The Horse Rider's Chiro

29/09/2022

Can off-horse exercise help your in-saddle performance, improve the quality of your horse's movement, and improve the harmony between you and your horse? A 2021 by Uldahl, Christensen and Clayton would suggest so.
✅Riders were scored on their ability to perform 3 exercises on a fit ball
✅ They were also scored in saddle for quality and harmony
✅ Riders who were good at a 'pelvic roll' exercise on the ball scores highly in-saddle
⛔BUT riders who were good at sitting still on the fit ball weren't as good at the 'pelvic roll' exercise.
➡️ Off-horse training of pelvic mobility and the ability to control that mobility correlate to improved horse performance
➡️ "When ridden by riders with higher scores for pelvic roll ability, horses showed significantly fewer conflict behaviors and worked at higher heart rates, which reflect a more effective rider producing more impulsion while riding with greater clarity."

02/12/2021

Me at age 11: falls off horse and runs cross country at school next day in my school shoes because I forgot my sports uniform.
Me now: takes 3 weeks to be able to turn my head left after my horse spooked at a leaf.

13/02/2019

Make sure you tap the picture to see the whole thing ❤️🦄 how much of who we are do we owe to these lovely beasts!

18/08/2017

A lovely reminder that equestrianism is always a work in progress. The progression through the levels of understanding and competence you see in this link can apply not only to "dressage" as a whole, but to any number of the thousands of small steps you take along the way (on and off horse).

Never beat yourself up for learning something new and being bad at it - that's step one for everyone!

FEI trainer and instructor Eliza Sydnor Romm explains the best mental approach to handle learning curves.

23/07/2017

Megan and Festy were my heroes growing up, and when I had the chance, I spent a month at Kirby Park as a working student. It was one of the most intense times of my life - hard work, hard play, and almost too much learning to keep in my head. I nearly wet myself from excitement the first time someone said to me "go get Festy for his hill ride." Don't get me wrong, I wasn't allowed on him - head groom called dibs 😂 but to me he represented (and always will represent) the pinnacle of Australian eventing horses: talented, quirky, and a gentleman. A true unicorn. Thanks Megan Jones Eventing Team for the dreams and the memories, I for one will never forget him.

20/07/2017

If you were guaranteed to improve performance or avoid injury by warming up before you ride, would you do it, or would you think it's too inconvenient? The three most common injuries I see in riders are shoulder rotator cuff tears, low back SIJ sprains, and knee patellofemoral pain syndrome. As part of a dynamic warm up routine, these two exercise prime your shoulder and hip external rotators to be active and do their job well while you ride.

If every other professional sport encourages warming up before training and competition, why aren't we doing it too? 🤔🤔🤔

4shares 1 3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 That’s right I just said that, you need these two exercises in EVERY program! OK, maybe not every program, but I think there are two critical movements that should be included in almost everyone’s program – shoulder external rotation and hip external rotation. Why do …

23/06/2017

FEI Campus is live! A website run by the FEI to provide education related to horses and horse sports, FEI Campus is still in the process of getting all its courses online. At the moment, there are Courses on all aspects of horsemanship, including Equine anatomy, behaviour, husbandry, identification, and so much more. I'm checking out their information on Equine Behaviour, and wasn't expecting to learn anything new, but I did!

It turns out "satiation (the feeling of having eaten enough) depends on the amount of food eaten and on the number of chewing movements.

If the horses doesn't spend enough time chewing, this may lead to behavioural problems such as chewing on woodwork, crib-biting, or wind-sucking (McGreevy 2004), even if the amount of food it receives is adequate."

The more you know...

https://campus.fei.org/