Ep. 50 - Snug thighs, stirrup leathers, and a profoundly effective stretch for your concave side.

Hello, I'm Mary Wanlis WELcoming you to podcast 50. And after the last one, I hope you've developed more awareness of what happens with your seat bones, both just in walking on and that little walk along movement of your seat bones. And in terms of the lighter one and the heavier one and where the lighter one goes when it goes. Learning how to get that back is really significant. And at the same time you may need an adjustment that stops the heavier one from getting too heavy just depending on your body type. If you have a stiletto heel type seat bone under there, you may need to be training yourself to get a little bit of a bigger pad of muscle. You've probably had the experience when on a train or on a plane and and a child in the seat behind you sticks his feet in your back or maybe some taller guy sticks his knees in the back of your seat and you really feel it. We can't be sure how much this translates to the horse feeling your bony seat bone through a saddle. And this is an appeal to emotion more than it's about science. But that's such an unpleasant experience when you're on the train or the plane through. I hope if you're the heavy seat bone type that it might motivate you to really teach yourself to keep that little extra bit of the seat bone and the pad to really try and stop that seat bone from getting too heavy. But I know, and I've said this before, that if I could just say to you, keep your seat bones with 5050 weight and keep your forehead, your chin and and your zipper if you're wearing a waistcoat directly over the horse's mane. If I could say that and you could just do it. Riding would be very much simpler and I'd probably be out of a job. Willpower and obedience will fail against the habits of your body and the way we could talk about the guy ropes of your connective tissue pulling on your spine and pulling you out of True. This is such a multi dimensional issue that it takes a variety of approaches to begin to make an inroad. This is a good way as well to get started without opening Pandora's box in a big way. Your thighs are like an a frame around your horse and if you think of your thigh bone it and reach down your thigh bone to feel on the inside of your thigh just above your knee how there's a bony knobble there. And when you're riding you could imagine the bony novel on each side inside your knee being hooked on a bar that passes through the horse's tummy. And the question is, would that bar be level? This has become often one of my first interventions with people, and I will never forget the time I first did this. And I had a woman for just one lesson, which is a situation I try to avoid. But I had this woman for one lesson. She was older, she was rather overweight, and she was disappearing off the side of this horse, taking the saddle with her. And I looked at this, thinking, oh, my goodness, what can I do here? And my rule of thumb, and the rule of thumb that I've taught all of the ride with your mind coaches, is that you don't begin with asymmetry unless it's so dire you can't avoid it. You're much better off getting some good organisation in the plane of up, down and back, front before you enter the plane of side, side. But this was really unavoidable. And this woman's knees were so far off level, it was dramatic. And I asked her, if your knees were hooked on a bar, would one be higher up, one be lower down? And she could tell the lower one was lower. And it was very definitely that that lower one needed to come up. And could she do that and get herself to where the bar between her knees would be horizontal? And she really could. And it made a very substantial difference and became such a helpful tool in my toolkit. So would your knees be level? What might not be as clear to you as it would be to a coach if your coach was with you, whether the up knee needs to come down or the down knee needs to come up. If you look at yourself sideways on in a mirror and you see a rather straight, vertical looking thigh on the side of the lower knee, that knee needs to come up. If you put your opposite side onto the mirror and you saw your thigh much more horizontal than 45 degrees and you knew your stirrups were even then, then fat knee would need to go down. Realize too, that the issue might not just be you, it could be that your horse is holding his ribcage very much to one side. So one leg has a big bulge to go around and that takes up some of the length of your leg and the other leg is going almost straight down. And of course, if you're sitting a little away from the midline, so one seat bone's further from the midline, that's that leg has less to go around anyway, even if the horse is not distorting his ribcage, and that might make your knee lower when it's not so Much you that's the initiator of the problem. If you were sitting on an oil drum, it would be very clear that you would have the same bulk of oil drum under your right seat bone, right buttock and right thigh to what you'd have under the left seat bone, left buttock and left thigh. But your horse is not an oil drum. He too could be adding to the problem. At this point, I need to remind you to check that your stirrups are level. And you need to do this before you mount. And it won't work to just count holes, and it won't work to just stand in front of your horse and look at them. What you need to do is to pull down the stirrup as you would before you mount. Get hold of the stirrup and give it an extra downward pull so you know the stirrup leather is hanging taut. Then take the stirrup and turn it up so that the bottom of the stirrup is now higher up against the stirrup