterations to alignment, muscle tone, engaging postural muscle and breathing that all go towards providing the rider with sufficient independent balance that the rider does not need to even consider the rein contact.

Quality of sitting is the answer to contact issues

On the subject of rein contact, most riders are thrown completely off the scent of correct riding by discussions and instructions on ‘how much contact should you have?”  All sorts of mathematical figures are bandied about  - 6lbs of pressure in each rein, no loops, a strong contact, a soft contact.  This diverts the rider’s attention from the area that actually affects the ‘contact’ and that is the horse’s back.  Only when the rider’s precise and deft use of body control allows the horse to bring up his back under the saddle will the contact issues go away.  When the horse is able, because of the quality of the rider’s sitting, to round up his back and engage his own postural muscles (a prerequisite of carrying a rider correctly) there is no need to ask about contact for the truth is revealed - the horse dictates the contact, all you have to do is take up enough slack in the rein to be able to make polite and subtle requests through to the bit.  If he hasn’t offered up his back, all you are doing is hauling his head in and ultimately restricting engagement.

How to sit in such a way that the horse feels able and confident to bring up, round and expand his back muscles, i.e. go correctly when carrying a rider, is the major job of the rider.  When that is cracked, everything is so much easier for horse.  In fact his potential is then ready to be unleashed.

If you would like to improve your riding and make inroads into long held riding faults that might be holding you and your horse back, start today with the first phase of the process:

Find out what you are actually doing now.

Spend time focussing on feedback from your horse.  Spend at least three sessions only in walk or at least 50% of your ride in walk.  This can be done on a hack or in the school but circle and ride halt walk transitions.  Focus on what the horse feels like as it moves and how it moves you - you are feeding this data into your memory bank for later. Crucially, start to narrow your focus onto your seat bones, pelvis and torso and away from your hands and eyes. Start to notice differences between one side of your own body and the other. (You can do this off the horse when standing at the sink, driving or sitting in the chair watching tv. You are trying to develop a skill that will give you an internal set of eyes that can ‘see’ what no one else can - the internal workings of your riding muscles and tendons.  Don’t limit practising to the small amount of time you are on the horse). If you have already noticed that on one rein he doesn’t go as well, try to put into words what it feels like i.e. on the right he flows, on the left he’s clunky then focus on yourself - does your body act one way for left but another for right.  The fact is that it almost definitely does but I bet to date you have had no idea what is actually happening within your body.  Until you can read the clues from your horse and connect them to the feels from your body, riding competence will be hard to improve.



 

It doesn't really matter who is at 'fault'. You are the one who has to fix it. Just taking responsibility for changing your body use on the horse can be a major first step for many of us.   more »