Have I Found Another Solution?

Last night I was re-reading “Riding and Schooling Horses” by Harry D. Chamberlin who was a Brigadier General in the US Cavalry.

Since I have been having difficulties with keeping my right leg forward enough when in two-point I was re-reading Chapter I, “The Seat”. This time I was reading slowly, and in his discussion of the rider's knees on page 31 I ran into this: “Knee joints almost completely relaxed,...must not be entirely limp, OR THE LOWER LEGS SLIP TO THE REAR (my caps), and the heels come up.”

Have I been keeping my knee joints too relaxed in my right leg? Do I have to work on keeping my knees a little bit stiffer on both legs and on keeping the stiffness of my knees equal on both sides? Is this THE REASON why my lower legs are less steady than the ideal?

When I started riding seriously with my first horse I had to overcome many problems that came from the trail riding my family did in South America without benefit of riding lessons. When I started riding again I had to work on all of my position because it was pretty horrible. One of my problems was wanting to grip with my knees, some knee grip had been necessary as I rode up and down the STEEP foothills of the Andes mountains and no one ever told me before I got riding lessons to relax my knees. Since then I spent years trying to relax my knees enough so that my weight could sink down into my heels and I finally succeeded somewhat. But since then, through the car wreck and my increasing disabilities from my Multiple sclerosis my muscle tone got worse, a lot worse.

A lot of my initial lower leg problems came through excessive knee grip. Everywhere in riding schools and in the literature about advanced English riding I hear and read that the main reason a rider should not grip too much with the knees is that then the lower leg moves back (pivots on the knee) and the heels come up, greatly reducing the rider's security in the saddle. So in the last 50 years I was mostly concentrating on relaxing my knees so I would not grip. Now it seems that I may have relaxed my knees too much. Part of the reason for this coming up now is that with the MS I try to use as little muscle power as possible while riding since I have so little energy to use for my riding. Somewhere I forgot that I had to keep SOME tension in my knees.

So now I have a somewhat complicated problem. I have to learn to have enough tension in my knees so that my lower legs do not move back AND at the same time keep my knees relaxed enough so my weight can sink into my heels, all the time being careful not to actually grip with my knees except in an emergency.

For my brain and body this is right now the equivalent of higher math, something I do not have much talent for, just like my crippled nervous system does not have much talent for all the little picky physical stuff I have to do for improving my security in the saddle.

At least lately I have been trying to do more two-point, that should help some in strengthening the necessary muscles as long as I am sure not to let my lower leg get too far forward.

So now I will be concentrating on my knees, also doing everything else Chamberlin wrote in this paragraph, “Knees: inside of knee bones against saddle skirts; kept as low as possible, with stirrup-straps vertical; not allowed to turn too far outward (as to be) leaving air space between them and the saddle; normally do not grip tightly,--just sufficiently to keep whole thigh softly against saddle skirts. Knee joints almost completely relaxed, except when purposefully standing in stirrups; knees increase grip when necessary to keep seat from being displaced forward or sideways from any cause; must not be completely limp, or lower legs slip to rear, and heels come up.”

This is why I read books on equitation. Sometime and somewhere other riders have run into the same problems I have all the time, and occasionally the expert Masters of Equitation write about the fiddly little stuff that can make a rider's seat much better. Many times in these books I have run into a sentence, or in this case part of a sentence, that makes everything clear to me and I can go back to progressing with my riding again rather than repeating the same mistake over and over again over decades.

My present problem is beyond “keep your heels down”. This explains how something that looks like it is a problem limited to my heels is actually a problem further up my leg—in my knees. Now I wonder how many other of my problems on horseback will improve if I just get my knees RIGHT.

Have a great ride!

Jackie Cochran