leather than the top of the stirrup where it attaches to the stirrup leather. And then measure how many fingers above or below the saddle flap, how many fingers widths above or below the saddle flap the top of the stirrup is, and make sure that's the same on each side. Now, this is the nearest we can get, I reckon to really checking even. And when you've done that, when you get on, you need to believe could feel dramatically different to normal. One hole's difference will feel dramatically normal. Two holes difference will feel like you're in a whole other universe. But it's really important to believe it and realize that mass majority of riders who think their stirrups are level are actually being conned by their own asymmetry to do what suits their body, but is not actually level. Also, another word of caution. If you know your legs are different lengths to do not make your stirrups uneven. The only time you might possibly be allowed to do this is if you know you have a structural leg length difference, which likely means you broke your leg and it did not set well. Otherwise, what you think is your shorter leg is pretty certainly jammed more up into your hip socket. And if you make the stirrup shorter, you going to jam it up into your hip socket more. This becomes very controversial in the same way that issues around shoeing horses are controversial and orthotics are controversial because you don't want to hold the old pattern or habit in place. So ride with your stirrups the same length, check them really rigorously, and when you get on believe it and know that differences you feel will feel bigger than they look, because that's how it is when you make change and may also be added to by your horse's asymmetry. So can you get your knees level on the bar? And maybe by looking at yourself in a mirror or looking at a photograph from each side, can you ascertain whether one knee is really drawn up and that needs to go down or one knee is hanging too vertically and you need to make a better arrowhead shape to that thigh and calf with the knee at the point of the arrow. Very often one leg wants to go where the thigh and the calf are almost both vertical, rather than making the arrowhead. Now to change tack a little. Hopefully you know from our side bend and rotate exercise that we did a couple of podcasts ago, even if you're not clear from your riding, hopefully you have become clear. Which side is your shorter side? From your armpit down to your pelvis, that side will easily make creases. You could just do a quick side bend now and feel which side more easily makes creases and which side less easily makes creases. And I'm going to suggest to you a stretch that you could do in the stable as you're tacking up. I want you to do this with care. If you hurt you immediately back off. Start this with caution. Take care of yourself. This is not a case of no pain, no gain. I don't want you to put yourself in into pain. So you put the arm of your shorter side out in front of you and put your hand on the stable door so your fingers the other side of the stable door and you're going to be able to pull on it. So you're facing the stable door with the hand of your shorter side on the top of the stable door. Then turn your torso a bit towards that arm and lean back against the stable door, using it to help you really expand to make a C curve on what would be that shorter, soggier side. As you settle into this, take your other arm and put your fist on the stable door, probably lower down than the other hand that's holding the top. Find a place where you can push on the stable door to help you push what is normally your longer, more filled outside to make it more short and crumpled. So you're pushing with that hand to shorten that side of the body and you're pulling on the other hand to elongate and make an expanded C shape out of what is normally your shorter side can you breathe into the lung on the side that you're expanding and actually try not to breathe into the lung on what is now your shorter side. You probably breathe into that lung more naturally and have your ribs permanently expanded on that side, where they're permanently crumpled on the other. As you breathe into the lung of the side you want to expand. Think of a big X on that side from the back of your armpit down to the front outside of your thigh and the front of your armpit to the back outside of that thigh. Could you expand and elongate each arm of that X, thinking of their ends getting wider apart as well as further away on the top to bottom plane? Do this for maybe three or four good deep breaths, really expanding into that side. And when you come out of that stretch, just stand and just feel how your body is and hopefully you will feel more expanded in your. What was short side and more kind of crumpled and a little softer in the side that would have been permanently expanded on the saddle. Obviously you can't do this exercise in quite this way, but what you can do, put your reins in the hand of your normally longer side and put your fist on the side of your normally shorter side, the side that you would c curve and crumple and rotate to and have your fist between your ribs and your hips or against your lower ribs and push your fist against your side and your side against your fist. You could think of that same X expanding between your armpit tendon at the back to the front of your pelvis, where your thigh comes out of your pelvis and the armpit tendon at the front to the back of your pelvis, where your thigh comes out of your pelvis, trying to expand that X. You could also think of expanding an X from your belly button down towards your thigh and from your belly button.

Up to your armpit.

