Muscle Tone - A Taboo Subject - part two

Horses are reading our body language on a moment-to-moment basis, and our bodies are constantly sending signals about our emotional and physical boundaries.

Therefore, our ability to set and maintain boundaries with our horses is never about strength (as we would definitely lose), but is actually a great deal to do with our posture and tone.

You can see this clearly when you compare people’s bodies in a crowd, perhaps in a busy train station. There are some people who seem to command respect, who you probably wouldn’t want to bump into, and others who just go with the flow. It’s interesting to compare their tone and packaging!

If you look at talented riders, it is as if they have a very clear definition to their bodies, as if there is a crisp edge to them, but they don’t appear to be tense. They seem relaxed, but also very stable, and almost every horse they sit on also takes on the same qualities, as if responding to and mirroring the tone and packaging.

Part of good horsemanship is your how your intent is conveyed by your posture and tone!

So good muscle tone not only has a physical quality but also an emotional quality. How we hold ourselves allows us to tell others how much we value ourselves and how seriously we take our emotional boundaries.

This applies equally when you are riding. If you think about applying pressure with the inside edge of your thigh as you ask a horse to move laterally, it is possible to convey a sense of compelling calm authority with your muscles that both gives the horse the cue that you would like it to move sideways, but also has a non-negotiable quality to it, that is emotionally congruent with your physical request. Also, the rider must have enough tone and organisation to be able to catch and receive the other side of the horse as it moves sideways so that the movement is precise and does not become a splurge.

From the outside, it looks as if the rider is doing nothing. Compare this to a lateral move where the rider has to resort to shoving and heaving to get their horse to yield, and there is a time delay or perhaps no reaction at all from the horse. Apparent confusion on the part of the horse is often due to the discrepancy between what a rider is asking a horse to do, and the need for sufficient stability and tone in the rider's body to match the forces of the movement so that they are physically congruent in their request.

Setting Personal Boundaries to Improve Lateral Riding Skills

A personal discovery!

For me, my lateral work on horses and general handling improved greatly when I addressed all my personal boundary issues in human relationships, which illustrates to me how much my inner beliefs about myself were manifesting in my body language as muscle tone and intent.

It is also possible to have too much tone and lose the pliability in the muscles, and this can often happen in people who are trying too hard in a particular area of their body, or if your body builds muscle tone quickly. We are all on a spectrum of tone which is influenced by age, gender, and hormones. Men typically have around 35% more tone than women, however, women tend to be more supple.

So how do you develop the correct muscle tone? Fitness is very important, although this doesn’t mean you have to start running or become a gym bunny, but I think that if we expect a horse to carry us, we should take responsibility for maintaining good physical condition.

Yoga, Pilates, and strength training are excellent, particularly classes that target horse riders, where the instructor will have a good eye for the imbalances in your body.

Appraising your own posture with an Alexander Technique or Feldenkrais teacher is also very beneficial, as is finding a good bodyworker for yourself to help release the tight areas in your body. Also finding a good biomechanics coach who can help you pinpoint your strengths and weaknesses in the saddle so that you can work on them. If you’re not sure where to look, all of the coaches in the Ride With Your Mind network are well-trained in this.

Lastly, good old-fashioned walking (and/or swimming) is very good and building and maintaining fitness and tone in our bodies. I do think that as a minimum, we should be able to briskly walk the same distance and duration that we expect to ride for and aim to not be out of breath.

If you enjoyed this blog, try these:

Rider Stability and Balance - part one

Rider Stability and balance - part two

Join the discussion in my Facebook group, Groundwork for Humans with Sally Ede - I look forward to meeting you there!

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