Saddle Fit and the Female Saddle

Hello from Florida, where I have been travelling the last couple weeks and tried to get in a couple of days holiday at Ft. Myers Beach with my family. What happened to the weather? It seems to finally be getting warmer, but of course it’s now that I’m leaving for California! We’re doing our third clinic together with Heike Kemmer at the end of the month at Christiane Noelting Dressage Center in Vacaville, and I’m excited to see her again. (By the time you read this I will be there – we’re hoping to get her back to Ontario again later this year or early in 2011 – the clinic put on by Horse Sport last year was fabulous and she is an amazing clinician.) I will be getting filmed there for the California Bay Area Equestrian Network educational website – we will be posting a couple of educational videos on their website as well in the next couple of months.

This whole month has been really eventful; we are thrilled to have an article on our female saddles coming out in both Practical Horseman and California Riding magazines in April! In addition, although it has to be somewhat hush-hush, we are working with another top Olympian to make a new Schleese model – stay tuned as things develop and I can talk some more about this. It’s always fun to work on new saddles – especially since I don’t get to do much of the hands-on anymore myself.

Many of my clients look for comfort in their saddle seat and confide in our saddle fitters that they try all sorts of padded undergarments, seamless breeches, sheepskin pads on the saddle seat, etc. (even bicycle shorts with padded butts or going commando under their breeches!) Unfortunately the real reason for this discomfort is often the saddle construction itself - the location of the seams in a male saddle in relation to the bones of the female pelvis means that often as a woman you are actually sitting on the seam or falling off the seam on one side. My wife had problems sitting in many of the saddles I made years ago when I first started with custom saddles, and I couldn’t understand what the issue was because the saddles all felt great to me! It was just when clients told me about having these issues with their saddles (up to and including bladder infections and being rubbed literally bloody!) that the light went on and I decided that further investigation was necessary. The result – through extensive research (including the plaster butt casts which showed the position of the female pelvis on the saddle seat) we now have a full line of female models to address pretty much every female conformation! (You can read more about the whys and wherefores behind this epiphany on our website at www.schleese.com/resources/articles - Who’s Built Best to Ride?.)

Look for the next blog with Saddle Fit Tip #4!

Jochen Schleese, CSM, SFT, CEE

www.schleese.com