From: Patti
I have really enjoyed your newsletter and have learned quite a bit from it. (Your helmet stories have gotten my husband to ride with a helmet now! I used to be the only adult on the trails around here wearing a helmet.)I had a question about what I could do to prevent my knees from hurting while trailriding. I am 50 years old and started riding on a regular basis again 5 years ago. We mostly trailride and ride with a western saddle. After several hours of riding, by knees start to ache. Getting off and resting helps but the pain soon comes back and it cuts our rides short. Is there anything that you can suggest that would help this problem?
Sore knees definitely take the fun out of long rides - in fact, they can even take the fun out of short rides. Many riders develop sore knees, but there are, indeed, some ways to minimize knee pain or even avoid it altogether.
Your position in the saddle is the first thing to address - and to analyze the cause of your knee pain, you'll also have to look at your saddle, stirrup leathers, and stirrups.
First, does your saddle fit you, or is the seat too small? Your body should be aligned comfortably with your shoulders over your hips and your hips over your heels - and there should be a bend in your knee. If your saddle is too small, you can't stay balanced; instead, you'll find yourself sitting against or on the cantle, behind your leg instead of balanced over it. In this position, anything you do with your knees becomes much more effortful and puts extra stress on the joints.
If your saddle is a good fit for you, turn your attention to the length of your stirrup leathers. When you sit in your saddle with your feet out of the stirrups, your weight on your seatbones and thighs, and your legs hanging relaxed with toes pointing down, the stirrup tread should be right at the level of your anklebone. If it is, then when your feet are IN the stirrups, your toes will be up, your heels will be down, and there will be a bend at the knee. There's some variation possible here, but not much, if you want to be comfortable. At their highest, the stirrup treads (again, with your legs dangling and relaxed and your feet out of the stirrups) could be just barely above your anklebones; at their lowest, they could be just barely below.
When your stirrup leathers are too short, you will have too much of a bend at the knee, and the result will be too much pressure on the knee joint. Your body will keep wanting to straighten the knee, which means that you'll either be popping straight up out of the saddle like a jack-in-the-box, or pushing your seat back onto the cantle. That's hard on your knees.
When your stirrup leathers are too long, you have a different kind of knee stress for a different reason. With your stirrups hanging too low, your toes will point down instead of up, your ankles will stiffen, your hips will lock, and your knees will be straight. There will be no flexing - just concussion. That's hard on the knees, too.
Adjusting stirrup leathers on an English saddle is easy - if you don't have enough holes in the leathers, you can make more with a hole-punch, or you can purchase stirrup leathers that have "half-holes" - that is, twice as many holes, much more close together, for maximum customization of stirrup leather length. On a Western saddle, you still have the option of adding holes with a hole-punch, but it's a little trickier, and you have to be dismounted to make any adjustment at all.
With Western saddles, there's another issue, too - the fenders. On both English and Western saddles, the default position for stirrups is hanging flat against the horse's sides. When we ride, we turn those stirrups so that our feet can point forward - and that means that we need to twist the leathers. With an English saddle, this is relatively simple, as good leathers will not be stiff, and as there are no fenders. But with a Western saddle, fenders often get in the way. The old solution to this problem was to soak the fenders in water, put the saddle on a chair, twist the fenders until both stirrups were in "riding" position, and then run a broomstick through the stirrups under the saddle, to hold the fenders in position until they dried. These days, there are better options - most Western tack catalogues offer one or more gadgets that are placed between the stirrup leather and the stirrup itself, and that hold the stirrup in the correct position, turned at a right angle to the horse's side. Just having your stirrups where you need them to be can take a lot of strain off your knees. Try a pair of these gadgets - you may be very surprised to find out just how much effort you were making, and how much strain you were putting on your knees, by twisting to pick up your stirrups and keep them in position.
Although this is less of an issue for riders with English saddles, it can still be a problem. In this case, the solution is to purchase a pair of stirrups with the eyes turned 90 degrees. Again, most major English tack catalogues carry these, and they can make a world of difference to the rider's comfort.
Now take a look at the stirrups themselves. In addition to the position issue, there are also considerations of size and design.
Most riders know that stirrups should be larger than the width of the rider's boots. If your stirrups are a little bit too snug (this is dangerous anyway, as you might get hung up in them in case of a fall), you'll tend to tense your feet instead of relaxing them. This may sound trivial, but it isn't. If your feet are tense, your ankles won't flex, and if your ankles don't flex, there is more strain placed on your knees. You should feel that you can relax your feet and spread your toes. ;-) When your foot is solidly in the stirrup, with weight on it, there should still be room for a pencil between the side of your boot-sole and the side of the stirrup - on BOTH sides of your foot.
The size of the stirrup tread also matters. The wider the platform for your foot, the better, especially if you're going for long rides over varied terrain. Padding is also good - if you use ordinary English stirrups, be sure to use rubber pads in them. If you have Western stirrups, be sure that the tread is flat and wide - and there are pads available for Western stirrups, too (they wrap around the tread). The people who know most about stirrups are probably endurance riders - they spend more time standing in their stirrups than just about anyone else in the world, and the best ones are experts on the subject of knee pain and how to avoid it by minimizing concussion. You might want to look at some of the catalogues and websites that cater to endurance riders, and see what your options are.
On the subject of concussion: Use your weight correctly - distributed between your seatbones AND THIGHS, with some (but not ALL) of it on the stirrups. Putting too much pressure on your stirrups can cause problems. Don't forget to keep your body in correct alignment - shoulders over hips over heels, with a bend at the knee - and don't forget that you have THREE sets of shock absorbers. Your hips, knees, and ankles ALL flex when you ride, and ALL serve to absorb the shock. Keep your hips, knees, and ankles as flexible and strong as possible, so that they can continue to share the job. If your knees are your best shock absorbers because you have stiff ankles and tight hips, your knees will end up doing the work of all three joints, and in time - sometimes very quickly - the extra stress and strain will cause pain and damage. So if you feel that your knees are working overtime and your ankles and hips are... not working all that well, do exercises OFF the horse to help regain flexibility in the other joints.
In addition to all this, there are a few other things you can do to make life easier for your knees. Buy or build a tall, wide mounting block, and teach your horse to stand quietly whilst you mount and dismount. When you dismount away from the mounting block, ALWAYS remove both feet from the stirrups, then slide down and BEND YOUR KNEES as you land.
Warm up before you begin your ride - walk around the arena once or twice, do some bending and stretching, be sure that your ankles and knees and hips will ALL be flexing from your very first moment in the saddle.
During your rides, take breaks, drop your stirrups and do some exercises - ankle circles in both directions, for example. If you feel any part of your body becoming stiff or sore, whether it's your shoulders, hips, knees, or ankles, take a break off the horse and do some gentle, range-of-motion stretching exercises.
Good luck, and have fun on the trails!
Jessica
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