It’s not just for straightening your knee – This Quad muscle could be causing havoc with your seat.

If you keep getting tipped forward, lower back creating all the movement, very busy seat, lower leg coming back or shooting forward as you rise the trot, can't quite nail the rhythm, or worse pushing your horse out of their's - read on…

The Rectus Femoris Quad Muscle need to allow a hip led movement

There's one muscle in the quads that crosses both the hip and the knee, the rectus femoris. It runs from the front of your pelvis, down the thigh and across the knee. Because it spans two joints, it has a job at each. At the hip it tilts the pelvis forward. At the knee it straightens the leg. One muscle, two joints, and only one length to share between them. That sharing is the whole story here.

When the front of the thigh is short and weak, it pulls down on the front of the pelvis and tilts it forward. This is the fork seat. Your seat bones roll towards the crotch and your lower back hollows, and you feel perched forward over the pommel however much you tell yourself to sit tall. You've probably been told to stretch your hip flexors, which is fair as far as it goes, but on its own it rarely holds.

Once the pelvis has rolled forward, the front of the thigh has given itself slack at the knee end, because tilting the pelvis forward shortens it from above. The lower leg is free to bend, and it tends to hang back with the heel creeping up. That's the tipped-forward, leg-back rider.

That's not all that happens with the lower leg -

There is another situation, and it's a common one. When you push down into the stirrup to find some security or depth, or when rising, that push has to go somewhere. The hip can't open, because the short front of the thigh won't let it extend. So the force diverts to the knee, the knee straightens, and the lower leg and foot slide forward. The seat is still tipped forward and braced. The leg sliding forward is the push finding the only joint that will give, on a stirrup that is free to move forward, unlike when fixed on the ground.

Rising trot, sitting trot and the canter all ask the same thing of you. The hip has to open and the pelvis has to move through its range with the horse. A short, weak front of the thigh works against both halves of it. Short, it holds the pelvis forward and won't let the hip open. Weak, it can't lengthen under control, so it grips and blocks instead.

When the front ot the thigh has no elesticity or control - the pelvis finds compensations

In rising trot, you can’t send the hips up and forward to the pommel with a hip led movement. So it gets stollen from the lumbar spine. In sitting trot and the canter, for the seat to move, it comes again from an excessive anterior tilt of the pelvis creating a hollow lower back and shoulders that swing forward and backwards because the front of the hip is holding it shut leaving a posterior pelvic tilt unavailable to you.

The added problem with this is even if you are managing to move, it is loud, busy and will disrupt rhythm and balance for both you and your horse.  When following correctly, a lot of movement is happening, but it’s all in time with the horse and absorbed by a seat thereby looking imperceptible.  Invisible aids are applied from seat, legs and body.  Contrast that with a pelvis rocking violently forward, body back and forth, legs being pulled along for the ride... you see why this is so important. 

You have probably heard a few things describing the hip flexors of which rec fem is just one. Tight and weak - Tight can mean short, where the muscle has lost length and can't reach the range you need. Weak, where it has the length but can't produce or control force once it's there. Or then there is overactive - where it grabs early and holds on and won't switch off in the timing you need it to let go. The front of the thigh is often all three at once.

What you're after is the other end of all of it, a thigh that's long and strong. Long enough to reach the length your hip opens into, and strong enough to hold and to give there under the weight of the movement. Strong in this sense also means control - able to let go when the movement asks for it, rather than grabbing on and staying on.

This is why stretching on its own falls short. It gives you length and nothing else. A thigh you've stretched but not strengthened still can't control itself as it lengthens when the hip opens, stride after stride. The grabbing eases as the thigh gets stronger too, because a muscle that trusts the position guards it less.

Reverse Nordic

So the work required is LOADING the front of the thigh while it lengthens, with the hip held open. The reverse Nordic is the clearest example and one of my favourites. You kneel tall, hips open in a straight line from knee to shoulder, and lean back slowly so the front of the thighs work hard as they lengthen, then bring yourself back up. It can feel brutal at first so most riders start with resistance band to assist and a tiny range.  Then progressively build from there.  Done properly it teaches the front of the thigh to hold and to give at the length riding asks for, which is the length the hip has to open into when you follow the trot and the canter.

Pulling the lower leg back or pressing the heel down doesn't change what's holding you, which is the front of the thigh keeping the hip shut. That part is built off the horse, with the thigh strong enough to lengthen and give while the hip opens. The more elastic range here, the less it gets stolen from above.

Interested in rider specific strength programmes written by me? Find them here by clicking the link below.

Onya Equi Programmes