Ep. 56 ‘One side on/one side off’ is the existential state of humans on horses…

Hello, I'm Mary Wanlis WELcoming you to podcast 56. I'm going to start with a quick story which I think I told a long time ago, but it bears repeating. And this was in a teacher training course in Australia many years ago, and people were working with each other in groups of threes, with one person coaching, one person as the rider and one person as observer. And there's a number of groups in this big arena with me kind of going around and trying to monitor what's happening in general. And I heard this squeal in a voice I recognized that went, I can't find my right seat bone. And I knew this was probably about to become a drama, even though the rider in question rode at the upper levels. But I then heard her coach, in this wonderful Australian drawl, go, so what are you going to do about was a brilliant response because the rider was about to go down a rabbit hole of angst about this disappearing seat bone and how it kept happening and how awful it was, and she just got stopped in her track and put back into. So what's going to be the correction for this then? It is also true as the baseline, that one side on, one side off is the existential state of humans on horses. Whether we're in the early stages of learning and just talking each seat bone and whether one's there or one isn't, or later on when we're talking about the idea of both boards on, having both sides on is not natural, it's a big reorganization. It probably really is hardest for women with a wider pelvis. And in the female pelvis, the angle of the sled runners between the seat bones can be 60 degrees as it is in men, and, and can be up to 90 degrees. And that 90 degrees gives a wider base. And I've said this before, but it's worth repeating. I believe it's those women with that wider base who really appreciate the wider saddles designed for women, where many women actually don't like them. Men, virtually all of them, have the same shaped pelvis with that 60 degree angle. But even with pretty elite male riders, a lot of them still don't have the ideal orientation of their seat bones and their underneath relative to the horse's long back muscles. And when we find the seat bone that's been missing and get it well in place, very often the other one suddenly goes missing. Especially again for women, but true for all of us. And this is the game of ping pong between seat bones. One is on, one is off. I often demonstrate this by putting one hand out in front of me in a roof shape with my knuckles at the top of the roof and my thumb and first finger on the other hand, each side of my middle knuckle. But I put maybe my finger against my hand and my thumb not against the hand, and then I'll reverse it. The thumb is on, the finger's off, the fingertips on, the thumb is off, and so on. And this is the game of ping pong as opposed to the narrowness that keeps both sides on. Within that game of ping pong, the reversal can happen every few days, sometimes every few minutes in someone who's really figuring this out, but more often every few days, every few weeks, every few months, every few years, or maybe never. One side on, one side off just could be a way of life, a way of riding with someone who doesn't even notice what's happening and what the knock on effects are. Finding that narrowness of both sides on is really helped by doing the exercise of reaching behind you, putting two fingers in the gullet of the saddle on the less clear seat bone and pulling with those fingers away from the midline, which brings your seat bone in towards the midline. It's worth doing this first of all with the not there side, then with the more there side, then again with the less there side. Maybe think of a little X low down in the back of your pelvis where you're trying to get that X to have its arms somewhat more upright. And when you get too wide, the arms of the X are all too close to the horizontal. So being narrow enough requires that a certain part of your anatomy in between your butt cheeks takes a certain orientation. And that will put a certain part of your anatomy within that gap up off the saddle. And if you spread your seat bones, that part of your anatomy comes down too much and and you are doomed to be too wide. Another factor in this is that slingshot helps, because being further back with your thighs, like the elastic in the slingshot, making that long, thin, narrow under tension V shape, being back goes with having that narrower a frame to your thighs and also being narrow in your seat bones. Not having slingshot and being further forward in the saddle can go with being too wide and too soggy in your thighs and too wide and basically soggy in your underneath. Most people don't slingshot so well in one direction, it can leave them feeling just a bit like they're flailing about, where in the other way they get themselves into a good place. The rider needs to be both riverbanks to the horse's river. Both pieces of bread in a horse sandwich the seat bones the the outside seat bone on 5 o' clock or 7 o', clock, depending on which rein you're on. But don't let the inside one disappear away from the midline along the long hand. It's got to stay in close to the middle of clock as well. In fact, you might almost feel that you're steering the horse between your seat Bones at 5 and 7. Here's an experience that people often have in learning, which is another way to get confused. They find a really good fix with their bad side. And that fix is like a pendulum swing that when the pendulum swings the other way, makes that side really good and they get it and lose it and get it and lose it. And within that, the pendulum swings from really bad when they've lost it to really good when they've got it. And let's say the person knows they need to make the