How did you get on with last weeks neutral spine?

Did you find it easy or difficult to remain in that position whilst riding?

There are many different ways that riders can deviate from a neutral position with backs arching, rounding, lateral shifts of the rub cage and curving to the side. Riders can have one or many of these things going on which will all affect your ability to stay neutral and therefore affect the aids you give to your horse.

One of the most common issues I see is a hollow back-an arched lower back causing the bum to stick out.

Now unfortunately some of us are built with a slight anterior tilt in our pelvis, which makes even regular standing and sitting in neutral spine a struggle. This doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do, it will just take some work to get the right muscles working in balance to allow a neutral pelvis. (I’ve spent around 2 years and I can now sit in a saddle in neutral I just struggle to maintain it whilst riding-but I have made huuugggee progress from where I started so it is possible!)

Add to this a Dressage saddle and we are in big trouble! You see in a GP saddle the thigh sits at approximately  a 45⁰ angle from hip to knee.  Depending on the severity of your hollow neutral spine may be achievable with adjustment in this position. In a Dressage saddle with the lengthened thigh position and usually higher cantle to really “plug” you in, the thigh is now somewhere around 35⁰ or less from hip to knee. Just to sit in a Dressage saddle automatically takes you into an anterior tilt, so in order to attain neutral you need to effectively posteriorly tilt. Which is fine if you have solid neutral already, if not then we classically see riders hollow backed, chest out and unable to use their core effectively when riding. Often these are the riders that complain of low back pain due to bracing in the back to try and absorb a big horses movement.

Aside from back pain, riding with a hollow back prevents you from being able to communicate with your seat effectively. If you can feel your seat bones at all they will most certainly not be pointing straight down rather they will be pointing backwards, and your balance will be off as your centre of gravity will ….well not be central as your chest is out, with your shoulders and bum back and your stomach lengthened. It can feel like you are working incredibly hard to give aids and they just aren’t as effective as they could be.

So, what can we do about it?

In it’s simplest form we need to release the back muscles and retrain them to work in a slightly more lengthened position and in turn retrain the abdominals to work in a slightly more shortened position. The aim being that you are actually equal length front and back.

This simple exercise with a pole is a great way to help retrain those muscles. Also look out for some more exercises on my social media across the week.

 

What is Neutral Spine?

Why do we need it?

How do I get it?

Read on……

Neutral spine is when the spines natural curves flow gently into one another without postural extremes of being very rounded or arched in appearance.

If you were to draw a line from the top of the spine to the base of the spine that line would be vertical with only the slight curves away in between.

Neutral spine allows the whole skeleton to be a really effective shock absorber  with all of the movement of the horse being transferred straight through the centre of your joints. It also means you are completely in line with the pull of gravity.

 

If you move away from neutral you do not absorb the movement as well and the strain can be passed to the soft tissue structures surrounding the joints-tendons, ligaments etc. And this is likely over time to cause some aches and pains.

Being outside of neutral also means you are less balanced as gravity has more of a pull on you and of course this means you are more likely to fall off. Obviously gravity is always pulling on us but when it is not being opposed by good alignment and muscle tone it has more chance of pulling you down!

Imagine your body as a stack of boxes.

Pelvic box

Rib cage box

Head box

Each box can twist, tilt sideways, tilt up or down and shift sideways independently.

Your whole stacking pattern has an effect on your horse, not just your bottom and it can give your horse messages that he interprets differently to what you are intending.

Any box shifted to the left or right can be giving a weight aid -which you are then having to try and counteract with a rein aid. Any box stuck in a twist can put the horse on a particular bend and make the rein contact uneven.

Of course once in neutral alignment you may move out of it to give aids more effectively but you will then move back to neutral to make it clear to your horse that it was a single aid.

To help you maintain neutral whilst riding you can use your core stabiliser muscles-these work to keep the joint neutral not to hold it on when it’s not in neutral-that’s when the aches and pains happen.

 

So let’s start with the pelvic box.

Imagine the pelvis is a bowl of water. Tip the water out the front onto the pommel your back will hollow as you do this, you will feel your hip bones come forward and your pubic bone go back underneath you. Now reverse this and tip water out of the back onto the cantle you back will round your hip bones come back and your pubic bone will come forward. Now move between the two until you feel that the hip bones and pubic bone are on a vertical plane-this is neutral.

Step 2 check on the pelvic -can you feel your seat bones? Can you feel them equally? Re do the water tip if needs be to find them.

 

The rib cage box.

Imagine your chest is a pair of head lights-like the ones you have on your car.

Move the lights into full beam which will arch your upper back, now dip them to round your upper back and move between the points to find neutral. I also find it helpful to align my sternum with my pubic bone at this point to help.

Now close your elbows to your side. Can you feel exactly the same part of your waist,hips, rib cage on both sides or do they feel different? If you can feel yourself crooked whilst riding bringing the elbows into your sides and have them in EXACTLY the same place on each side and this should help.

 

Finally the head box.

I’m sure you’ve all heard this one or variants of it from riding instructors over the years and that’s because it works! Imagine your head is balloon gently floating up away from your body.

