The shoulder is one of the most complex joints in the human body and as such is vulnerable to all sorts of problems and injuries. It is a relatively shallow joint in comparison to our hip joint and is extremely dependant on muscle tone for correct alignment and joint stability. Imbalance in any of the […]
A correctly placed and aligned knee prevents knee injury, whether we are on or off our horse. While in the saddle, a correctly placed knee can be used for subtle aids. However, very few people actually spend any time thinking about the positioning of their knees ,until they start to experience knee pain. But what
When I first started teaching Rider Biomechanics it was perfectly clear to me, standing and watching, whether a rider was sitting straight in their saddle, or collapsing to one side, leaning forwards or leaning backwards. However, it soon became abundantly obvious, that what I was seeing and what the students thought they were doing, were
Posture & Balance Read More »
As a Rider Biomechanics Coach, I know that the way a rider sits on her horse influences the way the horse moves. Obviously, there are lots of other reasons why a horse may not be moving properly, such as the horse’s own asymmetry or a poorly fitting saddle, but one of the most common reasons
Posture, Position and PI Read More »
Biomechanics seems to have become the buzz word in the equine industry in the last 10 or so years. Everyone these days is a biomechanics coach, but what does biomechanics really mean and is biomechanics really important to you or your horse? Lets us look at the meaning first. If we look at Wikipedia, biomechanics
What is Rider Biomechanics? Read More »
A good seat is an essential if we want to be a good rider. Every book and every trainer seems to agree on this. How a good seat can be achieved or what constitutes a good seat, is perhaps a little less clear. Perhaps the first question we need to ask ourselves is why our
The Importance of the Seat Read More »
Contact is the third building block in the classic German Scales of Training pyramid following after Rhythm and Suppleness (sometimes shown as Relaxation). However, the question of what contact is, or more to the point, just how much contact is needed and how soft or how firm the contact should be, seems to be something
Contact & Rein Pressure Read More »
I originally wrote this post in 2018 but it is as relevant now as it was then. As anyone who has followed my articles for any length of time or attended one of my clinics or classes will know, I am pretty obsessed by asymmetry (both our own and our horses) and how being crooked
Correcting Crookedness Read More »
So far in this series we have looked at “the importance of straightness” and “the importance of the hips”. But just as you can’t build a house without a good foundation, we can’t correct the posture of either our horse or ourselves without looking at our feet. Both horses and humans will find a way
The Importance of the Feet Read More »
Our hips have a huge influence on our ability to ride well and the way our horse goes. Tight hips are a major cause of all sorts of problems, such as; bouncing in the saddle at a sitting trot, not being able to follow the movement of the horse, restricting the movement of the horse,
The Importance of our Hips Read More »
All horses and all humans are asymmetrical to a greater or lesser extent. The muscles on one side of the body are stronger than the other, one side may be more flexible than the other and we (and our horses) are more coordinated with one hand or hoof than the other. So if we are
The Importance of Straightness Read More »
More and more middle-aged and older people ride now. In fact there are more of us than ever before. And although some of them will have had horses their entire lives, many of them are only just coming back to horses now their children have grown up whilst others are achieving a lifelong dream and
Fitness & the Older Rider Read More »
One of the most common problems I see with riders when I am doing Posture Assessments and Awareness Clinics on PI are tight hips. This can manifest itself as an inability for the rider to turn their upper leg at the hip, toes turned out, problems with adjusting their pelvis to implement weight aids or
Many riders suffer from lower back pain that spreads downward to their legs and sometimes even their feet. This sort of pain is frequently referred to as sciatica but it is sometimes caused by tightness in the periformis muscle. The piriformis is actually a small muscle that is located behind the gluteus maximus, deep in
Posture is the position in which we hold our body upright against gravity while standing, sitting on a horse, driving a car or sitting in a chair. Good posture requires our spine and pelvic girdle to be in alignment or neutral. When our spine is in correct alignment we place virtually no stress on our
Posture & Alignment Read More »
Our position has an enormous impact on the way our horse moves underneath us, and our spinal alignment influences every aspect of our riding. One of the common problems that I see is the rider inadvertently stacking their weight more over one side of the horse than the other. As a general rule your horse
Spinal Misalignment Read More »
Neutral pelvis and neutral spine – what are they and why should we care? As riders, I suppose the main reason we should care is because we need to find our neutral pelvis and spine to become effective riders. However there is a far more fundamental reason to worry about finding our neutral spine and
Although we know we need to ride in alignment and know the importance of good posture, most of us don’t automatically think about our ribs when it comes to riding. We are aware of the importance of our pelvic girdle being level (anyone who has read Sally Swift will be know of her analogy about
Biomechanics is the study of the functioning of the body in movement using mechanical principles. It is highly relevant to riding because in riding the human’s body and the horse’s body, each with their own normal way of functioning, come together to influence each other. In order to bring about the right biomechanical dynamic of
Why worry about the rider? Read More »
Anyone who has attended one of my clinics will have heard me talk about vision as one of the key elements for improving our riding. However just how important our vision is, was really brought home to me last month when I attended the International Society of Rider Biomechanics 2015 Symposium in Lexington, Kentucky. One