We all strive to ride our best for us and our horse. We do movement rehab, strengthening and conditioning, we learning new ways to ask our horses to move. When you get that ‘Aha’ moment the feeling of satisfaction is amazing. But have you thought if you have changed your position, your movement, your body shape, size or tone have you thought how that effects your seat and connection to the saddle? What about after an accident, injury or surgery? These are thing that play a huge role in changes your position and the ability for you to “sit” correct in the saddle.
When your saddle fitter comes they fit you (they should fit you as well as the horse) and the horse on the day that they come out so to your current body position, shape size, injuries. After an accident or injury that takes you out of moving correctly is a re check is a must do.
One of the key areas riders look to improve is the mobility and security in the pelvis. This plays a huge role in ensuring you 'sit in' your saddle rather than 'on it'. As you learn to open and close the femur you will reduce tension through the hip flexors. As you stabilise the pelvis rather than stiffening the back, you’ll gain mobility in thoracic spine. As you develop your seat you will change your stability, you will sitting deeper into your seat without a tilt forwards or backwards, without more pressure in one stirrup than the other, with out bouncing out of the saddle. These allow for postural changes in spinal stacking and pelvis positioning.
When all these allow you to change for the better but you HAVE to make sure your kit is supporting those changes too.
As we all strive to be better riders we need to ensure we get our saddles checked regularly to make sure they fit you as well as the horse.
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