that same fix on the other side. Sometimes the fixes aren't the same and sometimes they are. So they kind of find the fix on what was their good side and then they're surprised when they can't do it and it's not so clear. And the truth is that that side is less bad when it's bad and less good when it's good. It's a smaller pendulum swing and that makes it harder to really wrap your brain around and make the difference. Sense the difference, learn how to do the difference. So the bigger pendulum swing from really not good when you lose it to really good when you get it is much clearer and easier. And maybe you're on your way to a new good side. And of course that's going to come with the free gift that always accompanies a new good side, which is a new bad side. Let's come back to the theory we've come up with over the last couple of podcasts that we've really demonstrated by hand modelling. We're going to review this really quickly as we've done it in a previous podcast. So if you put your upper arms in front of you parallel a little bit below horizontal, and your lower arms so your fingertips are pointing up to the ceiling, your lower arm is going to be your thigh bone and you want to angle it out slightly so your wrist is further from your midline than your elbow, there's your thigh bone going up to the bony knobble on your panty line, the greater trochanter, which is the outside of your wrist. And make sure Your hand is parallel to the floor, so your palm is facing the floor. And loosely curl your fingers. Your loose fingers represent the head of the femur, which goes into your hip socket. And if you mold your other palm around those curled fingers, you have a hip socket. Beneath the hip socket is your wrist, just as the sled runner is beneath the hip socket in your body. And there's this space between the bottom of the wrist that's like the sled runner and the creases on your outer wrist, which are like the underside of your Greater Trochanter, where you have another novel, the Lesser Trochanter, which we can't model this distance, which is known as the neck of the femur, after the fiber has gone around that very steep turn, that is the distance that we ideally want to lie across each of the horse's long back muscles. Once the person has both of their seat bones close to the midline, and this probably means both boards on, and they can do that and maintain it pretty well, it's time for the next stage and we can do this sitting in a chair. So if you sit in a chair with your thighs a little apart and you want to think of your seat bones close together, so you might begin by taking the flesh at the side of your butt and tucking it in underneath your butt. And then on one side, put your fingers under your underneath with your fingertips just to the outside of your seat bone. You should have three fingers in under there. So with permission from the rider, I will put my fingers under her butt in this way on the side where the horse has the less there, less wide, long back muscle. We usually start with the horse's less clear, less wide, less their long back muscle on the inside, because that's normally the easier place for the rider to begin to make a difference. So I've got my three fingers under the flesh in the rider's butt. And if there's an audience, which there often is, when I'm teaching, I will normally face the horse straight towards the audience. And you can do with your fingers what I would do with my fingers. So without moving my fingers so they slide on the person's flesh, I will make a draw away from the midline. So can you move your fingers in a way that you feel you're encouraging the flesh away from the midline? And I'll say to the rider, this is a draw away from the midline. And then do the opposite, make a draw towards the midline. You have the draw away from the midline and the draw towards the midline, the draw away from the midline and the draw towards the midline. Now this is actually a very good spectator sport because the folks at the front see the horse's cleavage and his bosoms changing, as it were. So as I draw away from the midline, his cleavage goes that way and as I draw towards the mid line, his cleavage goes the other way. And as I'm standing beside the horse, I can see that as I draw away from the midline, his ribcage comes towards the elbow on that side. And as I draw away from the wid line, his ribcage goes the other way. So I'm seeing his ribcage change and the rider can pretty much always feel the difference that I'm making in the underneath and often goes, oh, the horse is moving too. And the first time I ever did this with anybody, it was on a 132 pony and the pony nearly fell over. And suddenly I realized the power of what I was doing. And every time I demonstrate this, what I'm really doing is rocking a thousand pound horse with three fingers. And often to people watching, that is remarkable. And as I say it here, it feels remarkable. But I promise you, it happens every time. So the most recently I taught this was with a young rider who is a young professional and she hasn't had that many lessons, but she's been very able to clue into these changes and been doing really well. And at the end of the lesson she said to me, I stood there thinking, yeah, I'll never be able to do that, because you can imagine what I said next, which is, okay, so as we walk on, you're trying to make this draw away from the midline. She walked on. And despite her skepticism, yeah, I'll never be able to do that. She did it. And she felt how she made that long back muscle become wider. And as long as she could keep that sense in her underneath. So this is a way of doing suction, of kind of ing that long back muscle to be wider, higher, more present, supporting her and the saddle. Many, many people have learned to do this. And of course, for me as a.

