Fixing my Hip

Let's try this again. I wrote this whole post out last week, accidentally posted it early, thought I hadn't, tried to update it, and ended up deleting it somehow. The idea of rewriting it (especially because I'd kind of forgotten everything I'd written) was a no go, so I figured I'd write it again later. This injury isn't going anywhere. 

One of the things I enjoy about my job is that it has good health insurance. I have not had good health insurance since I was on my parents' plan, but even the copays back then were tricky, so it's honestly been a while. Now though, it's great! And I'm finally able to get consistent care. 

I've done a physical, seen the doctor for my esophageal spasms that sometimes feel like a heart issue (they are not but it's nice to hear from a doctor that my chest pain isn't anything to worry about), and am going to finally get my contacts paid for after years of paying out of pocket, but the weekly/biweekly visits working on my body have been my favorite part. I started working with the chiropractor every other week for a while, which has been great. My upper back and neck are always really bad and I've always found that regular chiro helps with that. Sure enough, I didn't realize how much pain I was in until I started going regularly! 

I just started physical therapy as well! It took a while to get on his schedule and it was something I kept putting off until my hip actually freaked out. Then I went in (and have an appointment for my wrist coming up too). 

This

He did a full examination where he looked at my balance, having me stand on one leg and do certain movements. He came to the conclusion that my piriformis is incredibly tight and that is causing my pelvis to be tilted and THAT is causing some interesting problems. Long time blog readers who have very good memories for weird biomechanical things may recognize some of these symptoms...

1.) my right leg wants to be more bent than my right

2.) my left oblique is weak

3.) I might find it hard to drop my right seat bone

4.) my right side is stronger than my left

5.) I can't turn off my right hamstring

Hmmmm I told him that all of those things sounded like my long time riding problems. 

Me, about my SI injury

He thinks that this is a very old injury, where something happened where my pelvis was twisted hard. Then my body basically tightened up around that twist and it stayed. Namely, my right piriformis tightened around my right hip and locked it into place. Then a decade later, I was squatting and my piriformis yelled I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE and freaked out. 

Back in early 2011, I was riding a horse who my boss had assured me had been out all week (I was gone). He had not. He had this nasty root-buck-twist move and he did it to me early in our ride. Rooted me out of my secure position, leapt into the air, then twisted. I was out for a couple of weeks but all I did for it was take anti inflammatories and gave myself a stomach ulcer. Then that caused me to drop weight and therefore feel super weak, so I got flung head first into a fence. Being a horse trainer crash dummy is rough. I went back to school after that. 

That is very likely when this injury occurred and my body has been compensating for it for years. 

My SI and my hip to me, I'm sure lol

I'm bummed that I didn't take it seriously back then (and honestly, I couldn't, I had to keep working and had almost no money since it was winter) but I'm glad I can take it seriously right now. I am doing my physical therapy exercises each day, which mostly include me pummeling my right piriformis and right hamstring with a lacrosse ball. 

Hopefully it starts to get better! I can already feel it complaining. My back has been hurting, which I think was due to the balance on the saddle being off but could absolutely be part of what my tight piriformis was protecting me from. 

I go back today for a check in, I'm hoping to get some exercises for my wrist too! We'll see how far we get. 

Mary Wanless Workshop: Connecting the Dots with My SI Injury

Nine years ago, right around this time, I had an accident. It wasn't even a real accident, I didn't come off. I don't come off nearly enough, so many of my injuries have occurred when I wish I'd come off but I didn't.

This injury in particular occurred when I was working at the event barn I worked at. Winter is tough and I went to get on a particularly rude horse (looking back, he probably was in pain) and thought he'd been longed the day before. Turned out he hadn't been out in a week. He went to buck me off and twisted while pulling downward.

I was a tiny person, about 15-20lbs lighter than I am now, and weak. He yanked my back and I was in instant pain.

At the time, I had no health insurance and was quickly skating around debt, desperately riding horses for people for as little as $15 just to pay my bills and survive the winter. So the last thing I wanted to do was go to the doctor.

You can see me falling left here

Fast forward nine years and I am out of pain, been out of pain for a while now. Occasionally I'll piss off the joint by doing something weird, get some crazy sciatica or just have a lot of pressure on the right side of my SI joint, but it goes away with a lot of walking and rest. For the most part though, it's been fine!

