Ep. 51 - Spiralling muscles, rotating pelvises, and ‘seat feet’.

Hello, I'm Mary Wanlis welcoming you to podcast 51. I'm hoping you've had a go at the stretch I described last time, using the stable door where you fill out your concave side, turning it convex. It's such a good stretch and I hope within it you might have had a sense of a rotation. Instead of rotating towards that side, your shoulders start to rotate away from it. And I want to give you an idea of one of the muscles which is a key player in the tendency to side bend and rotate. Put the back of your hand on your back with your knuckles just by your spine and your entire hand just above the top of your pelvis. Put it there on your concave side. And then slide the back of your hand and your knuckles around further forward and further up around your side to your ribs in the direction of just under your bosom. You might have to turn your hand around a bit as you do it. Do this several times so you can find a way to that works comfortably. Taking the back of your hand and your knuckles from just above your pelvis at the back up and around your side to just under your bosom. If you can make that movement in a way that you feel you're dragging the tissue under your hand up and around. Recruit your other hand to help you if you need to. Now you're following the fibres of a muscle called the internal oblique, and it's a key player. It's like you're stretching and lifting your ribs away from your hips and rotating away from that side as you do this. Do the opposite. Let it crumple and feel your ribs go towards your hips. Your side makes creases. Everything just goes soggy. You rotate towards that side and now use your hand in whichever configuration works best for you to make that diagonal forward and up movement. I hope you can get a sense of this and dragging the tissue in that direction. And then just sit and feel if you can feel. So some filling out. This muscle is key and it's one of what I call the lamb chop muscles. My apologies to vegetarians. So, in a lamb chop, you get part of the spine, the muscle by the spine, and the long, skinny bit of the top has three layers of muscle in it and fat and the skin on the outside. And this is the middle muscle of those three layers. You. You may have heard of transversus abdominis, the tva, especially if you do Pilates. That's the deepest. And then we've got the internal oblique and then the external oblique. But if you Think of a lamb chop. You won't be far off in understanding what it is in your side that crumples and soggies and needs to be stronger. For our next exercise, it works best if you stand up. So I'm sorry you're going to struggle here. If you're driving your car and I hope you'll come back to it, sitting might work, but you better be at a stoplight when you do it. And please keep your hands on the steering wheel, your eyes on the road and do nothing, which will compromise your driving. But if you're able to stand up and put your hands on the tops of your pelvis on each side, so the tip of your first finger is by your point of hip. The webbing of your first finger to your thumb lies along the ridge of bone there. And your thumbs are reaching back towards your spine at the back. Gently. Experiment. Move one hand back a little. Now, don't move it over the flesh in a way that has friction. Move it in a way that you're moving the flesh to and just rotate it back a bit like you're rotating the rim of a wheel. And just feel what kind of response you get from your body. Then do it with the other hand and the other side. Now, most people, when they do this, feel that one hand in that invitation for the flesh and the bone underneath the hand to rotate back. One side kind of says, yeah, I can do that a little, and the other kind of goes, no, I don't do that. I wonder if you felt at difference. It's a subtle movement. Don't go in too big or you just won't be able to get it work. You're just going, can the skin and the flesh move over the bone? Would the bone conceivably go with it? So if one side says, yeah, I could do that, and the other side says, no, not on. How does that relate to the side where you tend to side bend and rotate in. In your riding, the chances are that the side that agreed to consider rotating back would be the side you rotate to. Now we're going to do another little bit of modelling with your hands so you begin to understand more about your pelvis. Point with both first fingers. As you do that, tuck your thumb under your second finger. And now make your pointing happen so that your first fingers are not parallel to each other, but going slightly in towards each other and slightly up relative to the back of your hand. So they're making a V shape with its imaginary point away from you and have there be maybe an inch or so between your fingernails. I hope that's clear. So your fingers are pointing forward, up and in towards each other with about an inch between your fingernails and your fingertips. Now, your underneath has two bony rockers that we often talk about as sled runners. They're officially called the rami and the singular is ramus. So we're in Latin here. But they're like the rockers on a rocking chair or the runners on a sledge, except we only have the first half of the rockers. And unlike a sledge or a rocking chair, these rockers go forward, up and in. Like your fingers go forward up and in. And your fingers back to your hands are representing two ridges of bone. And you'd find these ridges on the inner edges of your underpants, where your pelvic floor becomes your thigh. Your pubic bone would be between your fingernails. So we're just imagining it there. Your seat bones are back by the knuckle of your thumb. So a lot of talk about underneath almost implies that riders are sitting on literally three points. But your underneath is not a three legged stool. It has these two sled runners. Now, most of us have a torsion within our pelvis, so the angles of these are not the same. And whichever side you tend to side bend and rotate to lower the knuckle of the thumb a little bit, so your finger is at a steeper angle than the finger of the other side. This is probably how you are, because virtually everybody pops out of the womb like this and it's considered idiopathic. In other words, it just happens, it's part of what is, and nobody really understands why. So if these two sled runners are at slightly different angles, you're not going to sit on both of them in.

