Ep.53 What do Ice skaters and clock faces show us about how to turn horses?

Hello, I'm Mary Wanlis WELcoming you to podcast 53. We've been talking in the last few podcasts about the tendency in virtually everybody's body to roll back onto the heel of one of the seat feet. You go round back in that direction whilst lifting the opposite seat bone, pointing the opposite point of hip across the body towards the midline and thereby rotating and side bending towards the inside of the circle, whereupon you are going to pull on the inside rein, whether you know you shouldn't or not. And what I want to do now is take a bigger picture view of turning and how it works. And I really hope you've done the exercise from our last workshop of sitting on someone's back, as well as these smaller exercises of just. Just discovering how these asymmetries pan out in your own body. So, for our big picture overview, I want you to think of an ice skater and how an ice skater goes around a turn. And think of an ice skater on one leg doing a dance as arabesque. And what she does is she pushes off her outside foot and she glides on her inside one whilst making that shape of one arm reaching forward and one leg reaching back. As she does this, where does her body face? Is it towards the inside of her circle or towards the outside of her circle? And I really invite you, if you can, to stand up and imagine pushing off your outside foot, gliding on the inside one. Even if you keep the toe of your back foot on the floor and don't test your ice skating stability, you will find that her body faces out of the turn and if she were to face her body into the turn, she would spiral out and fall over. So if you've tested the arabesque position, turn yourself inwards and realise that as your shoulders go in and you face into the turn, the bum goes out and that's the ice skater starting to spiral to the outside. Now, riders and horses are subject to the same laws of physics. And it's when we rotate in that we send our bum to the outside, our horse to the outside, pulling on the inside rein so he jackknifes worse. So my contention here is that a turn in riding works like that ice skater setup, that that helps us bring the horses with us around and turn like a bus. Ice skating shows us the physics, but the ice skater has her weight just on one leg. If you thought of a fencing lunge, you have a different version of the same thing. In the fencing lunge, you put your outside back foot down on the floor and you reach Forward with your inside arm. So, so a circle to the right is like a right handed fencing lunge. Your left foot is back, your right arm is reaching forward in the lunge and a left circle is like a left handed fencing lunge. Your right foot is back, your left hand is reaching forward in the lunge. The lunge in some respects is more realistic because both feet are on the floor. Like we have both legs, feet in the stirrups resting lightly but whilst we're riding. But between them, those two are great pointers for what the rider needs to do. So you're thinking of an ice skater or a fencing lunge on a right hand turn and a left handed fencing lunge ice skater on a left hand turn. Riders most normally lose the weight on their outside seat bone, but it can be that they lose the inside seat bone. And to not lose the outside seat bone, or not lose either of them, they have to be really close to the horse's midline. Realise that the further you go away from the midline, the more the saddle slopes down. And keeping weight on a seat bone that's a long way away from a midline is quite a contortion. People manage that sometimes and we'll come back to talking about this contortion, but it is a major contortion. So normally the seat bone closer to the spine has more weight on and the seat bone further away from the spine has less weight on. And in the sitting on backs exercise, rather like the fencing lunge idea, it becomes clear that the turn is initiated from the outside seat bone and the outside thigh in the back position. And it can help when you're riding to imagine that you were sitting on a clock face. So there's a clock face on your horse's back with 12 pointing towards his head and 6 pointing towards his tail. So if you were on a right hand circle, you would want your outside, which is your left seat bone, to be closest to 7 o'. Clock. If it goes to 8 o' clock or 9 o', clock, you're going to lose the weight on it and you're going to be rotating in. If you are riding a left handed circle, your right seat bone, which is the outside one, would need to be close to 5 o' clock. And if you lost it, it probably goes towards 4 o' clock and 3 o' clock as well as coming up. Once that happens, you're doomed to pull on the inside rein. So keeping your outside seat bone near to 6 o', clock, somewhere close to 5 or 7 is really important. Now we've done the exercise of putting your fingers under the saddle flap at the back or under the panel of the saddle, or better still, grabbing the edge of one of those sheepskin half pads that goes under the panel of the saddle. That gives you a great edge that you can grab and pull up on. Another really good fix is to take the hand on the same side as the disappearing seat bone and reach back and put your first two fingers in the gullet. You then pull in the direction that that hand came from. And as your fingers pull away from the horse's midline, you'll find the seat bone on that side moving towards the horse's midline. And this is a brilliant way to anchor it there closer to the horse's spine, where you can really feel it. It works like a charm and it brings that outside seat bone back and helps you keep the whole of your outside back, because that seat bone disappears as you advance your point of hip across your towards the midline, across your body, and you advance your elbow and you answer your shoulder. And if you're going to make your outside aids into a wall so the horse can't fall out through his outside shoulder and jackknife, you have to have the seat bone before you can keep the elbow, before you can keep the shoulder, before you can keep the hand. And if you lose that outside seat bone, you will give way your shoulder, your elbow and your hand without meaning to, and make that big space for the horse to dive through as he falls out. So your outside aids make a wall. You're