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Last week we looked at beginning to work the lower back.  This week the exercise I am going to go through will work your low back but I feel it also has a lot more benefits specific to horse riders that I would to go through so that you can fully appreciate its benefit in your exercise programme.

The exercise in question is The Deadlift. Now in all sense and purposes the Deadlift involves picking up a weight from the floor and putting it back down again-simples! Well Kind of-there is a little more to it than that.

The Deadlift actually works loads of muscles right from your calf up to your shoulders and many things in between so it is a great exercise to get maximum work in minimum time. Of most interest to Equestrians I guess is that they target the low back, legs, bum, abs and your shoulders. So think strong Core and Lower Body to do the obvious stuff like stay on and provide power with good shoulder retraction for a steady rein contact-I know awesome right!

There is also one other thing that the Deadlift brings to the Equestrian Fitness Table and that is the Hip Hinge. The very act of completing a Deadlift involves maintaining a strong, stable Core whilst hinging forward at the hips-you know what else involves that action………………………..Jumping! Also in Canter we actually make a very small seated hip hinge in order to move with our horse. Now we know why I’m a Deadlift Fan.

In a Jumping Position as your horse lifts you hinge forward at the hips whilst staying stable on top in order to keep balanced. If you don’t hinge at the hips you end up too far forward and on the horses’ neck over the jump. This obviously has a couple of potential outcomes. One being that your horse does not lift as much at the front due to your weight, or two if you are really unlucky and he pecks on landing……………….well you’re already out the front door.

If you are an Eventer, the Hip Hinge is pretty much your permanent position on the Cross Country Position. Whilst galloping and approaching fences you will be hinged slightly at the hips, lifted from the saddle-so imagine if your body was primed to be really strong in this position?

For us regular, less adventurous folk the along with the benefits of being overall strong the hip hinge comes into play in the Canter. Now it is a very small one but I can assure you if your hips don’t hinge you will struggle to move with your horse in Canter so it is well worth working on this element to add it to your armour.

Deadlifts can be a little intimidating if you are not a gym bunny and even then if you are not au fait with the Weights area, so there are a couple of different variations that you can do to get a similar effect if the heavy weights area is not for you.

Obviously traditionally it is done with a barbell however Dumbbells or Kettlebells can also be used.

If you are an absolute gym avoider then you can also do a hip hinge with a resistance band-attached to a door or other solid object.

For the past couple of weeks we have been focusing on the core starting with the abdominals and then the obliques. This week we are going to start looking at the low back.

There seems to be quite a bit of fear around working the low back as any kind of ache here is seen as a danger. Firstly, your spine is not that fragile-I’m pretty sure any of you that have fractured vertebrae etc. took a pretty bog whack to do it! Secondly, if your legs are killing the day after a spinning class or a hard core riding lesson (is it just my instructor that missed a career as a bootcamp trainer….) then we might moan a bit but it doesn’t scare us into thinking something is wrong; so why should your back be any different?

Your lower back forms part of your core and being strong in this area actually helps to prevent back pain. Your back is also your main shock absorber whilst riding-anyone who spends a lot of time in sitting trot or canter may have found they had back pain afterwards, this is where a strong low back can help you. It also common to see riders leaning back particularly in sitting trot; this is due to them trying to brace against the movement, which again can cause back pain.

If the muscles are strong they will be better able to absorb this force meaning you will brace much less in these paces-which in turn will make you ride lighter and with a better position as the tendancy to lean back will also have gone.

So as I know this can be new for people we are going to start with just one basic exercise that can be done at home with no equipment.

Back extensions.

Lying on your front, face down with your hands in line with your shoulders, elbows going back. Lift your upper body focusing on forward rather than up. Just come as far as is comfortable and return to start position. Try working up to 3 x 10 reps.

These should be done slow and with control, do not force the movement there is no particular height to aim for just what feels right for you. If you do find it a little uncomfortable to start with try taking your legs further apart and squeezing your bum a little.

After the last two weeks discussion on the core I want us to look at the often forgotten core muscles…..the obliques!

These are the muscles at the side of your waist. They help you to rotate and bend as well as being an integral part of a spinal stability.

When you are riding (or carriage driving in fact) they are the muscles that help you to maintain your position on turns and circles and maintain straightness in lateral work. As you turn your body you firstly need the strength to make the turn but also the strength to keep your spine stable. This is what a strong set of oblique’s can do for you.

