When you’re young and your body is agile, and you’re free from daily aches and pains, a belief exists that “it’ll never happen to me”. You might notice the stiffness or contracted posture in older people, but it’s so foreign and far away; because your youthful body has never let you down.
Physical wear and tear has a way of slowly sneaking up on you, though, until one sunny afternoon in a 3PE Obstacles training session, you’re invincibility is shattered by the realisation that you’ve got limitations you weren’t even aware of… at least, that’s how it happened for me!
I’ve always had one shoulder that sits lower than the other, it kind of rolls forward and down. I don’t remember how or when it started. It hasn’t been caused by an injury or incident, it’s just always been like that. I remember noticing uneven wear patterns on my school shoes when I was ten years old, so I’ve been crocked at least as long as then.
Mostly it doesn’t bother me, and it’s never stopped me from doing anything that I wanted (or needed) to do, but it does impact my riding symmetry. For that reason, I’ve been searching for a solution.
I won’t bore you with the full history of the last decade of working to improve my posture and get closer to symmetrical in my movement and self-carriage. The important part to note, is that progress was incremental; it took time, and improvements were gradual.
Meanwhile, I’ve recently been working with a lovely Warmblood gelding that has some pelvic dysfunction. He drags his hind toes on the ground in the trot (one side more than the other), he doesn’t have much capacity for impulsion and was incredibly one-sided when he first arrived. Bending to the right was extremely challenging.
For the last few months we’ve been working in-hand and on the ground only, no riding. We’ve been focusing on developing stability in the hind end, as well as encouraging more activation of the thoracic sling. It’s slow, repetitive work, improvements are gradual and if I ask for too much then compensatory patterns or defense mechanisms kick in. I’ve had to be patient and remind myself that the body can only change at the rate of cell replenishment/muscle growth/neural pathway adaptations. It’s not my schedule and there are no short cuts.
We’d reached a point where left bend on the circle has become stable and consistent enough that the horse can maintain it with very little support from me, so I started asking for the inside hind to step under more, a little like shoulder-fore. Results were good 🙂
However; the same exercise in right bend was a mish-mash of can’t-do-it, can-do-it, cracking-it-when-being-asked, evasive-manoeuvres, oh-here-we-go, no-lost-it-again. My human mind wanted results, and both the horse and I were getting frustrated. At one point it even looked like he was trying to cross the inside hind leg BEHIND the other one (which is completely impossible while walking forward… why is he even trying that, it’s such a dumb move, have you forgotten how to walk, seriously).
Fast forward to my obstacles training day and the instructor has us going around the double slalom poles. She wants us to really bring our inside shoulder back and turn through the body because the turns are so tight. Yep, got it.
She wants more, she wants more, she wants more. I’m trying my hardest. I feel like my outside shoulder has almost come around so far it’s above the horse’s wither, it’s too far from alignment with my horse and it’s disturbing her balance. She wants more. We’re both getting frustrated. Then I realise, she’s not looking at how far my torso has turned, she’s looking at my curly-forward shoulder and waiting to see that change.
I explain to her that it always sit forward, even when I’m off the horse. That I can move it into the “right” spot but I have to really concentrate. I have to adjust my pelvis, and then my rib cage, and then activate muscles in my shoulder that I don’t normally use, and then the shoulder will come into place. However; it requires most of my attention and proprioception (feel) to be tuned to my body awareness and I can’t maintain that while mentally negotiating this new exercise, and physically riding my horse, and trying to maintain her bend and balance while she’s learning do it it as well. Simply too much data to process at once, sorry, not enough brain processing power. Have to wait until I’ve done enough of it that muscle memory will kick in and take some of the workload into the subconscious mind.
She listens, and she’s curious. She tells me to put down my reins and “make an aeroplane” with my arms. Turn all the way to the left, then turn all the way to the right. It’s not a movement I’ve done for years, and I was horrified at how different each side was! Going one way, my body simply stopped. No pain, no tightness, just no further movement available in that direction. I adjusted my pelvis and voila; unlocked. Wow. Massive learning moment for me.
Pondering over this experience as I drove home from the club ground, I realised it was the complete mirror of the Warmblood gelding and my recent rehab sessions…!
The pelvis leads the way in all movement and posture-in-movement, and sometimes in rehab, re-organising the pelvis, and therefore adjusting the entire body, into a different-to-typical posture is hard. Especially while moving and while mentally learning a new exercise at the same time. It takes more brain processing power than may be available, until muscle memory kicks in to help.
In the rehabilitation scenarios, all of this is assuming there’s no pain. That there’s no physical limitations such as torn ligaments etc, no genuine reason that the healthy movement cannot comfortably take place. If there is, that’s a whole other kettle of fish.
Each single step should be treasured and rewarded. When things get hard, rest after one step. Allow that to integrate into the nervous system. Remember that it won’t happen when it can’t happen. There’s no sense in getting frustrated. An even deeper level of patience may be needed.
Remembering that in every single step taken, the pelvis leads the way.
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