Put your fingers at the top of your neck/ base of your skull you should feel a little bony indent either side. This is the equivalent of your horses poll. Now flex your poll and then release it. When it is neutral it should feel like you can rest your fingers in the indent under the bone, when flexed the indent will flatten when extended it will close the gap.

 

Now recheck whether you think all the boxers are aligned.

This can be a nice exercise to run through when you first get on as you are just walking your horse around as it helps to set you up in good alignment for your ride.

Ok, so if anyone would like a little more detail on this kind of work for themselves I run a saddle horse alignment alongside a biomechanics assessment at my studio so drop me an email if you are interested in that.

 

 

There is a noticeable trend with equestrians in that many of us struggle with some kind of injury or pain condition.

Of course many of these injuries and ongoing conditions are caused by numerous falls etc. over the years as its safe to say even if we are lucky enough to avoid serious injury have still taken a fair battering over the years.

I think many Equestrians could teach others some lessons in dealing with pain. As there are a huge proportion of us that no matter what we still drag ourselves up and ride half a ton of animal and nothing is going to stop us-heck some Equestrians lose limbs and it doesn’t stop them!

Why is that? Why can some people absolutely put up with whatever is thrown at them and carry on upwards when others with often less medically serious issues give up and go home?

Mind-set! You see pain is a hugely complicated issue with many factors that can influence it but one of the most important factors is your own mind.

It has become a little anecdote of mine that when I ask at initial consultations with clients if they’ve had any injuries they will reply “nothing serious……..just a broken foot, broken ribs, collarbone, vertebrae, and pins in my hip…..but nothing major!” Perhaps we just accept it as part of our sport that these things will happen?

I also think that for most of us, horses are not just a hobby we do when we have spare time, they are our life. We go to work solely to fund our horses, we go without other luxuries (apparently there are these things called beach holidays that people go on?) so our mind set is incredibly positive towards doing whatever it takes to keep horses in our lives.

I honestly believe that that is a great thing! As in most cases the exercise, fresh air and mental wellbeing that comes from being with our horses and riding is exactly what is needed to deal with pain both from a mental and a physical view-there are very few medical conditions that get better by sitting still!

Of course in my job I work with equestrians to help them become even better at dealing with and eliminating their injuries and pain issues. I’m going to talk a little bit about that in future blogs but if you would like some 121 coaching with me to help you really tackle your issues and get you back riding as your best self then hit reply!

There is also a new Wednesday evening class about to launch, 7.30pm at the studio based WN8 9QP. Only 2 spaces remaining so let me know today if you want in!

The last couple of weeks we have been playing around with balancing on gym balls.

This week I want to give you a couple of ides of things you can add which ever level you are at to improve your riding.

First test is once you are sitting, 4 point or kneeling on the ball and able to stay relatively still, why not see if you can carefully move from side to side and then go back to neutral -without falling off!

This is an exercise in muscular control and will help you to give very precise aids to your horse as you will be able to fully manage how much you move to give those aids.

How about trying to juggle, throw and catch a ball or have someone throw a ball to you? This is great fun in a group so why not try it with some friends at the yard. Again you can do this sitting or kneeling depending on your current skill level. This exercise works on your reaction times, as well as your ability to move your arms and remain stable. This helps with those unexpected moments and day to day your ability to give rein aids without unbalancing your seat.

Adding shoulder exercises perhaps with a band or cable machine combines shoulder stability with the already working hard hip stability. This again goes back to being able to give aids and remain balanced in your seat, but the elements of both hip and shoulder stability make this quite tricky as I have found many riders (including myself) can have great stability in the hips or shoulders when they focus on them but it is not quite so good when asked to have both at the same time!

I will be posting videos of some of these exercises across my social media.

If you check out my Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/equestrianfitnessnicola/

 

Or My new Channel on Instagram TV. *You need the IGTV App then  follow me on regular Instagram @nicola_equestrianfitness and when you go to IGTV it will show you my content there.

 

Soooo you must be a bit of a pro on that gym ball by now?

Now for the final mastery before we start adding movement, bells and whistles!

Time to kneel up onto just your two knees-no hands for balance and just learn to sit there are hang out!

As with the other phases of gym ball work there is totally a point to this other than of course looking really really cool.

When you are in a two point position, to stay still and of course upright you need super duper hip and core stability as well as the ability to hold relaxed muscle tension-which means if you are bracing to try and stay there you will be too tense and actually more likely to fall off.

Once you have the hip stability to kneel and stay relaxed you can move on add extra elements like doing band exercises to work the shoulders at the same time, things to improve reactions and proprioception function like throwing and catching a ball.

So, as we have done every week here is a video to talk you through it. Once you know how it’s not as crazy as it seems but I will say it does require a good amount of hip stability so if you find that one hip is collapsing you need to go back and work on that first.

Also, I did my video outside in the arena (soft landing!) but you can as with the sitting exercise do this by a sturdy table, the fence etc. and use that for balance to help you out at first……………...just don’t fall off and knock yourself out on said fence!