I can tell you this not only from a Biomechanics Coach point of view but also from a rider view having spent a fair bit of time recently doing Canter Circles adding a leg yield to spiral in and out-my oblique’s are now made of steel! (Thanks Amanda!)

To be honest this sounds crazy but if your horse falls out through his shoulder try thinking about switching on your waist muscles on that side and see if that helps to correct it…………………….

Now onto to creating your own obliques of steel.

Seated Rotation.

Sitting on your seat bones with feet flat on the floor. Engage your abdominals and lean back to about 45⁰ if you can. Your spine must stay straight, and not curve as you do this. Take your hands to shoulder height in front of you and make a “Charlies Angels Gun” (it doesn’t work if you don’t…….). Keeping your spine straight and your feet and knees still, rotate your rib cage to the left and then the right. If this is too easy try lifting your feet off the floor-don’t let them rotate away as you turn.

Oblique Crunch.

This will be like no Oblique crunch you have done before. It is way more subtle than that. Lying on your back, knees bent, feet on the floor. Take your hands at the back of your head – do not pull at your head though just support it and keep your elbows out at all times. Now recruit your abdominals, breathe in and as you breathe out and imagine you are taking your left bottom rib towards your right hip, breathe in and repeat on the other side.

This one requires a resistance band or if you are a member of a gym then a cable machine.

Standing Rotation.

Standing with feet hip width apart, side on to the band/cable so that your arm furthest away just reaches the band at a partial stretch. Bend your knees slightly so you are a half squat. Take the band in both hands and start rotated towards the band. Recruit your abdominals and pull the band across your body to rotate the opposite way. Repeat on the other side.

As always I love to receive your emails, and I am also taking names for people interested in small group Equestrian Focused Fitness Classes when my studio opens at WN8 9QP. Just drop me an email nicola@equestrianfitness.co.uk with your preferred dates and times.

Last week we looked at recruiting your deep core muscles whilst riding.

Hopefully you have been practicing the recruitment pattern and have a good grasp of how to activate your deep core muscles.

Did you try it out whilst riding?

Today we are going to try keeping that activation and move some limbs at the same time.  Obviously when we are riding we need to maintain a strong middle whilst giving leg and rein aids. For example If you can’t move your leg back lightly to give a leg aid without unbalancing your seat you are also going to unbalance your horse-pretty sure that won’t be the aid you were intending!

Now in order to keep this simple I have used simple, no equipment floor exercises. However there are some great versions that can be done on a gym ball that I guess would be considered more riding specific  and I will cover these another time. (Probably when the studio is ready!)

So, we are going to challenge our core with moving limbs 3 ways.

Standing – Lying-4 point

This covers the basic positions you will need to progress the challenge of the exercise.

First we will find neutral spine.

Neutral Spine is the natural position of the spine when it has all of its natural curves at the neck, middle and lumbar region.  This creates the strongest position for the spine.

To find neutral spine I find whether standing or lying, tilt the pelvis back so your seat bone go up, then tilt it forward so that the seat bones go down. Now find the mid-way point between these-your seat bone should be pointing down-this is your neutral spine position.

Standing.

Stand feet hip width apart. Establish neutral spine, the knees should be soft. Use the abdominal recruitment patter from last week. Draw in from the waist and up from the pelvic floor, breathe in to prepare and as you breathe out bend your right knee and lift the foot off the floor to hip height. Breathe in to return it to the floor. Repeat on the other side. Once you have mastered this add in an opposite arm lift too. So as you lift your right leg your left arm floats up to level with your ears. Ensure you maintain your neutral spine throughout. Got it-now try it all with your eyes closed!

Lying.

We are essentially going to do the same exercise as above but this time lying down. So begin lying on your back, knees bent feet flat on the floor. Establish Neutral spine. Recruit the core muscles, breathe in and as you breathe out float one leg up to 90⁰. Breathe in and repeat on the other side. Once you have established this pattern, do it in reverse. Start with both legs at 90⁰ and drop alternate feet to the floor. If you still need an extra challenge add in the opposite arm, so right leg drops, left arm floats over the head to the floor maintaining neutral spine throughout. If you struggle with this make the movement smaller- maintaining alignment is more important than range of motion on these exercises.

4 Point.

Starting on all fours. Find neutral spine. This time as you breathe out take your right leg behind you as if to tap your foot on the floor. Repeat with the other leg. Now once you have established that take your opposite arm forward in line with your ear. Maintain neutral spine throughout.

