This is addressed to all the people who were following my request for help with Shoulder in to the right the other day because they too were struggling with either right or left shoulder in. (Sorry its rather a long post :) ) I have finally managed to film myself riding and have taken a series of still pictures off of that film and made a huge discovery. My instructor had told me previously that I was collapsing my right side. In an effort to rectify this I was opening the gap between my right hip and shoulder and at the same doing all I could to drop my right knee in an effort to get my body and leg in the correct position. When I looked at the series of pictures of me attempting to ride just a simple straight line I finally realised just how ‘out of skew’ my whole body is. The simple ‘you are collapsing your right side’ was not quite the correct information I needed to rectify my problem and I could have spent the rest of my life trying my best to rectify that collapse and never getting the correct result which is why I am posting this for all you ‘can’t do shoulder in’ people who belong to this page :) After a car accident 28 years ago, and in an effort to protect my shoulder, my body had let my right shoulder collapse and swing forward towards the centre line of my body. In an effort to correct this imbalance my lower body has, over the years, developed a swing to the right. In effect, if looking at me from above, my body looked like a cross (X) with my right shoulder being too far forward and my right seatbone being too far back. In effect my poor horse was having to deal with me asking him to turn right or do right shoulder in and the whole time my askew body was telling him turn left or do left shoulder in :( After much experimentation and looking in a mirror OFF of my horse I have finally managed to correct this imbalance (oh my goodness it feels weird :) ). I tried just swinging my right shoulder back….didn’t work. I tried swinging the right seatbone/hip forward….didn’t work. The only way I could be completely straight was to imagine a huge elastic back around my right shoulder, going diagonally across my back and hooking the other end of the imaginary elastic band around my left thigh and buttock thereby pulling my right shoulder back and down and my left hip back and up slightly. Suddenly I was straight :) The past few days, while hacking, I have been experimenting on my horse and he is telling me BIG TIME that I have got it right and its feeling good for him. We are now doing wonderful relaxed straight lines without wobbling from side to side or drifting across the road to the right and, as soon as I can get back on my paddock to do some schooling I will continue working on our right shoulder in. It’s going to take some time for my new muscle memory to develop but I am now certain that it will happen and that NOW I am straight my horse and I can progress :) I hope my post will give some of you strugglers out there a small insight of where YOU might be going wrong……..its usually US and not our horse :)
Posted on: Fri, 30 May 2014 18:12:05 +0000
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