Coach, part of my skill is choosing.

My timing and picking the right moment to do this. But I promise you, normal people can learn to have this amount of feel and this amount of skill. It's just a question of how long it takes to get down the Alphabet to this point. Part of this and part of the difficulty is that in theory, your pelvic floor is a diamond shape. The front point of the diamond is a cut off point because you have your pubic bone, the sled runners make two sides of the diamond, and then from your seat bone back to your tailbone, you just have muscles and a ligament. But that diamond shape, which should be beautifully symmetrical. And if you ever look at an anatomy diagram with the pelvic floor, it will show you a beautifully symmetrical diamond. But I'd be pretty certain yours isn't and nobody's is. And of course it gets worse if you've had babies and you've subjected your pelvic floor to the ultimate amount of stretch. And in fact, I remember somebody I taught a lot and after she'd had her first baby, she rang me up three or four days later. She'd had a difficult birth, she'd torn a whole load, they'd had to cut her more, and she had somehow managed to get a mirror and look at the damage to her underneath. And she was on the phone to me in tears going, I don't think I'll ever be able to ride again. And she did heal and she did ride again and she did even have another baby. But there can be tremendous differences between the two sides. And I have another student who, after a difficult birth and having physiotherapy because of the damage that was done, had the physios tell her that there was an 8020 difference in the strength of the two sides of her pelvic floor. And obviously that rider's got her work cut out. And one seat bone is going to really drift into the middle on the less there side of the diamond, and the other seat bone going to really fall away from the middle on the more there side of the diamond. But let's say we can get the rider to where the seat bones are on the inner edge of the horse's long back muscles. The rider can get both boards on, the rider can get two boards in the horse underneath her. So she's dealing with her soggy side and his soggy side. And through this exercise of the draw away from the midline and the draw towards and the draw away and, and the draw towards, she's really influencing the width and the thereness and the substance of each of those long back muscles. Now there's an exercise that we could do sitting on the floor which will really help you understand this. And I do have to declare that this is most riders unfavorite exercise because the floor can be pretty hard. So if you can get yourself on, you know, a yoga mat and maybe double it, or on a carpet and a rug you'll do better. You certainly don't want to be on a wooden or a tile floor as you do this, and this is an exercise you absolutely cannot do in your car. So you want to sit on the floor in a way that puts one of your calves in front of you, the other calf at 90 degrees to it, to your side. So you're going to have to rest on the hand on the same side as the calf that's in front of you. And you'll be leaning a little bit to that direction. And you can pretty certainly only feel the seat bone on the side of the calf that's in front of you. The other one's likely to be a bit in the air. So from this baseline, which I hope I've explained well enough, you have your hand resting to the side and I want you to lean towards that hand. Now, as you lean towards that hand, you'll feel that you roll over quite a lot of muscle. And you might feel just one clunk or you might feel two clunks. But if you roll over far enough, you're hopefully going to feel find the Lesser trochanter and be able to feel that there's a bony knobble that stops you going any further. And you can, even if you feel masochistic enough, take your hands and your legs off the floor and balance on just your trochanter. And this is the lesser trochanter rather than the greater one, the underneath one. So then roll from the seat bone to the trochanter and to the seat bone and to the trochanter and try and feel the clunk, clunk of rolling over two muscles. And if you're struggling to find the trochanter, it may be that your body's reluctant to go far enough. You may need to lean more to the side than you think. And it may not be directly towards 3 or 9 o'.

Clock.

You may find that you've got to go a little back towards the 6 o', clock, end of the clock behind you, or a little forward towards 12 o' clock in front of you. But can you find that novel and just roll between the two? And whilst it might not be wonderfully comfortable, when you end up finding the little novel at the side, it's really worth it. And the rolling between the two is a great anatomy lesson. Okay, so next time you come back to the midline, change your legs round the other way. So now you have the opposite leg in front of you and across your body with the other calf going front to back at the side of you at 90 degrees to the first calf. You're resting on the hand of the side where the calf is across the front of you. Your weight's on that seat bone. And then see, can you roll towards the trochanter and backwards and forwards between the seat bone and the trochanter? And you may find it more easily, you may struggle more. The clunk, clunk of the muscles you roll over may be clearer to you or maybe less clear, but it's worth getting this anatomy lesson and really realising that you have these nobbles and the muscles between them. Okay, so then rearrange yourself. So you're sitting with your feet in front of you, your knees bent and up in the air, leaning back on your hands. Now, you can feel both seat bones. So both legs are parallel out in front of you, your feet about hip width apart. And you're leaning back on your hands. And then see if you can roll to one side, find that trochanter, roll to the seat bone on that same side, the seat bone on the other side, and roll to the other side and find the other trochanter and then girl, seat bone, seat bone, trochanter, seat bone, seat bone, trochanter. And you may find on the one you don't find so easily that you just don't quite glunk over the second muscle in the way you need to. And you may have to go further to that side than you think to find it. Now, as I said, this is often not people's favorite exercise because it's a bit challenging to the pony nobbles of the trochanter, but it really is worth doing and I absolutely recommend it as an anatomy lesson and as a way to find out how to get the side that's less clear, that doesn't so easily stay in place. So I hope you might repeat this exercise a few times in the coming week and that you'll enjoy riding your horses. You'll maybe put your fingers under your own butt to feel the draw towards the draw away. You'll do the exercise of the two fingers in the cantle, drawing both seat bones towards the midline so you make that X, I call it a taller X, with its arms more vertical and less horizontal. And above all, I hope you can do this, an attitude of play, discovery, just noticing, figuring out what works, what doesn't, and helpfully, happily, doing the repetitions that begin to make you more consciously competent. Have fun with your horses, Enjoy your riding. I'll be back again soon.

These podcasts are linked to two other Internet sites. One is Dressage Training, 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 in 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 you.