I've long thought that my right side weakness in riding has something to do with this injury. I've been told by instructors that I pop off that seat bone, have had every horse I ride go through the right side of their body. But I can manage it, I got through the Grand Prix with it, and when I sit in front of the mirror, my body is even, I can feel both seat bones and everything.

So I figured it's fine, I'll just keep strengthening the right side and that'll help both my riding and to support this weakness that's been there for so long.

Definitely love the left side

At the Mary workshop, we had a lab session where we sat on saddles and got realigned. I didn't necessarily want to take up a bunch of time being realigned, because I'm fairly happy with where I'm at and I've also found that sitting on a fake horse makes me sit weird, so it's not the most helpful. But Agi was playing with bands with Nicole, finding out where her weaknesses were in her stability, and I wanted to play too.

We briefly chatted about my desire to twist left, so I wanted her to try to twist me each way and see where my weakness was. When she went to do that, she saw something weird. Just sitting still on the saddle, both seat bones were weighted the same, I always thought it was interesting that trainers said I popped off of the right one because I honestly feel that one on the saddle all the time. BUT when Agi went to shift me, apply forces to my body, my right glute immediately popped my right seat bone up and forward, away from the saddle... protecting my injury. She put bands on and the same thing. When I go to resist being jostled, my body goes into protection mode.

She talked me through keeping my right seat bone on the saddle while I was resisting her push/pull/twist and I was in immediate pain. INTERESTING. Sounds like whenever I'm having to absorb/transmit forces from/onto TC, my first priority is to protect the injury. But then when I stop and work on my position, I sit just fine.

Me as a child, I could not lean right like this now!

Anne, who puts on these clinics, is a physical therapist and dressage trainer extraordinaire. She worked on Nicole the day before, just briefly, and I saw the difference she made. I wanted to talk to her about this injury because she specifically understands dressage. A regular doctor or physical therapist would probably think that because I'm not in pain, whatever. I figured Anne would understand why I wanted to address it and how to help me both on and off the horse.

Luckily, she had time to set up an appointment for Tuesday, yesterday! So I audited some of Mary's riding clinic (my work from home days are excellent, I got some good work in AND learned a ton) and then headed into Anne's office.

The first thing we did was put me through some of Anne's tests. She pushed lightly downward on my shoulders while I was standing and was able to feel a lack of mobility in my... left SI. Turns out that the frozen part is the problem, not the painful part! More tests revealed that my SI as a whole has almost no flexibility in it. She asked me several questions that were really on point, things I've just kind of minorly struggled with for the last ten years or so. Nothing enough to even think about but when she mentioned it, I was like "huh, yah that describes me" and such.

Hyper-mobile right SI causing my seat bone to come off the
saddle and shoving my right leg back

The PT itself didn't feel like very much. She first pushed on my pelvis (lightly in comparison to a chiro) in all different directions, finding that my left SI was stuck frozen upward, she said I essentially dislocated the joint at one point and now it was stuck. It had a lot of mobility going up but no ability to be pushed downward. Meanwhile, my right SI was all over the place, making up for the frozen left side. The way I understood it, and I'm sure my interpretation is off, is that the pain in my right SI is a strain caused by my left SI having no ability to move.

She basically just loosened up my left SI and then worked on my vascular system to calm the area down again. During this work, the hurting part of my injury felt like garbage at times and wonderful at others. I had everything from intense pressure in the original place to sciatica all the way down my leg, to a tingling feeling, to a totally relaxed feeling.

At the end, she had me stand again and felt my shoulders. I could feel the pressure down to my feet (so essentially, I was able to be in neutral spine for once), which was a huge change from earlier in the day. She then told me that I would feel weird, that I should take it easy physically (no climbing, no lifting, no sitting trot, minimal riding) for 48 hours as my body relearns how to operate after nine years of being totally frozen.

How cute is baby TC? Also look at my right side unable to get
into flexion pattern

As time went on over the few hours afterward, I felt WEIRD AS SHIT. I couldn't balance on uneven ground, I felt like I couldn't stabilize my pelvis, I could actually activate my glutes in an insanely different way - it felt like I had way more ability to turn them on (maybe that's been my issue in my squat over the last few years!), and I could stand on my right leg really easily, but couldn't stand on my left leg anymore.

