Cob Jockey

One of the gymnastics exercises we did at the LandSafe clinic got us into an inverted plank position with our feet way above our heads, and we stayed there for several seconds before rolling out of it.  Some of the ladies started murmuring that they weren't sure they could do that. 

When Danny heard that, he stopped what he was doing and said, "You'll able to do this, actually, you should be able to do a push-up in this position.  I'm not going to make you do a push-up, but if you were fit enough to actually do a push-up in this position, you'd be fit enough to avoid falling off, and then you don't even need to use what you're learning here and that's best case scenario.  I mean, we're teaching you what to do at the moment of impact when things have already gone wrong, and that's great, but ideally you wouldn't come off in the first place."

PC: Olivia because I didn't get any pictures of this, but he said you should be able to do an inverted pushup with your feet on the top of the pyramid (and your hands on the ground, not on the tall mat shown here).

Since he said that, I've been rolling around this idea in my head that there's fit enough to ride, and THEN there's fit enough to not fall off.  To keep yourself safe.  To give yourself a fighting chance to not hit the ground when shit starts going sideways. And those two levels of fitness are not the same.

...not that our shit ever went sideways when we were eventing

What if we treated Danny's inverted push-up (and the level of fitness it requires) as an essential piece of safety gear just like a helmet?  I'm fascinated by this idea that CrossFit has been protecting me in the saddle this whole time.  I knew it was making me a more effective rider already, but protecting me, that I had never considered.

I've only come off once in the last 11 years (on a strange horse and landed on my feet), but especially while eventing, I nearly came off many times.  Every time, I was able to cling onto him and heave myself back into the saddle from a lot of different close-call positions.  The last 11 years are also the fittest I've ever been, since I first started hitting the gym the summer before I got Connor. 

Doing biomechainics drills in the gym with a nearly empty barbell last week, just like I do at the barn.  Shoulder hip heel in line!  All my muscles are gone after not working out for a month due to work, sigh :(

(And yes, Connor himself has a lot to do with me not coming off, because another "essential piece of safety equipment" is the right horse at the right level with the right rider.  I know I'm not cut out for something tall, spicy and 5* level athletic.)

I'd love to see us all treat out bodies as another piece of safety gear, and it's difficult to develop the amount of strength Danny is talking about outside of strength training, whether that's bodyweight P90X in your living room or my own personal one true love, CrossFit.  I know it's definitely given me one more reason to get myself to the gym as often as I'm able to.

What do you think?  I'd love to hear some chatter about this.

Last weekend I participated in a LandSafe Equestrian clinic.  I'm not going to do an in-depth recap since Olivia did such a thorough job with that already (Day 1) (Day 2).  The only way my experience differed from Olivia's is that I never felt the need to take Dramamine.

These clinics exist to help teach riders body positions that can reduce the risk of serious injury from a fall.  It's using physics, gymnastics and rote position drills to reduce the risk of head injury, getting stepped on and other serious issues associated with coming off.  You practice slowly over and over again so that when you eventually have to do these things in a split second on a real horse, your body reacts the right way without thinking about it.


Alert: You're not going to learn a thing from reading about or auditing LandSafe.  You really, really, REALLY have to participate in the clinic to learn it. Do not try this at home, but please try this at a LandSafe clinic!  I think every rider should take this.

These clinics are held in two four-hour sessions over a weekend.  For the first half of the first day, we learned the brace position (spoiler alert: yes you DO want to put your hands and arms in front of you!  But without your joints locked), and then learned how to hold the brace position in increasingly more difficult exercises using gymnastics mats and trampolines.  Then we moved to the mechanical horse.

I was generally A+ at the gymnastics exercises, but putting it into practice on the mechanical horse was a whole other thing.  In order from what I found easiest to what I found hardest:

Rearing - easy

Left rotational fall - easy


Left shoulder fall - it was easy until they took all the mats away and we had to land on the green inflatable, then it got very hard to stay tight



Right rotational fall - hard, I don't twist this way easily


Right shoulder fall - also hard



 Emergency dismount - ridiculously hard (for me only)



The emergency dismount scared me, and also is what left me the most sore.  No one else had as much trouble with it.  Unlike a Pony Club emergency dismount which teaches you to kick out of your stirrups before jumping off, Danny teaches you to launch yourself out of your stirrups, using your hands to push away from the horse's withers, so that you land running as far away from him as possible.  I found this incredibly challenging and got my right foot hung up on the cantle numerous times, but I did finally do it right in the end.  I was also left so sore from this specific exercise, it still feels like someone is knifing me down my quads as I write this nearly two days later.

I learned so much though, and I think I'll do it again next time it comes around.  I have so little body awareness, these are skills I'm going to need to drill over and over in order to get them right, and it's not like I have a mechanical horse sitting around to practice on!  Also, I may have bought a new helmet while I was there...

Review to come