And you could make the same X on your back. So you're really endeavouring to expand in all planes. Breathe into that lung. Can you keep that side expanded even as you breathe out? And you can add to the pressure you're making in that side by putting your tongue against the gum line of your upper molars on that same side of your mouth and pushing your tongue against the gum line. Now, I hope you've done this with me sitting in your chair. Even if you didn't have a stable door handy to do the first part of the exercise, hopefully you could do the this second part of the exercise. And actually I can do the first part of the exercise in my house using my stairs and standing on the ground floor as the stairs are going away from me and getting my hand around one of the banisters and the other hand on the side of the stairs. It's not quite as good as the stable, but it works pretty well. Now, if you can do this and you can really build pressure in what is normally your soggy side, you're going to feel very different. And it's probably hard to even imagine how much pressure and how much expansion you really need to get in that side to begin to make a difference. Most people might imagine that 10 or 20% of what they need would be enough, whereas actually they may not reach enough for a significant amount of time later and a significant amount of increased pressure later. So you may be able to adapt this to do in your car as well. That at stoplights, you could put your fist against your side on your soggier side and you could fill out into it and use your tongue against your molars and take several breaths to that, pushing your tongue, really trying to stay expanded even on the out breath, and see if that can also help you make a difference. So we've been attempting to even out the weight on both seat bones, and what we're doing here is evening out the pressure on each side. It is the lack of pressure, that soggy side largely generated by not breathing into that lung, but also generated by the way the muscles are there. And those two factors are significant, especially if you can also keep your knees level on the bar. So from your knees to your pelvis, to the midline of your spine, to the two outer sides of your box, you have to be robust enough to not let your body deform when that soggy side is on the inside and you're going around a turn. Now, this is not going to entirely fix your problem. It's a good inroad, but it's just a beginning. And we're going to add one last thing here. This is for when you're on the horse. We did our exercise of pushing down in one foot and discovering the seat bone on the same side would tend to lift. And it is very likely that you push down in one stirrup more than in the other. So your check has to go. Not just do you have even weight on each seat bone? Are your knees hooked onto the bar with the bar level? Are your feet even in the stirrups and just resting, not pressing very often? The foot that tends to press more presses in a way of being on tiptoe. Sometimes people press with the heel More down. But don't just assume that if you're slightly on tiptoe on that side, you're not pressing. People will often really push down into the stirrup and with the ball of the foot and the heel coming up, and that's their style. So really notice which stir, it will get more pressure, which heel would come more up. Getting the slightly up heel to drop down a little bit can be really significant. Getting the heel that goes two down, which will be two down and forward to become more foot back underneath you. So sole of your foot flat can also be really important. And that change can really freak people out because suddenly they feel like they're on tiptoe on the side where they were heel down and they were probably very proud of their heel downness. And some heel downness when you're jumping and going across country is a good thing, but even there you can have too much of it. And the down and forward heel is making the rest of your body topple two back. So that's going to be part of what we look at in our next podcast. But if between now and then you can get a clearer sense of your feet, which one presses more, does one tend to go heel down and lower leg two forward? Does one tend to go heel back and up? With your leg more on tiptoe, notice the two differences. See if you can do the stretch in the stable before you ride. If you do it several times, holding it for a few breaths each time, that would be brilliant. Hopefully you can work out a way in your house that you can do it, maybe using the stairs or some other piece of furniture. You need a pull and you need a push. Notice your two seat bones. Notice your knees on the bar, notice your feet in the stirrups. And above all, enjoy your riding. Have fun with your horses. Keep checking in, because if you don't check in, you'll always do what you always did and always get what you always got. First of all, checking in and then figuring out what the fix is is the name of the game. And without that, there is no learning. Have fun doing it. I'll be back soon.

These podcasts are linked to two other Internet sites. One is dressagetraining tv, which hosts a whole variety of webinars taught by myself, Mary Wanlis, and my colleague, Ali Wakelin, where we're working, live with a variety of horses and riders, showing them the basics of biomechanics and helping them build their skill and train their horses and explaining to the audience as we do this, there's also a groundwork certification course on that site based on the work of Dr. Andrew MacLean and Equine Learning Theory, and this too gives you a step by step guide to building your skills. We'd also love you to take a look@justgiving.com and then to search Overdale to find the Justgiving page for Overdale Equestrian Centre, which is my UK home base here. In this time of lockdown in 2020, we have 10 school horses eating, of course, and pooping and doing all the things that horses do, and no income to support those horses. And whilst they're having a wonderful time for us, this is something of a stress. And if you've enjoyed these webinars or enjoyed these podcasts and benefited from them, and you're willing to give any small or large amount to our Just Giving page, we would be so grateful. Many thanks to.