Anne gave me permission to ride lightly, so I did. TC was foot perfect and so many weird things happened. When I first got on, I felt completely off balance. I sat more on the right side than I ever have before and low key felt like I might fall off to the right, but also felt safe there? That doesn't make sense, oh well. I struggled with my stability in posting trot, unable to put my butt back in the same print that it left seconds earlier. I could feel my right stirrup for the first time, possibly ever, I don't know if I've ever actually felt it before. TC felt amazing, super soft over his back and very willing to stay into the bridle, more so than usual. That could easily be the training plan we've shifted to, but at least I wasn't messing him up. He was such a good boy, Anne warned me about how horses sometimes respond to PT and I told her that TC was wonderful and he absolutely was, god I love this horse.

I'm still too early on to know how well it worked, but I do feel different and way more able to move around! I still have a bit of pain on the right side (as of Tuesday night), so I'm treating it like an injury (like I should have in the first place) and resting it a bit. I ride with Tanya on Thursday and Saturday, so we'll see how much I can do. Then I hope to get another PT session soon and also ride with Anne to work through some of this weird stuff on TC! Nine long years, I cannot wait to have this worked out so I can continue down the pathway toward my intimidating goals.

Instability to the Left

Seven years ago I was working full time as an assistant trainer at an event barn. I was a bit of a crash dummy type, getting on everything and anything, in addition to teaching and holding down the fort when the main trainer was out and about. One day I got to the barn to ride a horse who I thought had been longed the day before. We had just had a big storm and the horses didn't get out for a few days. This horse was particularly obnoxious when not exercised, he had a really bad habit of rooting and bucking.

This one wouldn't know what being obnoxious is like, he is
always the most perfect

I hopped on him and headed up to the arena to ride. Things were going okay until he grabbed the bit and bucked HARD and twisted. I didn't come off, but something was VERY WRONG with my lower back. A shooting pain was sent down my right leg and I hopped off, took the reins off over the horse's head, and limped down to the barn to put the horse away.

Unfortunately I didn't have health insurance, but after a week, I still couldn't ride without being in pain so I went to the doctor. I refused to do any tests or physical therapy due to the expense, but was put on high dose NSAIDs and told to take time to rest. Instead of resting, I took the meds and rode through it. I didn't keep track of taking them very well, I just felt pain and took them. That was dumb, as one would expect.

Fast forward through a stomach ulcer which caused me to drop a ton of weight I didn't have to drop, which caused me to get weaker and weaker, which caused me to fall off into a fence and get a concussion, but I couldn't take a day off work because #horsetrainerlife and so I went to work the next day and almost fell off in the same way (in the same helmet because couldn't afford a new one, it's winter), which caused me to go home and sign up for classes again. Which got me my bachelor's degree and my master's and led to a job and my pony! So it wasn't all bad.

This isn't in my favorite part of the step but I love my position
here reflecting, somehow, all the Mary stuff I've been working on.
There's still so much to fix but it's coming along!

Sooo that was a long story, what was the point? Well, that SI injury still hasn't been dealt with. I occasionally have sciatica due to it, which chiropractic care helps with, but for the most part, my asymmetry has protected the joint. Riding doesn't hurt it, but I think if TC's bucks get twisty, I'll be singing a different tune.

The trainer putting the Mary clinic on is a physical therapist, so when I put the franklin ball under my heavy seat bone (the left side), which dropped my right seat bone, and felt a TON of pain, I went to talk to her about it. Without poking at me, she told me that it's likely that the ligaments on the left side of my SI joint are longer than the ligaments on the right side. The shorter ligaments draw my right hip up. She said I needed physical therapy and I needed it as soon as possible.

So I think that I will be prioritizing PT very soon, but for now it's a lot about dealing with my asymmetry without increasing the pain in my SI. Luckily, despite all the pain I am in when I work on it on the ground, I have not been in pain yet working on it undersaddle. I don't know why, but I'm not complaining. I haven't yet had any riding-induced SI pain and I haven't had any sciatica either. Fingers crossed it stays the same. For now, I think addressing my asymmetry undersaddle is hopefully the first steps in getting myself all sorted out.

You can see my asymmetry here a bit. Much tighter on the right
side than the left. 

The asymmetry is essentially that the right side of my body is shorter than the left side. My right thigh falls away from the block and gets loose. My right seat bone sucks up away from the saddle. My left leg gets heavy and tight against him, my right leg hooks around him and/or slides forward. When tracking left, I can't close the door on the right side of my body. When tracking right, I can't ride him off my right leg correctly so he often rides with his rib cage too much to the inside.

