Do you ever find when you’re riding that you get your leg right but then your hands are everywhere or your contact is spot on but your lower leg is flapping around like it’s ready for take off, sort of like you can have one or the other but never both together!
This is totally me! I struggle with my rein contact as a rule (great choice to take up carriage driving!) but sometimes I get it just right and then I’ll hear “what’s your lower leg doing?” Erm it’s best, it’s doing it’s best……..
Of course then my seat and my legs are going great guns and instead my hands are verging on useless…..
There is of course ways to help this and it is just a matter of teaching your body to work as a stable unit from top to toe.
If you can focus on off horse exercises that involve stabilising the shoulders at the same time as the hips and legs it will be an awful lot easier when you’re back on the horse to do the same.
I’m going to start with what is essentially a fairly basic ( not necessarily easy) movement pattern.
The Turkish Get Up!
Basically from lying down with one hand in the air holding a weight you proceed to kneeling then standing and then do the movement in reverse. The added weight encourages you to stabilise your shoulder and of course the act of getting up to standing requires hip stability so that’s head to toe stability sorted.
You don’t need any particular weight just a bottle of water will do.
Now get practicing that for this week and next week we’ll look at some more advanced exercises you can do to work on your full body strength.