I’d love to know if you try these out how you get on.

The concept of core stability has been around for a few years now and is mentioned frequently in riding as the way to a better seat.

This is technically true however how many of us truly know if we are using our core correctly?

I find many people will “brace” their core in an attempt to hold their position. Brace…………….is that the correct way to activate and strengthen your core? I’ll help you out- no it isn’t.

Firstly let’s look at the core.

In order to correctly use our core we want to be recruiting the deeper Transverse Abdominis and our obliques. However when most people do a core exercise they recruit the Rectus Abdominis down the front. This is what pushes the abdominals out.

So how do we activate them correctly?

If you can, do this lying down but sitting will do if you’re at your desk (your boss won’t notice I promise). Once you have grasped it on the floor try it on your horse or a gym ball.

Put your hands at your hip bones and then bring them in about an inch. Gently start to contract the muscles under your fingers and imagine a small lift from your erm undercarriage-can you feel them? That’s your pelvic floor. This is step one.

I was going to add a picture of the pelvic floor but they are all a little graphic of the other stuff going on rather than just the muscles. Just think of a sling of muscles underneath you that holds everything up-even the fellas have got one it just doesn’t have a hole at the bottom!

Anyway once you have found your pelvic floor we will move on to those deep abdominals.

Take your hands to your waist. Imagine your waist pulling in towards your belly button and as you do so draw your belly button back to your spine. You should feel some muscles switch on here? That’s your oblique’s wrapping around and your transverse abs drawing back to spine.

This should feel like a drawing in of muscles rather than a pushing out. A pushing out is bracing and that is what we are trying to avoid.

Now you need to activate both sets of muscles at the same time –can you do that? Try holding for counts of 10 working up to a minute. Once you have got the hold try to make sure you are breathing too!

I know there is a lot to remember and it’s kind of tricky. Now you know why it’s so easy to do it wrong but I promise practice makes perfect and it’s absolutely worth the effort in being able to effectively use your core whilst riding.

I’m going to leave you to practice that for this week and next week we will take it a little further and start to move whilst in activation.

Last week we talked about how leg and glute strength were integral in lower leg stability, hopefully you have been doing the little circuit so your legs are feeling the burn now.

Today we are going to look at another area that may affect your lower leg position, and that is the stability of your pelvis. You see we focus a lot on having a mobile pelvis as riders but in fact it also needs to be stable. Part of this is what would be considered core stability but there are also many other muscles of the hips that help to keep it stable that your generic core stability would not hit. It usually focuses on just the middle.

So what has your pelvis got to do with your lower leg? Well it's obviously attached! Think about it your leg comes directly out of your hip socket so it makes sense that it's direct attachment to the body must be stable. Imagine a table leg that has not been securely fastened to the table-the leg will not be very stable and in fact the whole table won't be.

So, in order to stabilise your lower leg you have to start further up the chain at the pelvis. You will find this is true of most things in terms of the human body, a stable pelvis and shoulder joint will fix a lot of problems. But I won’t go into that whole can of worms right now it’s just important to bear it in mind.

Anyway, how can we stabilise our pelvis? Well there are actually quite a lot of muscles involved in hip stability but other than the Glutes that we have already covered last week the abductors  are probably the most important to consider.  The abductors are responsible for taking your leg away from your body (the exact position you are in on a horse) so they need to be strong to deal with this properly. It is interesting that many riders may experience pain in this area that can be wrongly mis-diagnosed as being due to a tightness when in fact it could be a weakness-again a blog for another day.

Today we are going to strengthen our abductors specifically.

Officially the abductors are the Glute Max (that’s your big bum muscle) Glute Medius and Minimus and Tensor Fascia Lata (TFL).

The Clam is a great exercise and can be done as a beginner and advanced exercise.

Clam and advanced clam

Crab Walks

1 Leg Squat and Side Leg Raise

So I know this feels like I haven't addressed your lower leg at all but I need you to trust me that if you build solid foundations in this case your pelvis the attached limbs will be much easier to control, so if you are struggling with your lower leg please give this a go and put the work in doing these exercises 4-5 times per week and I promise you will see results, and not just in your lower leg so this is definitely more bang for your buck work.

I often get asked what we can do about flappy, unstable lower legs.

