RIDING FITNESS

Bringing science to the art and sport of riding

Ride smarter, not harder.

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Efficient Riding Concepts:

By utilizing just the appropriate musculature, riding can become more effective, efficient and less taxing on a rider's body. We are able to ride more horses ridden with less fatigue and better performances when our riding is both efficient and effective. As you learn to control and isolate and/or combine movements or different parts of your body, your aids (leg, hand and seat) become more effective at communicating your intentions.

In order to utilize the body more efficiently while riding, it is necessary to be able to isolate movements of the body and when to stabilize or allow a body part to move subtly, under control. This is necessary to absorb some jolts or bouncing or to stabilize or hold a body part still while others move.

"Sit up straight, drive with your seat, move with the horse, push him/her (the horse) forward, let him/her move out, don't hang on his mouth, sit the trot." These are all familiar statements heard over and over again, but what are trainers asking and what are riders hearing. The problem is that what a rider hears and what a trainer wants the rider to do gets lost in the translation of these statements. This is the most common problem with riding instruction and why it sometimes takes riders much longer than it should to execute what a trainer wants the rider to do. Months after beginning to learn a task the rider finally has an epiphany, when the rider's body, by chance, moves in a way it has never moved before and is able to execute the not so new skill that he/she has been trying to master. Being able to learn how to control one's own body better will even help the advanced rider. One who may no longer rely on a trainer daily and know how to ride quite well or be at the top of their respective riding styles, will still benefit. These riders may have learned to ride quite well, probably because they have spent vast amounts of time in the saddle and they have figured out how to get the job done, but there may be additional information that can make their job that much easier. Many top athletes in any sport not just riding often will get the job done but sometimes at great expense to their bodies. It is these athletes/riders, that will learn some useful bits of information which may make the difference between themselves and their competition which has always been to close for comfort, as well as a longer career with less aches and pains due to tightness or compensation patterns of movement.

In order to sit properly and not seem too stiff, in order to move with the horse, it is necessary to allow some movement of the pelvis. However it is necessary to understand recruitment or engagement of the musculature first, before allowing too much movement and thereby being too relaxed and becoming unstable. It is the ability to engage some muscles, while relaxing others, partially engaging others without engaging them too much, so that they do not become too rigid and relaxing some others just enough, such that they permit some motion without too much motion or do not provide any support at all. It is this physical balancing act which is what separates good from great riders. This physiological Goldylochs, which is ever changing, throughout a single ride that all riders are in search. This allows the riders to help themselves and their horse turn in a better performance with less effort. This concept applies to all parts of the body throughout the ride and will be made clear in the ground work and eventually applied in the mounted work.

Learning to use your body, as a rider, is as important as knowing what you want to accomplish. If you call someone and there is static and you can only here parts of the message it can be very frustrating for both sides, neither one quite hearing a complete sentence, often hearing the same parts and continually missing the same parts of the same sentence, leaving the receiver to decide to either assume what the sender was saying or to refuse to make a mistake and simply not act and wait until the caller calls back, hopefully on a line with less static. If you do not know how to engage your body properly you may be sending your message with lots of static, extraneous motion or extra movements with your body, or your message may not have the volume for the horse to hear, possibly when you turn the volume up lots of other noise goes with it, or you may be sending the message too loudly, when this happens your horse will initially pull the proverbial phone away from his/her ear and possibly miss the following information. There will be some trial and error with volume control of the message sending, as with people who have better or worse hearing than others, horses may have more sensitive hearing/feeling than others. Regardless of how loud or soft you speak, it is important that you annunciate and keep the sound quality high.

Not always, “Loud and Clear”

Communication between horse and rider is what all types of riding are about. No matter what discipline, seat, theory, it is essential to communicate effectively. If you cannot “hear” /feel what you are “saying”,/ doing how do you even know that you are sending the message you think you are sending. It is this “deafness” to our body’s that causes many a rider and horse to struggle with their union. Some riders shout loud enough with a repetitive “bluack”, loud and frequent enough that somehow the horse figures out that this rider has come up with a very interesting way of asking for backwards motion. Other riders feel it is o.k. to keep the blaring noise in the background going while attempting to phone in a message to their horse, as when there is lots of extraneous movement accompanying a simple cue.

In order to be better riders of any discipline it is necessary to tune our bodies as a musician needs to tune their instrument. For without this tuning, we are not playing a song that anyone would recognize.

Tuning our bodies, so they may be in tune with our horses’

We spend so much time studying how our horses move, even before we sit on them for the first time in order to get a true idea of what their natural motion is, but we never look at how we move or are put together, what our natural motions are, where we may have weaknesses to be improved. We simply expect our horses to obedient and do their job, carrying us around despite our imbalances or imperfections. Not having perfect conformation should not preclude us from riding. We need to attempt to be as little of a burden and more help to our horses in spite of our own conformation while preventing injury to ourselves. All to often our horses will begin compensating their movements in order to make up for our imbalances.

Tomato, tomatoe, potato, potatoe, let’s call the whole lesson off

Isn’t it fascinating that your trainer tells you to do something and you are certain you are doing exactly what he/she is telling you. Louder and louder he/she repeats the same thing, as if you are not. He/she must be blind, can’t they see. It is so obvious that you are doing what they are saying. Isn’t it amazing how your student doesn’t seem to understand plain English. How is it that English is no longer an understandable language once they are on the horse? Are they purposely doing their own thing, do they think they have a better idea?

It is this misunderstanding whether it be verbage or lack of understanding of how to use one's body that Riding Fitness helps riders and trainers solve. Resolving these issues will help rider and trainer to flatten the learning curves.

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