On the ground this is pretty apparent. At the clinic we did a partner exercise to examine our asymmetries and I'll try to explain it. Stand as if tracking to the right- right leg slightly ahead of left leg, feet shoulder width apart, a slight bend in the knee. Have someone about your height stand behind you and put their hands around your ribcage, up near where an underwire would be on a bra. Have them pull back on you and you resist. Then have them pull back on you down near your love handles, and on your hips. Repeat the same thing tracking left, right leg behind left leg with both knees bent.

And you can see it here too, though damn look at that pony's
uphill balance! But to me, I'm so much looser in my left oblique
than in my right, and so unstable tracking left.

For me, when tracking right I was pretty stable when Kate pulled against me. I forget exactly, but I think I was a titch weaker pulling against my love handle area, but mostly pretty stable. To the left, Kate nearly pulled me down. I got very unstable laterally, kept shuffling side to side trying to keep my balance. Mary wandered by and I immediately jumped on her (well, not ON her), asked her why WHY was I so unstable to the left. She did the same exercise with me and nearly threw me to the ground as well. But then noticed when her hands were on my waist that I engage my left oblique when traveling right but not when traveling left.

This is all due to that left side being longer and looser. If you think about my spine as a tent pole and the left and right sides of my body as strings holding up the tent pole up. My left string is long and loose, my right one is tight, holding the tent pole up. If I think about lengthening the right side to match the sides, I'll lose stability that the right string has in it. If you are looking to create stability in the tent pole, you tighten the loose side, not loosen the tight side.

 Switching to front and back lines, one of my strengths in the
canter is not tipping my shoulders back behind my hips in the
down swing, and not thinking that this time is a good one to
pull on the reins either. So he can really stay up through his
shoulders! Good pony.

Translating this undersaddle, it means that I need to tighten up that left oblique, plug my right seat bone in, snug in my right thigh, and think about shortening the space between my left armpit and my left hip bone.

It's been an absolute GAME CHANGER, this work. I never used to be able to sit the trot tracking left. I felt like it was all TC. He was weaker that way. He didn't want to come through on that side, on the right rein. He didn't want to keep his left hind under him. He gave me nowhere to sit. He was being a jerk. He was trying to get out of work.

Wait. That's not how horses... work.

Instead now that I'm hyper aware of what is going on, I realize that he doesn't feel bad that way, I feel bad that way. I feel unstable and loose in the tack. I don't keep my right side on him. I don't keep him in the middle of my body.

Trying to stay into my right hip and right thigh but man is
that super fucking hard!

And sure enough, when I really focus on this stuff, he's right there for me. The stability that I provide him allows him to come better through and more engaged because there's room there for him.

It's REALLY hard though, my rides make my brain hurt and my abs hurt every time. But the feeling that he gives me is so addicting that I just don't care. On Friday I exhausted myself to the point where I felt like I was going to pass out when I got off of him (must get in better shape...). I know that the more I put into it, the faster that this type of riding will feel like I'm doing nothing. So I'm on this shit.

Dressage Dinosaur

In the last week, I've ridden so many bay horses! This one though, you'll recognize, Ramone! Visit L's blog for a video of our attempt to make the poor dinosaur do dressage.

All pictures = screenshots from L's phone videos because we're
classy around here

I've never really ridden a horse who hasn't been ridden dressage. Most of the horses I've ridden in the last 10 years have been either dressage horses or eventers.

Little things stood out to us- like how Ramone's shoulder looked extra huge with my dressage saddle's straight flap vs L's jump saddle. And how Ramone had never had a crank noseband on his poor innocent face (we used his bit though, and the noseband wasn't cranked down). And how he'd never had a short girth on him. Culture shock!

What became really clear to me when I got on, was that Ramone was a little disturbed by my leg being down there. I'm a few inches taller than L and also obviously riding in long stirrups, so Ramone probably hasn't felt spurs on him so low. I touched him with my spur just lightly at the walk to see what he would do and his skin twitched under my leg.

His trot is so dreamy

At the end of a shoulder-in, damn my crookedness

Ramone then proved to both L and I that, like I said in this post, I can't just get on a horse and have the horse immediately do everything perfectly. Ramone gave zero fucks about what I did in the past. All he knew was that I was not warming him up the way he should be warmed up and that I had no idea what I was doing with my long stupid legs.

