No one sits on a horse in perfect symmetry. Everyone favours one side over the other to varying degrees, ranging from nearly imperceptible in those who are exceptional, to very obvious in those who aren’t. So everyone sits with one hip lower, further forward or drops one hip more on one side than the other […]
So why is a correct and independent seat so important? As Bent Branderup wrote in his wonderful book The Academic Art of Riding, the seat is “the only aid you can’t stop using whilst sitting on a horse”. If we are crooked either laterally or vertically it WILL affect the way our horse goes. Firstly,
We are all asymmetrical to a greater or lesser extent; we may have one ear lower than the other, carry one shoulder higher or have one hip further forward than the other – this is our norm – and we think what we feel is correct and that we are level. Unfortunately for us our
Side to Side Issues Read More »
In the human, the psoas muscles lie deep inside our body, basically behind our internal organs (stomach, intestines etc) and in front of our spine. The psoas (there are two, one on the left and one on the right) originate along the sides of the vertebral bodies of the 12th thoracic vertebrae and extend down
Like so many instructors, I have asked my students to look up, raise their chests, drop their shoulders, etc. etc. for years, with varying results. I first came across mention of the hyoid bone and the hyoid muscles when I read Tom Nagel’s book “Zen & Horseback Riding”. Feeling the need to know more, I
Hands are so important when we ride. One often hears comments like “oh, she has such lovely hands” or “he has got awful hands” but what is meant by this and what are good hands? Firstly what should our hands do? Well if one looks at the FEI Dressage rules (Article 418), they state “the
Most of us will have heard trainers talking about the importance of core strength, but what do they really mean by this. Very often the expression core strength is taken to mean our rectus abdominal muscles (commonly known as a six pack) but this isn’t really right. Whilst we need to be fit, just having
Everyone knows that tension (as in negative tension) is a bad thing for riders. We all get tense when we are nervous, but tension also frequently occurs when we try and place our body into a position it’s not used to. Sometimes this is because we have forced the position, at other times it’s because