From: Lysane
Hello! I find Horse-Sense so useful and I enjoy recieving your responses to questions every week - I look forward to it. My question is about correct knee position. I have mostly ridden Western, but in the past year I sold my saddle and bought an English saddle - a Wintec Endurance. It is great, fits my horse well, is comfortable and easy to clean. I am interested in competitive trail riding, endurance and possibly jumping in the future, so I figured it was as all-round a saddle as I could get for the moment. And much lighter than my Western saddle! When I sit in the saddle I have noticed that my knees are not completely touching the saddle. I would have to squeeze the saddle with my upper thigh in order for them to touch, which I don`t think is the right thing to do either. Are my knees supposed to be like this? There are removable/adjustable knee blocks under the saddle flap so should I maybe move these higher? I am pretty busy with school and can`t really afford lessons at the moment, so I to do a lot of self-teaching in terms of correct riding position and teaching my horse new things (reading books, reading Horse-Sense, watching instructional videos occasionally and some trial & error). I am hoping to take one or two lessons this summer so that I have someone to watch me ride and make improvements. Thank you, Lysane P.S. Sorry, I had a last question...do you think the Wintec Endurance would be an adequate saddle for getting into the hunter/jumper field or would I have to have specifically a "jumping" saddle. And If not for competition, at least for the beginning stages of learning...?
1. Are my inner thighs in contact with the saddle?
2. Are my inner calves in contact with the saddle?
3. Are my knees pointing forward?
4. Are my toes more or less under my knees?
If you can answer "yes" to all these questions, your knees are just fine, even if they are never in contact with the saddle at all.
If your knees are pointing so far out to the side that the part of your legs in contact with the saddle are the BACKS of your thighs and calves rather than the inside of your thighs and calves, then your knees are too far from the saddle, but they're just a symptom of the problem, not its cause. The cause is almost certainly a tightness in the hips and an inability to rotate the hips in. A correct riding position requires a certain amount of inward hip rotation - think of it as a riding "turn-in" that is the opposite of the hip "turn-out" that you may have learned in ballet lessons. ;-) Correcting the hips will correct the position of the thighs and calves, and the knees will then be as close to the saddle as they are going to be naturally. Leave them alone - don't try to force them closer.
For most women and many men, trying to keep the knees in contact with the saddle will require a contorted position in which the rider's hips are locked and stiff, the rider's seatbones are out of the saddle, and the rider's lower legs are pushed completely away from the horse. Any one of these would make it difficult for a rider to be comfortable or effective, and the combination of all of them makes it utterly impossible for a rider to be anything but an inconvenient and uncomfortable passenger, you can see why trying to keep the knees in contact with the saddle is a bad idea.
Trying to force your knees onto the saddle will cause all sorts of problems with your position, your balance, and your ability to give coherent aids to your horse. In the short term, this practice puts far too much strain on knees and hips - in the long term, it can also hurt your lower back.
If you want your leg to lie flatter and closer to the saddle, you'll need to do exercises to loosen your hips and facilitate your hip rotation. Yoga can help a great deal.
You might also want to evaluate the fit of your riding clothes. Riding pants can make a big difference in your ability to place your leg flat against the saddle. If too-tight breeches, jeans, or riding tights are combining with a round thigh to create a sort of sausage-casing effect, you'll have tight, rounded "tubes" of leg that will present a curved surface in all directions, including toward the saddle. You can't possibly keep your knees anywhere near the saddle, or have a secure seat, if your riding pants are too tight around the thighs.
If your knee rolls are moveable, put them in different positions and at different heights until you find a place where they help you - or a place where they don't interfere. Knee rolls in jumping and all-purpose saddles are really meant to give the rider some security when jumping - when the stirrups are shorter and the rider's knees are coming more forward onto the forward-cut saddle flaps, knee rolls can provide some support for the knees, and/or serve as a position reminder. Knee rolls and thigh blocks in dressage saddles are meant, depending on their size, to (a) fill in the otherwise inevitable gap between knee and saddle, supposedly for the benefit of the judge at the competition, or (b) encourage the rider to keep the leg from creeping forward, or (c) by sheer size and bulk, prevent the rider's leg from creeping forward. Some riders are happier without knee rolls, and make a point of looking for pencil-thin ones; the comfort and happiness of other riders seems to be in direct proportion to the size of their knee rolls and/or thigh blocks. There's no "right" or "wrong" here, it all comes down to individual conformation and preference.
Congratulations on your new lightweight saddle. The Wintec Endurance is a nice saddle, good for what you're doing, and will also let you get started on some of the other things you want to do. Ninety-nine percent of jumping is flatwork, and you can do that in your Endurance saddle as long as you are able to balance well over your legs even with a slightly shorter stirrup. Don't take your stirrups up too far, though - just make them very slightly shorter, one or (certainly no more than) two holes higher than their "default" flatwork position. You won't need to take them any higher until you start jumping really big jumps - say 4' and over, and if you get to that point, you'll almost certainly be using a jumping saddle anyway.
As for occasional jumps, your saddle should present no problem - most endurance riders find that they do a certain amount of jumping in the course of training and competing. There's always a boggy place, a fallen tree, a ditch, or something on the trail that is more easily jumped than navigated in some other way.
Enjoy your new sports!
Jessica
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