Shoulders back, give with your hand not your body, relax the shoulders, open your chest….all commonly heard in riding lessons but what if there was simple effective fix for this that doesn’t involve gruelling hours in the gym or expensive pieces of kit.
Shoulder strength and mobility is so often overlooked as whilst the majority of our aids should be given through our seat, having a strong stable upper body is key in perfecting your position, allowing correct use of aids through the seat and creating that independence between hand and seat.
The Shoulder Girdle in Riding
The shoulder joint is a complex joint with a vast range of movement available also meaning a lot of problems can and do occur at this joint. Clicking, grinding and crunching noises are all too common here and whilst if you feel no pain with the noise it isn’t necessarily a major problem, it does highlight the shoulder is not functioning at its optimum.
For you as a horse rider optimal shoulder mobility is key to improve your posture and balance, creating a soft supple contact and allowing your seat to work independent of your hand.
A lot of lower back pain/hip issues can also arise due to stiffness or tight muscles surrounding the shoulder as like I have previously mentioned the body is designed to work together and a block in one area of the body has a knock on effect on your posture/how you move and in turn will create pain/imbalances elsewhere.
Our body does not function in separate parts and just like we know for example a problem with a horses back can block them from working correctly and potentially lead to an overuse injury arising in the leg/hock, the same can be said for us. It is important we look at the body as a whole when assessing pain/injury and also when training or building our mobility routine.
Very rarely will I isolate individual muscles to train for clients and myself – I will focus on an area if I know my clients is particularly weak here or coming back from injury, but the exercises always aim to get my clients activating correct muscle patterns and learning skills translatable to when riding on their horse.
Developing Your Training & Mobility
If you are interested in learning more about the shoulder girdle or about developing your own mobility routine, please click here to join my FREE 5 day challenge where we look at each joint individually with a whole host of talks and videos for you to work through over the 5 days as well as the chance to ask me all the questions you have for your own training/problems you may have when riding.
Develop your riding skills and become the very best rider for your horse. For more information on training with me please email sinead@centrelineperformance.com.
I hope you have a really great week and fingers crossed this sun is here to stay!
Much love,
Sinead x