Quite the same way.

Now, we talk about them as the rockers on a rocking chair, the runners on a sledge, and also as your seat feet or your fake feet. So if you imagine we amputated your legs and these sled runners were your feet, the toe end would be by your fingernails, by your pubic bone, and the heel end will be back by your seat bone. And you've just demonstrated that on one side we where the angle is steeper, your weight would drop back onto your heel. And in terms of your seat feet or your fake feet, you'd be too heel down. This tends to put your centre of gravity too far back on that side. Let's do another little test. Sitting in neutral, seat bones pointing down as best you can, the back and the front of you the same length. Think of your two sides as being pretty independent of each other. And round your back on one side. The other side will come a little bit with it, but predominantly you're rounding your back on one side, then come to neutral again in that coming to neutral, you might feel the effects of that muscle that we just traced with your fingers as it brings you out of that rotation. Now round your back on the second side. This is probably the side where you don't fall back on the seat feet. In fact, maybe you're too much on the toe rather than too much on the heel. And rounding your back on this side probably feels less familiar. So on the side where you tend to side bend and rotate, you have to try and keep your weight more to the toe. Your fake foot, it's like you're trying to roll along the rocker to put the toe end more down and the heel end a little bit more up and back to make you more hollow on that side. You might want to imagine that there's a little weight in your pelvis somewhere near the toe end, maybe just to the outside of the toe end of that rocker. And that weight helps to hold you in this place. Or maybe you'd like to put a weight, a bigger one, within your pelvis or higher up in your torso. Because mitigating the tendency to roll back like this is difficult. It's hard work. You have to defy your body and the bony setup you've got here, you have to defy gravity. You have to really work at it. The difference it can make in terms of the tendency you would have when you side bend and rotate to pull on the inside rein is highly significant. But it takes significant work and dedication to really get it to happen in an ongoing way. And the reality is you're going to get it and lose it and get it and lose it and get it and lose it. And I really hope through these little exercises, I helping you understand what it is that goes wrong and how that's kind of written into your body and how you can mitigate that and begin to change it. And you can, but as I've said, it takes dedication. Here's another experiment which I hope will help you put two and two together. Of course it's possible. I'm just blinding you with science. And your body's very idiosyncratic, which, if you had significant injuries, it may well be. So hopefully this all adds up, but I can't promise that it all adds up. Sit in a chair in neutral and put your first fingers on your points of hips so that the fingertips is kind of pushing back at the point of hip, but don't actually push. And your first fingers are kind of straight and horizontal, parallel to the ground. So you've got your fingertips on each side on your points of hip. Advance one point of hip. Now, notice that when you advance it, it doesn't so much point straight forward as point forward and towards your midline. Almost as if the other point of hit was the center of a compass and this was the pencil of the compass. It's going a little bit forward and around on an arc of a circle. But notice too, what happens to your seat bone on that same side and what happens to your foot. The chances are that you chose to advance the side that is the outside of your C curve, because this is rotating forward as the other side is rotating back, and they are opposite sides of the same coin. We can't blame the problem on just one side. And even though when you're riding, you may only be able to put your focus on one side, it ultimately needs both sides to be involved in the fix. So as you make that little push your point of hip forwards, I think you will feel your seat bone lift a little and your foot push into the floor a little. This could be very significant in terms of your disappearing seat bone. Try the other side. Does it feel like a mirror image? Does it want to advance in the same way? It probably doesn't feel as familiar or comfortable because this side likes to roll back. But again, I think you'll find that if you do advance that point of hip, your seat bone lifts a little and your foot pushes a little bit into the floor. Now, we're going to do that same exercise standing, so I hope you're in a situation where you can