I often probably give what sounds like a dismissive response of let’ sort out the hips and core and see where are at then. I know that is frustrating for riders as we want a fix to our exact problem now!

So, I will try to explain why I say this now.

In terms of riding position and aids to the horse the lower leg does not need to be in contact with the horse unless directly giving an aid. If your lower leg is constantly on your horse’s side he will quickly become dull to it and no longer respond without a more forceful action.

The problem most riders tell me they have is that they niggle their horse with their lower leg, even when they try really hard not to they find it difficult to keep it still. Unfortunately this also means they then feel like they have to keep niggling as the horse isn’t listening.

Whether we believe it is the case or not the majority of the time this niggling comes down stability. The stability of your lower leg comes down to the stability of your hips and torso too, as they are the foundational unit from which they operate.

I am a follower of Mary Wanless and her Rider Biomechanics, as I believe her system has the potential to teach every rider to ride to the best of their ability. Mary teaches the rider to hinge from the knee as they ride-in this respect the lower leg almost becomes irrelevant unless giving a specific upwards transition and/or lateral aid. Far too often when trying to stabilise our lower leg we push down into the stirrup; which causes our seat to pop up. If we can focus on lengthening the front of our thighs and into our knee this will create a more stable base without losing our seat.

The magic of this is, that if you use all of those big muscles above the knee –quads, hamstrings, glutes and core muscles to stabilise you, your lower leg will automatically become stable as a result. The energy/go signal your horse receives comes from your hips and seat bones. I advise you to go and check out Mary’s books if you want more on how this works.

I find this most easy to see in rising trot when you essentially pivot over the knee to rise up using the power from your glutes and hips.

For me other than hips that are so tight they have broken my physios acupuncture needle (true story) this was a fairly easy adaption to my riding. Apparently when trying to encourage others to do the same not everyone has quite the same thigh strength!

So, rather than focus purely on the core stability element of this (check out earlier blogs and my youtube channel if you want some core exercises) let’s start with the basic matter of thigh and glute strength. Unfortunately as many of us have sedentary jobs our thighs and bums kind of go to sleep and as we may have been riding for many years bad habits and compensations creep in. This means we don’t quite have the thighs of steel and bums we can bounce a ball at we deserve from our hours spend in the saddle.

Try this little circuit 3-4 times per week and see your thighs and bum become a power station.

Set a timer for 3 x 1 min rounds perhaps with 10 secs rest between to give you chance to move between exercises. Repeat the circuit 3-4 times –literally only 12 mins of exercise you can do that can’t you!

Bridge half thrust-1 min.

Side Lunge to Balance-1min

Wall Sit – 1 min

Let me know how you get on!

When I am working with riders one of the things they struggle with knowing when they are doing something right. It's all very well having your instructor put you in the right position and then continually cue you as you ride round, but what about when your instructor is not there?

So often when you have shifted your position slightly it feels 'wrong'. In order to make this our new default we have to embrace the 'wrong '.

I have a few tricks I use with my clients to help them recreate the perfection when they are on their own.

The luxury option would be to have mirrors in your arena but obviously that's down to budget and whether the arena is yours.

I find it really helpful to have someone video or take a picture when it's going wrong and when it's going right. I find the visual feedback really useful for me to understand how right the wrong feeling looked!

I also like to find inventive ways to recreate the position off horse. A gym ball is really good for helping you to sit evenly on your seat bones and being equal lengths front and back. It can also be more practical to use a mirror here to see how what you look and feel like matches up.

Try straddling a gym ball with your knees wrapped around the ball (as if you are at the top of the rise in trot). If you, can do this in front of a mirror to get some visual feedback. Encourage your inner thighs to relax and send your weight through the front of your thighs and tuck your tail bone under.Are you equal lengths front and back? If you can nail this position and hold it comfortably you will find many of your on horse position issues will be much easier to correct-even your lower leg despite it not being involved in this exercise-just trust me I will explain why another time!

Finding an exercise that switches on or relaxes the muscles you need to work on can help you become more aware of what you are trying to achieve. Struggle to get your core activated? Try this crunch exercise to recruit the muscles.

Having problems with moving with your horse? Then some of the standing series might help you focus on those movements.

Just try things out, videos, pictures, riding with a friend or working on your sticky spots off horse are all great ways to help you improve in time for your next lesson - you will be trainers pet!
Sent from my iPad
Sent from my iPad