Sample Analysis
Here is a still image taken from a set of videos, showing a horse and rider from the rear. It captures a view of the situation that could be seen in the video.
Any situation like this is far more difficult to see when in real life or a moving video, either one. Once the analyist spots what’s going on, however, it’s possible to grab several stills that show the possible problem and analyze them. Those, in turn, permit greater perception of the moving images and subsequently greater understanding of the problem, the capture and analysis of more still images, and so on, until the problem is clearly laid out. Below is the same still image (cropped), now with reference marks for analysis, and segments of the text that explain the problem and how it might be addressed by the rider. This text is from the final report, which was nearly 3000 words (7 pages) long and which included much more than what is shown here, including analysis of the horse, too.
“The most striking issue of balance and centering is in the rider’s lateral (side-to-side) position. The rider’s center should be midway between the left and ride sides of her body, and she should be balanced on — and sitting on — that line. However, this rider sits predominantly on her right hip, and sits “too far to the left” on her horse and bends her spine in order to situate that right hip more beneath the center of her body’s mass. The resulting imbalance impacts her riding and her horse in many ways. This rear view shows that imbalance. The rider is sitting primarily on her right hipbone (inner or pubis side), which is squarely beneath her center. The vertical white line that marks the center of the cantle — which is where her center should be — intersects the top center of her helmet but is far to one side of most of her head, neck, and back. Her backbone is bowed in a curve that bends outward to the viewer’s left in this image. That’s why there seems to be “more back” on the left side of the white line at her waist (where I have made a red horizontal mark) than on the right side of her waist at the same level. Her backbone is to the left side of the white line at that location. The result of this unbalanced posture is that she has “left leg left over” to hang down farther on the left side of the horse, since she is not technically sitting on it very much. Her left foot is considerably lower than her right foot as a result (as indicated by the red horizontal line I have made). Also notice that, as a consequence of this spinal curvature, her left arm is much closer to her body than her right arm is; you can see this by comparing the spaces (to which the two red arrows point). We can tell this is not a parallax (point of view) issue because the horse’s front and rear feet are tracking perfectly front-to-back here, lined up. The horse is not on a slant. The rider should not appear to be on a slant, but does because of her off-centered seat.
“Recommendation made: Work on learning to sit with the body’s weight centered through the midline of the torso, with external feedback and correction (e.g., “you need to scoot yourself to the right on the saddle seat; now shift your weight more onto your left hip”). This is going to feel awkward at first, partially because there is undoubtedly a habit of “being crooked”, but also because the “crookedness” probably has some underlying physical cause that will be encountered once change is made. Muscle and connective tissue, especially ligaments or even cartilage, might be tighter on one side than the other, which “scrunches up” the rider’s back and legs on that side compared to the other side. Or the muscles of one side might be stronger than those of the other, causing a similar outcome (though from a very different cause). An alternative could simply be that the rider favors one leg over the other for standing and is simply used to compensating with her posture for the resulting “tilt.” Depending on the cause, there are different things that can be done off the horse to help the rider regain lateral symmetry. To find the cause, it would help if the rider could record precisely which places on her body experience soreness, tightness, or other “aches” from riding in a centered position, and describe the nature of that discomfort. These can be reported to Anne in person or by email and transmitted to me. The off-centered posture affects the rider’s head, neck, shoulders, hands, hips, back, and legs, so everything will be adjusted as she rides under Anne’s direction the next few weeks. The primary place that must be addressed, however, is the seat — specifically, she needs to sit centered with weight evenly on both hips rather than one.”