About Equipilates™

Benefit of Equipilates™ tuition include

• improved spinal alignment
• increased core stability
• greater flexibility and balance

Why is this important for your riding?

Your position has huge impact on the way your horse can move underneath you.  Your spinal alignment influences every aspect of your riding, from where your legs are positioned on the horse's sides to how you can apply a half halt aid.  Poor alignment as well as a lack of stability and flexibility affects how well you can absorb the horse's motion, for example in the sitting trot.  If your weight distribution is unevenly distributed over both sides of the horse, perhaps loaded forward or back of the vertical line of gravity or you find it more difficult to turn your body one way compared to the other (or all of those things!) your body will be giving signals to the horse to move in a certain way, even if you aren't aware of it.  Even tiny deviations have an impact on how you and your horse work together.  Many riders spend a fortune on having their horses treated by the physio/chiropractor, their saddles checked and refitted regularly and yet are unaware of the huge  impact their own riding has on their horse's ability to move freely and whether the treatment of the physio/chiro/saddlefitter is effective on a long term basis.  As one half of the partnership, it is important that your body functions to the best of its ability.  It is also vital that you ride your horse in a biomechanically helpful way which develops his training mentally and physically, to ensure that the money you spend on his welfare is not wasted.  Click on the alignment page for more info.

Horses also have their own alignment patterns; often they are the same as the rider's but not always.  Equipilates™ founder Lindsay Wilcox-Reid's expertise as a dressage trainer means that when teaching you on your own horse, she can help you to work through corrective exercises to improve your horse's way of going through improving his posture, flexibility and spinal alignment, which in turn helps you maintain your position more easily.  See Equipilates™ for Horses pages for details on equitation training.

Sometimes trainers struggle to correct their client's positions because the root cause is not addressed; this can be frustrating for trainer, rider and horse!   People sometimes struggle for years with exactly the same issues; specialist knowledge of human anatomy and movement AND how you use your body whilst riding, plus how the horse influences you is required to make the necessary changes.    Encouraging length and the release of tension in tight, overworking muscles and awakening correct function in weak, underworking ones promotes correct muscle balance and symmetry in your alignment.  Lindsay's clear, simple explanations of how to recognise and maintain correct alignment plus her knowledge of Pilates and how to apply the principles and techniques to the rider's needs makes a better functioning body, and better riding, accessible to everyone.  She takes referals from other equestrian professionals (trainers, human and equine physios, vets and saddle fitters) to help their clients with postural issues which can affect the horse in ways ranging from difficulty with lateral movements in one direction to persistent saddle fit problems or lameness caused by poor rider balance/alignment. 

Improving rider alignment improves the horse's way of going