Monthly Archives: July 2021

Getting Started

The thing with riders is that often we’re so beat up from various injuries etc that the very idea of exercise seems impossible.Just getting your body to move into these seemingly strange positions is exhausting and feels all kinds of wrong.

Which is exactly why you need to start!

Having a body you can control well and make it do what you ask if a huge step in improving your riding. 

A body that moves well is less likely to be in pain or injured. It will recover better from injury when things do go wrong and it will perform better day to day making everything feel that little bit easier.

The hardest part is getting started and accepting it’s going to feel awkward for a bit. 

So why not start with a little yoga flow that will get your body on the way to moving better all round. It doesn’t matter if it yours doesn’t look like mine just do your best and with practice it will get better. 

https://youtu.be/v0qS1Vbb_xw

For more of this why not take a look at my online programme, it’s just 20-25 minutes of two workouts per week designed to give you everything you need to improve own body to ride better. There’s also a bonus HIIT workout every week if you want to push it a little harder. Waaaaay more affordable than you think it is too!

Shoulder Control

I often talk about Shoulder stability for riders.

It provides two benefits.

  1. It provides stability to the torso as a whole-it’s part of what you’d think of as your core.
  2. It provides stability to your rein contact.

The problem is many of us spend our days hunched over either at a desk, driving or sweeping the yard. This leaves the muscles of the back and shoulders long and weak. This means when we want to use them on horse they aren’t strong enough to respond.

When I work with riders I will ask them to retract their shoulder blades and many of them have no idea how to do that without using the muscles of the neck or chest. This means they lift their shoulders and tense rather than activate the muscles of the shoulder girdle that provide the stability.

So before we can even think about training the shoulder girdle we have to gain some connection from the brain to the muscles to allow us to activate them without tensing.

I start with Shoulder retractions. To do well this exercise is actually quite tricky.

With your arms out in front of you, draw your shoulder blades back and together without moving your head, neck or chest. Your shoulders shouldn’t pop up at all and your arms stay straight and will just move back a few inches.

Once we have got that mind -muscle connection we can move on to control of the shoulders whilst moving the arms. 

Do the same shoulder retraction, hold the shoulders down and together then bring the elbows back and then forward again without losing the shoulder connection. You can then add more movement to the arms, maybe elbows in and sending the hands out, then hands up and shoulders down. 

If you then want to progress your shoulder strength and stability there are some great exercises you can do with very simple equipment.

Add a band to your retractions and other movements to add resistance.

Then you can make this a Bent Over Row using a weight or band and recruiting the legs and rest of the torso to test your shoulder control as part of a full body position.

Windmills are another great exercise for shoulder stability that can be done with a Dumbbell, Kettlebell or just a bottle of water. 

https://youtu.be/6pRLnq8wF1E

There are loads of ways to make your shoulders stronger but whichever exercises you choose it’s super important that you can control the recruitment of the shoulder blades.

Breaking down the basics

I’ve been doing a bit more horse training lately. Mainly groundwork or basics under saddle with both my own ponies and a friends. I am by no means an expert on training horses but I tend to approach physical schooling problems with horses in the same way I approach training people.

How are the absolute basics or movement patterns? With my clients that’s how stable are they on single legs, can they isolate their shoulder blades, do they rotate left and right equally and can they Hip hinge and Squat.

The Squat is one I’ve seen lots of riders struggle with. The squat is much more technical than it appears. It requires stability from the hips, knees and ankles and good control of the torso. 

This is why I break it down to into regressions depending on peoples’ ability. 

If someone struggles with control of their torso or finds Squats painful on their knees I start with Gym Ball Squats.

If it all goes wrong in the mechanics of the up and down (lacks stability) I use Bench squats. Just using the familiar motion of standing up and down like you would many times per day makes it easier to focus on the bits that need extra work.

Using plates under the heels can help people reach depth whilst they work on ankle mobility.

Once we’ve got a solid base we can do regular bodyweight squats. 

Then we can add weight with a Kettlebell/Dumbbell or a Barbell on the back or the front. 

After that it’s add more weight or add instability such as bands, wobble boards etc.

The point isn’t necessarily to get to the end point. 

We don’t all school our horses to get to Grand Prix, we school them to be the best athletes that can be. 

That’s how you should approach your own training. It’s doesn’t have to be about becoming an all out gym bunny or weight lifter, it’s just about making your body the best that it can be.

 

Lessons from Wimbledon

I’ve been watching some of the tennis this week and in between matches they have been showing cameras behind the scenes where players are warming up. The nerd in me found this bit way more interesting than the matches!

The players aren’t hitting balls and just playing tennis to warm up, they were doing a series of activation exercises clearly all specific to them. Things like fast banks rotations or arm pull overs designed to prepare the muscles for what they’re about to do on the court.

It got me thinking whether if you went behind the scenes before a Dressage competition or on Cross Country day would we see the same thing? 

Probably not. I’m sure you may find the odd rider doing a few stretches or activation exercises, but the majority will be getting straight on and focusing on warming their horse up. 

Of course if anyone ever says the horse does all the work you’ll strongly disagree-“have you ever tried to get half a ton of animal to follow instructions?” Riding requires you to do a lot of things with your body. So why don’t you prepare it for that before you get on?

So, what sort of things should you do to prepare your body for riding?

Think Seat - Activating your hips and glutes with some Crab Squats and Side Lunges

Rein Contact-Open your chest with some T Arm rotations then activate your back and shoulders with some scapular retractions or dumb waiters. 

Then add anything else that may be personal issues to your body such as opening up one side or stretching out a calf