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.