in ice skater or fencing lunge. Position your weight on both seat bones equally, keeping the wall of your outside aids as you really think about wanting his inside front leg to step to the inside. When you get this really right, you can do that through your body positioning and through your intention without pulling on the inside rein. And when you feel tempted to pull on the inside rein, you know that something, somewhere has gone awry. Finding this ice skating or fencing lunge position is obviously going to be easiest at walk easy on a straight line, but where you really need it is on the circle. And even just a circle or a turn in walk might have you begin to lose it. Keeping your fingers in the gullet for a few minutes might really help you once you trot you up the challenge level. And if you're rising trot, you've got to know where that landing seat bone is and aim it for 5 o' clock or 7 o' clock in a very short space of time. Cantor really increases the forces acting on your body. The centrifugal force that would send your bum out gets amplified massively by the asymmetrical motion of canter itself and the fact that you're moving faster on a circle. So then it becomes a lot harder. But I promise you, if you can't anchor that outside seat bone, you're not going to be able to cape your midline over the main. So your forehead, forehead, your chin, and if you were wearing a waistcoat, your zipper are lined up over the horse's mane. And it's got to start with figuring out your underneath and being able to mitigate the centrifugal force. We're now going to do one of the really important exercises within this whole ride with your mind approach to steering. And it benefits people hugely to do this off horse as well as on it. And again, the best place to do it is in a hard chair. You'll get away with it in a softer chair with this one, where you wouldn't with some of the other exercises. But a hard chair is the ideal. And if you're driving your car doing this, I think you should be very careful because it's going to take a lot of attention. My recommendation is you're not in your car, you're not driving, you're at home in a secure situation. And this is known as the boards exercise. And it involves you thinking of your body not in halves, as we would normally do. Your spine in the middle, you've got a right half and a left half. But instead of chopping you into halves, we're thinking of thirds. And the lines that divide you into three thirds would go from. And maybe you want to trace this with your hand on your body, your shoulder strap over your bosom, down the edge of your abdominal muscle to the big tendon on your inside thigh, which is the end of your pubic bone. So on the front, we're going shoulder strap over your bosom to your ribs, down the edge of your abdominal to your pubic bone on the back of you. We take the equivalent line from your shoulder strap just near the inside of your shoulder blade, but really under your shoulder blade and down the edge of your long back muscle. So that's taking you down into your pelvis and to your seat bone. It would be the same line on the other side. So these lines are slightly wider at your shoulder strap than they are at your pubic bone or your seat bone. And. And they're going smoothly down your front and your back. But actually, better still, you're thinking of them connecting your back to the front. And this is where the idea of. As if there was a board through you, and we've got two boards through you from each shoulder strap joining your front and your back coming down to below your bosom and your shoulder blade going down the edge of your abdominals and your long back muscles and. And from your shoulder strap on the other side doing the same thing. And these lines divide you into thirds. What you want to do is put the fingers of both hands, the side of your hand, maybe the thumb side of your hand on each side on the front of one of those lines. So maybe one of the hands is on your upper chest and one of the hands is somewhere on your low ribs in your abs. And you're on that line. And you want to be sitting with your legs slightly apart and with your hands on that line. You're thinking of getting that line to be closer to your midline. Now, this has to happen in your back as well as your front. So you may be tempted to bring your front closer to your midline and have your back go away from your midline, almost like a door opening a little bit bit. But we want the whole thing front and back to move closer to your midline. Now, as you do that, you get to face your torso slightly in the opposite direction. And you want to imagine that if you were a stuffed toy rider with three thirds, you're taking all the stuffing in the outer third on that side and pushing it against the board to make it stronger and move it in. And you have to push it against the board as if you had an infinite amount of stuffing in that side. In other words, you mustn't make creases and claps at your waist. So you're moving that board towards the midline. And hopefully you can tell that you're doing this till it's a little weird, until it's made you stronger, and then let go. So you let your side just go to its normal place again with your fingers on your body, preferably move that line towards your midline, feel yourself feel face a little in the opposite direction, then let it go, then put your hands on the other side. You're going to do the mirror image here, except it probably won't feel quite like a mirror image. And the chances are that you managed to put your fingers on the more functional side first without even knowing that that's what you were doing. So this side may feel a little bit weird by comparison, but we'll see you put the side of Your hand or your fingers on that line. You think of it coming towards your midline. You're facing slightly in the opposite direction. You're pushing all the stuffing from that outer third against the board. Remember, the back of the board has to narrow in too. And maybe you're there going, oh, yeah, this isn't quite the same. It's not as strong or functional. And if you're feeling that, keep doing what you're doing. But could you bring our slingshot exercise to bear from the last podcast? And push back on the point of your hip, maybe with your fingers, and think of that side slingshotting back as you fill it