Fixing Myself

On Wednesday of last week, I had a lesson! It was my first (dressage) one in a long time and it was amazing. 

No pictures due to using the pivo for the lesson, but
I have some from a recent trail ride

The focus on the lesson was biomechanics, which I desperately need. I haven't really had anyone pick at my position since last August when I rode with an in person trainer who had a background with the Mary stuff. And my position falls apart easily without anyone's help, especially now that I've been at a barn without mirrors for a year. 

This trainer was a little different from Mary, but everything she found really aligned with everything my Mary trainers have found and that Kate has found. Essentially, while I sit in correct alignment with correct posture, I find my balance through rigidity. That's my interpretation at least. And this tracks through my riding career, when in doubt, add tone. Sometimes in places that it shouldn't be. 

This guy has been developing so well

My biggest takeaways were...

Breathing

It turns out, as Kate has pointed out on numerous occasions, that I only breathe enough to keep me from passing out while I'm riding. And I can confirm that I keep this breathing pattern up throughout my life except in weight lifting (since bracing was drilled so hard into me by my late coach, RIP).

We did some breathing exercises and TC REALLY enjoyed them, he was licking and chewing the entire time I was breathing like a normal human. I feel bad for him, he's probably had to get used to feeling like my body is in flight/fight mode all the time. Oh, that's just my human, she's bad at breathing and it makes me feel like she thinks we're both going to die. 

I'm going to really work on this, I'm not sure exactly how though since it's so engrained to not breathe while I'm riding. Should I listen to a breathing app while I'm riding?? Perhaps. 

He's the best trail horse

Left Hand

If you've followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I'm a big fan of using my left hand to solve all of my problems. Horse acting up? Pull on the left rein. Canter got too big? Pull on the left rein. Horse trips? Left rein. Owe money on taxes? Cut off my left hand and mail it to the government. 

She had me do some arm circles and noted that my left elbow liked to bend slightly when I had my left hand at the very back of the circle. I forced it straight and got some interesting shooting pains and numbness in my fingers. Turns out I've got a little nerve impingement there! It's a chicken and egg situation, did my nerve impingement mean that my left arm likes to hold itself bent and therefore it's easier to pull on that rein? Or do I carry my left arm more bent in my daily life (driving, working, I carry things on the left side and use my right hand to open doors, pulling on the left rein), which caused the nerve impingement? 

Who knows, but the answer is to switch it around. I am currently going through my life, noticing times where my left arm is bent and my right arm is not and trying to swap what the arms are doing to balance them out. I'm also doing a lot of arm circles on both sides. 

Thoracic Spine

My thoracic spine is a bit rigid, causing me to carry my head a bit forward. I know this from Tracey yelling at me not to be a vulture. Luckily because of work, I'm getting to go to the chiropractor as much as I want and only paying a $4 copay for it, so I'm definitely working on fixing my t-spine. But I also got some great exercises from the biomechanics trainer to help with this. It really comes down to me holding tension in my thoracic area and some computer stuff shortening my pectorals. I'm not the only one who needs to widen their chest and open up their shoulders! 

Such a beautiful place, it should stay green for a
bit longer, it's going to rain today

Right Hip

So as a background, almost three weeks ago I was squatting and suddenly had a massive amount of pain in my right hip to the point where I could barely walk on it for a couple of days. I saw the chiropractor who basically said that my psoas and hip flexor were tight. It's been fine since then, but just fine. I took my deadlift day off, just did upper body on my bench day, and then by the next squat day, was able to squat some light weight. I haven't gotten anywhere near the weight I was squatting that day. 

Anyway, this was incredibly obvious to my biomechanics trainer. I think it was the first thing she said actually. 

She agrees that my psoas is the issue, that my body was coping with it until I put it under weight. She wants me to get that worked on, so I think I'll be keeping it light with the squatting until I can get someone to fix it. My job has a lot of healthcare perks (such as acupuncture/chiro with a very small copay) so I'll see if they offer anything that can deal with my psoas too! We used to have massages on campus actually, but the pandemic shut that down, maybe they will happen again soon though!

TC says: would you like me to just
bite this leg right off? Would that help?

Okay, so we've established that my right hip sucks, what effect is it causing in TC? 

As we were tracking left, I was told to try to breathe out while my left seat bone came back and to really let it follow the saddle. This was fairly easy and actually focusing on that moment made it way easier to turn TC to the left, which has long been his tricky side. 

To the right, I was basically unable to let my right seat bone follow the saddle. Rude. We found that my right hip wanted to be the stable one doing all the work, so it got rigid and my left hip was free to do whatever it wanted, which it does in a chaotic way. 

I was taught to engage my inner thigh on my left side to help bring my right hip forward and immediately my body was not having it. 

We cut new trails into the hills! I love
this one, it's so beautiful!

TC's Response

I'm so excited for how TC responded. He's very in tune with me (I'll write about it more later, but I just read Susan Fay's book and it's amazing how WITH me TC is at all times, I almost find it a bit unnerving, but luckily he's the sweetest) and when I can get my body in the right position, he feels downright giddy. 

I think with Celeste's work, TC has been helped SO much, but I'm still locked in these previous patterns and I think that's holding him back a bit at this point. 

Hopefully my new saddle will be here soon and it'll be easier to find a better balance without having to be more rigid. And with a deeper seat and bigger blocks, it will allow me to be more permissive with TC's movement. Right now I'm sure my rigidity to keep my balance slows his roll a bit. 

I will never get tired of riding this horse in these
hills!

I wish I had the money to take weekly lessons with her (boo adulting, most of my raise in salary between jobs is maxing my 401k and FSA and a few other adult things like that), but I think I'll stick with once a month or every other week if I can swing it! Kate can work with me on the same things when I see her for my jumping lessons, so I'll definitely have eyes on these issues between lessons. 

Finding Celeste and her work has been so life changing, not only because of the work she's done with TC and I, but through finding other professionals in her network. So many trainers put "classical" or "biomechanics" on their websites and then I find out that those words have different meanings to different people and I end up a bit disappointed. Or at worse, stuck using some of my lesson budget to pay for a lesson I didn't get much out of. I know that anyone I ride with who is part of this network of trainers is going to, at the very least, do no harm to TC's mechanics, and that's huge for us!