So I'll be honest this is a little bit of a pet hate of mine. Not that I'm saying I am some far superior rider that has no faults whatsoever-far from it! But, I suppose it's because it is one that many people try and fix the perceived problem with their horse usually with gadgets e.t.c.
Many riders struggle to get their horse off the forehand and therefore working properly from the back end- all that power lost from those delicious rump muscles on your trusty steed! Anyway, usually to fix this there will be all manner of gadgets, attached to various ends whilst on the lunge and ta dah the horse comes off his forehand. Rider gets back on board...........................
When I attended Jon Pitts Coaching course he did an excellent demonstration of this utilising event rider Emily Phillips. Emily trotted her lovely and obviously well schooled horse around, we took note of his outline, where the power was coming from in his trot-most definitely from behind, and then analysed Emily's position. As you can imagine she was sat upright, shoulders back, looking straight ahead. Then Jon asked her to round her shoulders a little and look at the floor. Literally on cue her horse went rolling onto his forehand! She sat back up.........horse lifts back up. It really was that apparent. I found this a really powerful lesson. The reason for this as Jon explained is that as our shoulders round the weight of our head transfers to the front of our horse, and that is actually quite a lot of weight! The average human head weighs around 10-11lbs, and we've just lumped it on our horses neck and wondered why he's on his forehand? You try wandering round with 10 bags of sugar on your chest!
So, do you have rounded shoulders? Unfortunately, many of us will spend most of our day sat in front of a desk or standing for long periods depending on our jobs and no matter how much we know we shouldn't, we slouch. I am guilty of this also!
So, there is quite a lot of things we can do to help correct this, namely stretching out the chest and then activating and strengthening what are potentially weak back muscles. So I won't bamboozle you with a hundred new things to do immediately I will set you just one task for now-call it me setting you homework if you will!
We are going to start with stretching those chest muscles out.
I want you to try doing these stretches every day and particularly before you get on your horse and see if it helps you to keep those shoulders back.
- Find a wall or a door frame. If you stand next to the wall with your left arm closest to it, place your hand and forearm on the wall, stand with your feet slightly astride I.e left in front, right slightly behind and then look away from your arm, twisting your upper body but keeping you forearm flat to the wall as if trying to look over your right shoulder. You should feel a stretch deep in your chest, hold for 30 secs to 1 min and then repeat on the other side.
- Clasp your hands behind your back, arms straight (if you can!) Take your shoulders right up to your ears, roll your shoulders back and imagine trying to drop your shoulder blades down into your back. Do this 5-10 ten times depending how tense your shoulders feel.
Voila! A loose chest (oh er!) should now be yours, and hopefully your horse will have appreciated your effort and lifted his/her front end accordingly.
Let me know how you get on!
You can email me: nicola@equestrianfitness.co.uk or comment on the Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/equestrianfitnessnicola