It took probably ten minutes to get him to a place where we both were at least somewhat in agreement. It was kind of hilarious. I told L she might have to get on and school him for me so that I could ride him lol. I think once as he realized that I was just asking for the same things he already knows, but in a different way (also that I wasn't going to give up), he started to try to figure out what I wanted rather than just writing me off as a complete idiot. I don't blame him!

Lengthening! 

So uphill and fancy!

After that though, it was smooth sailing for a while. To the left, we really figured each other out and had some great moments. He's definitely a physical ride, but he's not unwilling or rude about it, he just has a lot of body to maneuver. He's actually really similar to Rico in the snaffle (but more forward), which means that I'm super excited to get L on Rico this spring/summer and see what she can do with him.

To the right, we really struggled. His tendency is to bounce off the contact when things aren't right, so while to the left I could get him fairly steady, to the right we had some issues in the contact and I couldn't keep him on a circle. I've seen L ride him enough to know that it had to be something I was doing. Since like, this horse knows how to circle.

She said "what is your strong leg again?" and I said "my right" and she was like "mine is my left" and I immediately put my left leg on and everything got better. Without the left leg on to support him, he wanted to step out with the outside hind leg and fall in away from my (stronger) left rein. I had noticed that part of it and had put my right leg on and evened out my rein contact. But my left leg was floppy and he was being directed out that door with my right leg and left hand.

The canter was tricky for me as well because he really is a huge mover. Looking back at the video, he looks so calm and collected (except that I barely got screenshots at the canter because he was a blur!), but being on his back I was surprised at how much ground we were covering. That's what TC does to me too! And I had the same issue as I did on TC with my hip flexors not wanting me to sit the canter but we managed.

Go Ramone! He would like me to go away permanently

After WTC in each direction, I basically just pushed buttons. We started in shoulder-in and the right was definitely easier on me than the left, probably because of my stronger right leg (I think for L it was the opposite). He mostly wanted to fall out with the haunches that way (again due to my leg) so instead of thinking about driving his inside hind leg under, I thought about wrapping his body around my inside leg. Haunches in that way was better, I think because my left leg actually came on and he was happy to move off of it.

The left was a little tougher both in shoulder-in and haunches in. Mostly because of Ramone's complaints about what a demanding bitch I was being. He had already done dressage for sooo long and I wasn't letting up and my legs are like long monster legs. Poor baby dinosaur.

Tell me this horse doesn't belong in the dressage ring! He would
prefer not though... 

I attempted half pass but uh, it didn't go so well. But Ramone can leg yield like a bad ass. We got a little confused again by my crookedness (and I saw the chiro on Wednesday night and I was all fucked up, so that's my fault) but we figured it out and got some good leg yields and one super drunk zig zag because Ramone thought he had finally figured out how to interpret my weird aids and was hell bent on going left!

After that we did a trot lengthening and hot damn can he move. L walked me through her aids for that since he tends to want to break to canter. I rode them a little conservatively so that we could get good rhythm and not risk a break (he was tired by this point).

One of the awesome things about Ramone that goes against a lot of hunter -> dressage stereotypes is that he does counter canter, so I got to play with that. I asked whether I could just pick up the wrong lead or if I should do loops. L said either. I opted against loops because I'm a lazy person and there were people to ride around. So I just picked up the counter canter on a 20m circle and tortured him with my endless counter canter exercise.

At first he was game but then he realized what I was doing to him and we had a couple of breaks to the right (on left lead) and a couple of really smooth lead change to the left (on right lead). Eventually he just sighed and accepted his fate. I think I solidified myself as Worst Human Ever in Ramone's mind after that.

One of the few cantering shots that isn't so blurry lol

We let him be done after that! When I got off he seemed like he didn't hate me soooo much. But he also may have just been really happy that I was on the ground vs on his back.

When I grabbed my saddle off of him, I saw something that irritated me but also always makes me laugh. I put so much pressure on my left seat bone throughout the ride that I had made a divot on my saddle's seat on the left side, while the right side was completely smooth. I called L over and we had a good laugh. But it explained some of the issues I had on him to the right but why I found the lateral work that way easier. Poor Ramone!

The chiro straightened me out on Wednesday (and I have follow up appointments on Monday/Wednesday) so tonight when I ride BFF, hopefully I can sit on my right seatbone without causing sciatica (which is why I tip off of it). Yay SI problems!