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[RC] Endurance Equitation: The Rising Trot Part3 - Duncan McLaughlin

The Seat and Upper Leg

To achieve a biomechanically correct rising trot, it
can be helpful to think of your knee as the centre of
a circle and your thigh as the radius of the circle.
As you rise, the bony knobble at the top of your
thigh, the greater trochanter, describes a part of the
circumference of that circle (see Figure 2). In the
rising part of the motion your pelvis sweeps on a
forward and upward arc. The emphasis should be on
forward, not on upward; it is as if you were going to
rise on over the front of the pommel. The larger and
longer the forward sweep of your pelvis, the longer
your horse?s stride will become. As you rise, the
angle of the hip opens up, almost to 180 degrees. Your
kneecap will rotate slightly downward and the lower
leg will remain still, with next to no change of
pressure in the stirrup. It is as if you could
continue to rise to the trot with no difficulty if
someone amputated your legs just below the knee. 

Figure 3 demonstrates a good test of your ability to
rise correctly. While kneeling on the floor, rise
forward and up, while keeping your upper body on, or
even a little behind, the vertical. You should be able
to achieve a fully extended rise without having to
lean forward at all. This exercise does require
significant effort. Of course, it is much easier when
riding your horse due to the vertical forces that
arise from the motion of the trot. If you do need to
lean forward in front of the vertical to rise up in
this exercise, then it is most likely you are pushing
off your stirrups when actually riding your horse. By
raising your heels, you have lost the primary means of
shock absorption and, as a result, your hip flexor
muscles have become contracted as they try to
compensate.

Rhythm and Tempo

One of the reasons we riders feel safer when riding at
trot, when compared to riding at canter, is due to our
neurological wiring. Humans evolved with a two-beat
locomotory pattern, either walking or running. Our
horses are much more complex with two, three and
four-beat locomotory patterns. It is the two beat
rhythm of the trot that meshes most easily with our
own evolved locomotory patterns. We also find it
easiest to establish rhythm in two-beat patterns. 

Rhythm is the evenness of beats. Rhythm requires
balance, while a lack of balance, in horse or rider,
suggests falling. For example, think of the
traditional stockman?s position with a long, straight
leg and heels pushed out in front: the rider?s seat
and upper body, without any support from the legs
below, fall back in the saddle every stride and the
trot becomes irregular.

Tempo is the interval between beats. You will find
particular tempos feel harmonious and your body will
relax and participate easily in the motion of
trotting. If the tempo is faster or slower than this
resonant tempo you need more energy to keep rising
effectively, your body becomes tense and discordant,
and rhythm is lost. Your horse is the same. He works
in an efficient, ground covering trot at one tempo but
looses efficiency at faster and slower tempos. Tight
structures resonate faster than loose ones. To
accommodate a fast tempo (or a non-rhythmic rider)
your horse will have to stiffen his muscles ? clearly
this is not desirable.

It is obvious by now that balanced riding is the best
way to develop a rhythmic trot and allows us to take
control of our horse. To slow our horse?s trot we need
not pull on the reins, nor adjust the ?rings? very
short. Instead, we slow him by adopting a relentless
rhythm with a tempo slower than that which our horse
offers. How we slow the tempo is important. If we
simply try and slow our rising down, we will emphasise
the down beat in the up/down action of rising trot,
with detrimental effects on our horse?s stride.
Instead, what we should do is, after our pelvis sweeps
forward and up, pause for a moment, at the top of the
rise, before coming back down.

................


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