• VOLUME 42 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
Purple Pony On Scrunching and Crunching
Why is it that physically handicapped riders become stronger on the horse and physically capable riders are told that they need to become stronger off the horse and not only that, but that they need to take their horses to massage therapists? Funny that nobody seems to catch the faulty logic in that. How the disabled become stronger, but somehow the same appears not to be true for those that are not disabled.
If you look at many of the exercise programs proliferating around the world, they promise you fabulous abs without ever going down on the floor to do those horrible, horrid crunches as some call them, sit-ups to others. How do they fulfill this astounding promise? By telling you one simple little trick. And it is always the same little trick with all of them! They have you do one little thing, before you do ANYTHING else.
They ask you to tuck your pelvis.
Sounds too simple doesn’t it? Often the right thing to do is usually the most simple.
By tucking your pelvis, you automatically engage your abs and hence get your abdominal workout.
By the way, you might notice they don’t ask you to tuck your head. “What do you mean, I am talking in a sarcastic tone? Me!? Little ol’ innocent Me!?”
I mean after all, how could tucking your head and chin down have anything to do with engaging your core? <innocent eyes batting eyelashes>
I mean, try it for yourself. Tuck your chin to your chest - doesn’t do a thing for your tummy, right? Take a real deep breath while you are down there, by the way. You might notice you can’t take a good belly-filling breath either. As a matter of fact, the tighter the tuck, the harder it is to lift the chest and breathe at all!
Yes I know, that wasn’t a very subtle hint against working behind the vertical, but honestly, take a quick moment and try it anyway! Convince yourself one more time, this isn’t going to work.
Getting back to the tuck your pelvis, engage your abs concept that these brilliant humans have created as an exercise program basis for other humans... Yeah, yeah, I know you can see the lead-in coming to being about horses, but bear with me.
Let’s take a look at the pelvis. Did you know we horses don’t have a direct joint per se between our pelvis and the hind legs? Our pelvis just kind of rests on top of our spine and we have lots of muscles and tendons connecting our pelvis to the spine it rests upon. That’s so the spine doesn‘t fall down underneath us...can you imagine?
The spine itself is pretty dang rigid in the up and down plane, we have some, yet limited, flexibility going to the side, but really next to none anywhere in the spine going up and down, except maybe in the neck.
But the one place from the outside where it looks like we can bend like crazy in the up and down plane in the spine is where the pelvis connects to the spine. That is because of the way the pelvis is attached - we can do a horsey version of the pelvic tuck!!
And when we do the pelvic tuck, we are doing our own version of engaging our abs! Brilliant, isn’t it?
Now we all know that weak stomach muscles make for a problem back, and conversely strong tummy muscles make for a strong back. So when you expect us to carry you on our back, do we horses need to have: a) weak back, disengaged abs? or... b) strong back and engaged abs? I know this is a hard one, but you can do it! Right! The answer is A!!
Now before some bright person out there tries to continue extrapolating human versus horsey physiology, let’s not forget that we have a rigid spine, we have to because our back stretches so far between our front and back legs, with nothing in between holding our middle up! Makes me want to whistle London Bridge is falling down, falling down.. anyway, back to the matter at hand.
But you humans don’t have that problem. Your spine is upright and actually quite flexible compared to ours. So yes, you can curl on the front and curl through the lower spine, round like a cat and really, really engage the abs. BUT WE CAN’T DO THAT!!! We are not you! And I am not a cat!!
Curl me one end OR the other, but you can’t do both!! And remember the tuck chin exercise - if you curl us up in the front we will never, never, never be able to curl or tuck our pelvis under! PEOPLE, it is one or the other. NOT BOTH!
Hey, and this tucking under of the back end. This is what they mean by collection. Real collection, not that fake thing of making our long and very flexible neck make a pretty round curve. Want to really take care of us? So make sure you let us hold our head where we need to, so we can get that dang back end of ours under. Panting... this is...pant...dang...pant...hard work...but...pant...it really is worth it!
