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 […]
Have you ever wondered why your horse veers to the left (or right) when you ride up a centre line in a dressage test or thought your horse was being naughty when he doesn’t hold a straight line as you approach a jump? If you find that you constantly have to use one rein more
The Seat (or why does my horse veer to the left?) Read More »
One of the things I talk about at my clinics is how important awareness of our body’s posture is for both us and our horses. Whilst most people accept that their proprioceptive system may need some help, somehow it is much harder to realize that our horse may also need help in improving his awareness
Alignment & Posture (Horse) Read More »
Does your horse fall in on a left circle and fall out on a circle to the right, or vice versa? Does he toss his head or try breaking into a canter when you want to trot? All too frequently we blame our horse for being naughty, but have you thought he may be trying
Balance & the Aids Read More »
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
Weight aids are fundamental in riding, but are all too frequently misunderstood or misinterpreted. Even if your instructor tells you how to distribute your weight to make a turn, do shoulder-in or travers, or to perform some other movement, you may still struggle to gain mastery over your body to produce the desired results. Let
I recently read an article by Wendy Murdock about the rider’s elbows and was immediately struck by how few articles I have seen written about them recently. And more importantly I realised that I had never written anything about elbows myself. Yet, how we hold our elbows when we ride has a major influence in
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
In this article I thought we would have a look at on the forehand versus engagement. You might think “I’m not doing dressage, I’m only hacking, it doesn’t matter” BUT you couldn’t be further from the truth. It does matter, because if we constantly ride our horse on his forehand, we can cause our horse
Forehand versus Engagement Read More »
So many riders and trainers talk about having the horse “On the Bit” but what do they really mean by this ambiguous statement? Do they mean pull on your horse’s mouth? Do they mean ‘contact’? Or do they mean ‘collection’? Certainly if one goes to a competition one sees all too many riders who think
Whether you compete at dressage, do just a little bit of schooling or are just happy hacking out – bending and circling are a great gymnastic exercise for our horses. Circles, and that includes loops and corners, can really help our horse stretch along his outside, as well as encourage him to flex his inside
To ride transitions well is probably one of the most important (and difficult) things one can learn as a rider. All too often the rider tips forward on a downward transition and tips back on an upward transition. Add in the rider who uses the reins for support on the upward transition, or hauls on
In this article I thought I would take a look at the first of the lateral movements, shoulder-in. I hadn’t realised when I started the article, just how long it was going to become. However, I decided that in order to really understand the true importance of shoulder-in, we needed to have a glance at
In this article I thought we would look at the second of the lateral movements – travers (also known as quarters-in, haunches-in or croup-in). As with my article on shoulder-in, I thought we should start with a quick glimpse of the history of this highly controversial movement before looking at the reasons for doing (or
The trot is a two beat movement with the legs moving in diagonal pairs with a moment of suspension between each pair of legs touching the ground. The trot therefore has four phases: Diagonal pair of legs on the ground, other pair in the air. Moment of suspension – all four feet off the ground.
In this article I look at the importance of being able to feel our horse’s footfall and follow his natural rhythm with our body. We will start off looking at the walk, as what we learn in a walk we can carry over into the trot and subsequently the canter. We all know that the
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