Photo by Revital Salomon
Yeah, that’s right. One of my dressage banes – stirrup length. I’ve been struggling with stirrup length ever since I came back to riding. When it was school horses, in the beginning, I attributed my discomfort to weak muscles and bad saddles. I’ve always had issues with my right leg, so it was no surprise to me that it hurt after doing some serious posting-trot.
After I bought Talo, I had issues with stirrup length. I made so many new holes, and I never felt the length was equal on both sides. I finally settled on a certain length, but my seat was far from perfect. A lot of hard work and working without stirrups, improved my seat, but I still didn’t feel very comfortable.
Not long ago, I got my custom saddle, and the struggle renewed. In the first couple of rides, I alternated between two different lengths, and settled on the longer one. My seat continued to improve, but my legs kept swinging on the posting trot and I had a lot of leg movement in the sitting trot. Finally, a couple of days back, my trainer told me to shorten the stirrups. This was at the end of the lesson, I was tired and it felt HORRIBLE. I felt like my entire body is cramping and couldn’t seat the canter properly. Afterwards, my legs and knees hurt like hell.
But on the next day I tried riding with the shorter stirrups again, and it was much better. Still have a few aches and pains, but there’s no doubt the shorter stirrups are better for me at this point. I just need to remember that the stirrups are there just to rest my legs on, and there’s no need to put my entire weight on them. My core muscles are much stronger now, so I can hold myself pretty well. Still, I need to re-adjust to the new length.
Competition season is all but over here in Israel. I didn’t compete in the second half of the season. All of the competitions were out north – too far and too expensive to shuttle Talo over there. Hopefully I’ll get to compete next season. That gives me about 5 months or so to adjust to the new stirrup length, better my seat, improve the leg-yield and learn the tests by heart.
Summer is coming. It’s going to mean shorter rides and fewer days of riding per week, because Talo can’t handle heat very well. Starting the day very early helps, but it’s not going to last when the real heat hits the fan. We’ll see how things go and make the best of it, as usual.