with stuffing and push that outer third against the board and then let it go. And then can you redo it and let it go? Just rest for a minute. This is surprisingly strenuous and actually it can burn an awful lot of calories, whilst to an observer you would appear to do nothing. People often really get hot when they do this exercise a number of times. So let's go to the first side fingers or the side of your hand on the line. Can you move it towards the midline? Your body faces slightly in the opposite direction. I think you might really have a sense of advancing the outside third a little bit as you're doing this and you're filling it with stuffing. Pushing the stuffing against the board, really trying to make that whole third solid. But being careful you don't make creases in your waist. And notice has one or other thighs extended, you might find that one knee has reached a little forward of the other knee and you may feel a bit of stress in your thigh as you do this. Then let's let it go. Now we're going to go to the other side. Your hands or your fingertips on the line of the board. It's like you're trying to push the stuffing in that third against the board from the outside of you. Again, be careful you don't scrunch in your waist as you do that. You face slightly in the opposite direction. If you're struggling and it feels like it doesn't come together, think slingshot. And you might remember from the slingshot exercise how that can really put your quads into burn. So maybe you're going to feel your quads burn and perhaps because you've done slingshot, your knee may or may not be in advance of the other one, but you're trying to get this thigh to firm up and your quads to burn a little bit. So we want the same side thigh to firm up. And maybe extend as the board you're working on. Sometimes people find only one thigh gets strong, extends a little bit whichever side they're doing, in which case you're trying to figure out how to get the other thigh to be a mirror image of the thigh that naturally does the right thing. Okay. If you haven't let go of that, let go of it. If you hang onto it for that long, congratulations. That was noble of you. Let's go back to the first side. Feel your thigh extend. Feel that side firm up with stuffing. Really check the back of the board. Keep breathing. Let that go. Go back to the second side. Still put your hands on the front of the board. That's probably a good idea. Make sure you think of the back of the board involved as well. Maybe you need to think slingshot or push back a little bit on the point of your hip. Can you get the thigh to feel strong and firm on that side? Then let go again. Now it's time for the punchline. And the punchline is you put on the weaker, more disorganized side first, and then you put on the stronger side. And neither side is allowed to dominate the other one. So let's see if we can do this. You put on the weaker side and then you put on the stronger side. So it's like from the edges of your body, you're pushing the boards in together, keeping really stuffed and firm in those outer thirds. And you've made your middle third narrower. You want to think of it as windpipe width, the width of your windpipe or the width of your vertebra. Both thighs should be extending and feeling really strong. And I love the image somebody came up with for this many years ago, which is it's like two people fighting to sit on the same bar stool and neither one must push the other one off. And as you're doing this, breathe and just notice. I think you'll find you're bearing down. And I think you'll find that you've increased the tone and the solidity in your body by a massive amount. Let's let you let go so you can feel that you've really upped the pressure in your insides by doing this. And I'm actually not really sorry to tell you this. I'd be lying if I did say I was sorry to tell you this, but this is what it takes to begin to organise both sides of your body relative to the midline of your horse and relative to what you need to do when you're steering. And good riders could be Doing this without know they're doing it without realising how soggy the rest of the population are compared to them. My experience is, though, that even elite riders mostly have some funky or peculiar things about their boards and benefit from doing this exercise and really getting more clarity. Okay, we're going to go one last time. Put on the weaker side. Put on the stronger side. Breathe. Feel yourself bearing down. Feel your thighs extending. Maybe put your hands in a riding position. Don't let one side dominate over the other side. Most people have significant differences in the two sides, which are very clear and you want to get them as equal as you can. And when you're riding, that can really mean backing off on the stronger side. Let everything go. Now, it may be that you can't get this together on horse and it's just something that you practise off horse, but maybe you could try just walking your horse at the beginning of a session or out on hacks. Put one board on. Let it go. Put the other one on. Let it go. Put the first one on. Let it go. Put the other one on. Let it go. Keep noticing the weak places. If you have weakness at the bottom, you have all the fist on the pommel and fist across the pommel and two fingers in the side of the pommel exercises to help you, as well as your new exercise of reach around and put two fingers in the candle. So you practice doing that and then you go both sides on and you really may need to let go a little bit in the naturally strong side so it doesn't live its life pushing the other side off. Normally, one side pushes the other side off. It's there going, me, me, me. I do the riding and letting that strong side back off a little bit is as challenging, or maybe even more challenging than getting the weaker side to come more on. So I really hope you're going to practise this off horse and maybe in simple situations like walk on a long rein on horse, you during the next week, and above all that, you will have fun in your riding and enjoy your horses. And I will be back with you 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 at Just Giving and then to search Overdale to find the Just Giving 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.

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