Seat bone symmetry – sit right in the middle of your saddle!

Asymmetry in riders is very common. Whether to a large or small degree, few of us travel with the same weight in every seat. We distribute our weight more on a stirrup or more on a seat bone and that affects our horse’s balance and ability to respond to our aids. While standing or standing in stirrups, it can be even more difficult to stand with equal weight in both stirrups. If your saddle chronically leans to one side even though you feel like you’re in the middle of your horse, you’re losing your balance. What about when other riders say you’re in the middle and you feel, hmm, crooked, off balance? Yes, you are not used to walking in a straight line and will have to retrain yourself to walk with equal weight on both sit bones. Does your horse take a leash more easily? Does he go one way with ease and the other way he falls in or out? Are your spins or spins sticky in one direction? Again, you are most likely not riding in the middle of your horse. If you don’t believe me, lift an unevenly loaded backpack on your back, and then just walk. You’ll experience firsthand the compensation you need to maintain balance under uneven loading. Try carrying that uneven load 5 days a week for an hour and you’ll experience how easy it is to get stronger in an asymmetry pattern.

If you ride balanced to one side for years and years on the same horse, your horse will suffer. It will have to compensate and will get stronger to support its uneven distribution of weight. This will lead to back pain, joint wear and tear, and uneven muscle development. It can eventually cause lameness. Riding unevenly affects the saddle, causing it to twist and creating saddle fit issues. When you habitually bear more weight on one foot or sitting bone and then engage in strengthening or exercise regimens, you will reinforce your natural asymmetry, making it more difficult to find where you are sitting in true balance.

Like many or most people, you don’t have a reliable sense of your own symmetry and balance, not because you can’t, but because life happens. We change, we hurt ourselves, we compensate and the unequal begins to feel good. Your senses have adapted to being a little off balance, so it feels normal to put more weight on one foot. Perhaps you’ve had an injury that caused you to stand with more weight on one leg. Or perhaps, as a teenager, you developed a habit of standing more on one leg, with your hips raised. Maybe it’s that heavy bag constantly slung over one shoulder that has made you use one leg more strongly than the other. Whatever the reason, your entire organization has adapted to this off-center posture, and your muscles and brains back it up. Although your saddle and your horse tell you that you are unbalanced, your brain will tell you that you are not. You may even want to blame your horse or blame the centrifugal forces of riding in circles. The weird thing is that when you stand or sit on your horse evenly, it will feel really weird. You have to relearn lateral balance.

Twisting, slipping of the saddle, difficulty getting the horse to take a certain lead, or the horse not moving are all signs of lateral imbalance. All cause stress on your horse and are counterproductive to the goals of a well-trained, balanced mount, whether in the arena or on the trail. Yet many of us do these things every time we ride. So if we can feel balanced when we are not, is there hope? Can we develop and improve our ability to move equally well in both directions and feel when we are doing it?

The good news is YES! Yes, you can improve your sense of balance and get stronger at any age!

How do you do this? First recognize that the long/supported/strong side will be the side you tend to sit on when riding, the side the saddle tends to lean toward, and the side of your strongest leg. It’s not true for everyone, but that’s the trend. Your flexible side and raised leg should be organized for strength and support, from foot to head. Experts in movement education and body mechanics can help you with this. You will balance your balance from side to side as you use your weaker or contracted side more. Little by little you will gain the necessary strength and flexibility for a symmetrical organization. If you feel like you need strengthening exercises, you should do them with a self-organization that helps you become more functionally symmetrical, not in your old patterns.

I use Moshe Feldenkrais techniques because I have found them effective in equalizing people, increasing awareness of symmetry, and helping people move efficiently from their center. Other somatic disciplines like Alexander or Hanna work can also help. Once we have learned to feel when we are balanced through our spine with strong and efficient support, our arms feel light and our breathing is easy. As a result, when we go to the gym or ride a horse, we can exercise in a way that strengthens this balanced posture. As we improve our awareness as well, our balance, coordination, dexterity, and freedom of movement will improve. Even when we straighten up, our horse can still be stiff in one direction. Over time, it will adjust to its symmetrical balance and become more even, more willing to take the lead or let you post on either diagonal.

Here are some simple starting points loosely based on what I’ve learned from Moshe Feldenkrais’s work on how you can improve your driving by improving your posture, awareness, and movement:

1) Test your balance and standing lateral support. Stand on one leg and find out which leg you wobble on. Can you stand on one leg and reach the sky just as easily on both sides? Do your ribs expand equally on each side? Look in the mirror and check the alignment of your foot, knee, hip point on each side. Check the length of your ribs and see if your sternum (breastbone) is in the middle of your ribs and shoulders. Also check to see if your head tilts to one side. Once you can balance easily on flat feet on each side, slowly start to rise up on your toes and slowly lower yourself down, staying long and steady. When you can stand on it with just a light touch to the wall to support yourself and push yourself up onto your toes, you’ll have started to find your balance on that leg!

2) Test your side sitting support. Find out which seat bone supports the most weight. First find your sit bones by sitting on a firm, flat chair or bench and placing your fingers under your butt and finding the bones you sit on. If they’re not the same shape, it’s a clue that you’re not sitting symmetrically. Make a slight change to weigh a seat bone. Do you lean or bring your ribs closer to get your weight there? Try the other side, keeping your head in the middle and staying long in your torso, without lifting a shoulder or foot. Can you shift your weight to both sides equally well? As you develop symmetry, you will find it easy to weigh each seat bone equally.

3) Find your flexible side. Stand facing forward, feet hip-width apart, and allow your right hand to slide down your right leg. How far does it go easily, effortlessly? And on the left side, do you bend more easily or not so much? Try to lean to one side when sitting down. Does it turn slightly when bending over? Which part of your ribs bends the most? Which seat bone has more weight? Like a horse, one side is usually more flexible and the other side is stiffer and more supportive. As you gain lateral balance, you’ll learn to lean equally on both sides of your ribs.

4) Check your tendency to spin. Do this sitting down and standing up. Slowly turn in one direction several times and find out where your eyes are looking. Try the other side. Is the height of your gaze the same on both sides? What happens to the weight on each foot or sit bone? Does it detect weight changes when turning? As you develop the ability to easily turn to either side, you will notice that your horse turns better in turns.

5) Find your habit of sitting down, getting up and sitting down. If we put in the trot or stand on our stirrups, we can keep our balance while sitting but drift to the side when standing up. If we post or stand on our stronger leg, every time we get up, our horse has to adjust to our shift in weight. Practice keeping your weight even on both sides as you stand up and sit down. You can practice with a physio ball, placing one hand on the pubic bone and the other on the sternum, stand up and sit down keeping the torso in the middle of two legs with the same weight. You can also stand on two bathroom scales to check this.

6) Visualize, mentally, sitting in the middle of your horse. Visualization is a powerful performance tool for any athlete. The basic position of a rider is weight evenly on both sit bones with legs wrapped on either side of their horse. Start looking at the riders who really sit in the middle (these aren’t always the best riders; when jumping, I’ve noticed kids tend to be more focused). Visualize yourself centered, a line through your body and your horse’s body with equal weight and support on each side.