How your seat and posture can help your riding

Biomechanics looks at explaining WHY things happen.  Not just “look up and get your heels down”, but WHY did your heels come up in the first place? It looks at your spine and anatomy to make sure you’re sitting in a strong, safe position.

It applies to all horse riders, young and old, all disciplines and horse sports, and especially if you ride for long hours, or are in a speed or repetitive activity or horse sport where horse can be injured just by the way the rider sits.

Balance and Co-Ordination

Colleen Kelly Masterclass at the Lipizzaner Hall in Johannesburg, the following day giving a Teacher Training Day featuring ISRB Instructor Anneke Roodt and Stallion Maestoso Erdem

Balance isn’t a gift – it can be taught!  I have taken some of the world’s best balance exercises from my work (and sadly my personal experience learning to walk again in the same kinds of gyms I used to work at, and I have turned them into horse exercises.  !  And we have such fun ways to do it. Balance staying on in the beginning is just as difficult as balance on a cross country course, or the different type of balance needed for fine movements like tempis. For the pleasure rider, balance is probably the most important, as even the slightest imbalance can change the way a horse moves, even changing the way bones grow1. 

Confidence

Great balance and confidence go hand in hand, everyone knows that! But there’s all sorts of other things that affect confidence. One is undiagnosed vertigo, just as an example. And we have some amazing little tricks that only take you a minute.  Or, some amazing techniques for anything including piaffe & passage, higher jumping or reining spins…such as you see Anneke Roodt there on the left.  And, with good balance comes confidence, and with confidence comes the fun back that people like Julio Mendoza are having here at Horse World Expo, or Colleen is using in her collaboration with  Linda Parelli.

Higher Level Sports

With Colleen’s experience with Olympic and Paralympic athletes and World Champions, come and spectate at one of the upcoming events, or grab a DVD and see how to improve your own seat and posture, or what to look for in your children or pupils.

Coming Events…

Lessons – clinics – teacher training world-wide.  More >

Free Training

You only need 4 riders to organise a clinic, and then your own training is free!  More >

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