do this again. You've got your points of hips and your first fingers on your points of hips. Advance one just a little. You probably chose to advance the same one that you advanced when you were sitting. Again, it's like the pencil with the other hip, like the compass point. Notice how your point of hip points forward and towards the midline when you do that. So there's rotation in this. It's not just a straightforward movement, it's a rotational movement. Now, this time, what's probably most clear to you is not the seat bone and the foot, but what happens to your knee. And I think you'll find your knee bends and your kneecap aims somewhat across your body. Put that hip back where it started and try the same movement with the other hip. So advance that. That probably feels like something you don't do normally. It makes you rotate towards the side you don't normally rotate to, and the chances are that your knee will bend and your kneecap will aim sort of across the front of your body diagonally. So from that point of view, they're mirror images of each other. But from the point of view of how familiar one feels the, they're not mirror images. Now, the hip that would like to advance, maybe just advance it again. Feel what happens as you rotate. Feel what happens as your knee bends. And then as you straighten yourself up, push that hip back a little bit, try and get it to go straight back, almost like you've got a bigger butt cheek sticking out behind you on that side. And feel your knees straighten a little bit. You do it. That probably takes the rotation out of your pelvis. When you're standing here, maybe give yourself a forward up and around rub from the muscle on the other side by your pelvis to under your bosom and see if that can help you. And if you do this well, you're going to be feeling slightly weird because you won't be in your normal rotation. You might even be rotated somewhat the other way. And if the side you've pushed back feels a little crumpled and deflated, that would be a very good sign. Remember, when you get yourself into a state of being more symmetrical, you're not going to feel symmetrical, you're going to feel weird, it's going to feel bigger than it looks, it's going to feel weird, and maybe it's going to make you feel like a mirror image of how you are normally. Now, these exercises and noticings and realizations are very valuable. And when your body's just standing or sitting, it's easier to get clarity than it is on a moving horse, because here we haven't got the big external forces acting on your body of the boing, boing, boing of eight miles an hour in trot, which is enough to dishevel 99% of human beings. So doing them here, standing and sitting is a much easier option than doing them on the horse. But when you know what it is you need to do, what your beginning point is how the fixes need to happen. You at least have knowledge, and as they say, knowledge is power. And when you understand the what and the why, it's easier to execute the how. And you're going to have to do a lot in walk. Trying to use these realisations and the exercises we did in our last podcast with the stable door and the fist on the side of your concave side pushing into your fist, pushing your tongue against your molars, maybe at the same time really trying to get the opposite point of hip to come back that little bit, the pull up on the saddle to find the seat bone that tends to lose weight on it and to really get that seat bone clear. All of these can come in together to be fixes that you can do. And I want you to realize that this is a totally different philosophy for just saying, well, you need to be stronger. If you went and you worked out at the gym, you would do it with your advanced point of hip, advanced with the side of your back that rounds more, rounding more. You would be training your asymmetry and digging yourself deeper into it. Digging yourself out of it isn't easy, but it's doable. And it's the answer to changing the fact that when you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got. You have to think, think out of the box, think out of your asymmetry and find these different answers. Even if you feel you're going incredibly slowly losing it a lot, if you can keep checking in, if you can keep finding the corrections that help you the most, you will, over time make progress. And in the process of doing that, I hope you will have a lot of fun riding, that you will enjoy being with your horses, that the weather will improve and life will get easier in many respects, including how you get to ride on the more difficult rain. And meanwhile, I will get to see you again next time.

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 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 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 you.