Worse on my right than left. I feel that to get my toe forward I have to roll my ankle and all my weight is rolled to the the outside ankle. Anyone else have this issue? I have wondered about wedge shaped stirrup pads.
For the issue is turning out my whole leg, not just my toes. Hope others have suggestions!
I read this recently: If you have trouble keeping your leg on the horse and your leg turns out at the knee or further down at the ankle - think about sitting as if you were doing a “snowplow” while skiiing. You will have to think about this all the time while riding until you have re-trained your body.
Not sure how well it works as I don’t have this particular problem.
Good luck!
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I’m not a dressage rider and I don’t have any home exercises, but I have this same issue. For me it’s due to my conformation, I have duck feet naturally. If I try to just tuck in my toes, my weight rolls onto the outside of my ankle. Instead of doing that, I think of pushing my heel away from the horse, and feeling the horse’s side with the middle of the inside of my foot, if that makes sense. Doing this gives me a more stable feel in my heel and ankle and I feel I have a more direct line of contact through my thigh, knee, calf, and ankle
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Grab the flesh on your inner thigh and pull it down towards your hamstrings. Your feet turn out because your thigh is turned out. Instead of riding sitting on your butt, think of riding on your inner thighs.
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Oh I like this! And the snow plow suggestion as I ski and understand that.
Be careful with the snow plow/ski visual, because it’s also easy to turn the lower leg in, from the knee down
Think heel out, rather than toes in. That at least should prevent the ankle roll, and will move the rotation up the leg. Obviously we’re not aiming for heels pointing out 
Leg position comes from the hip socket, the entire leg. Having someone lift your leg off the saddle, roll it in (“pulling” your inner thigh out some), and laying it back down, will give you the idea of how it should feel. Then you can do it too - grab the back of your thigh and pull it out, rolling your whole leg inward
Standing in the stirrups while walking, with your leg exaggerated in its inward rotation, also makes it easier to move towards middle ground.
It takes work out of the saddle too to help realign your muscle memory, and strengthen your hip abductors, even up into your gluteus medius which is forward of the gluteus maximus (what we sit on)
If you’re old enough, you’ll remember a lot of the 80s exercises where you lie on your side and do leg lifts (still valid today, just a lot more common then). But for this, you want to rotate your leg from the hip so that you feel like you’re lifting your leg via your heel
Gotta stretch the glutes and hamstrings too. The leg lift exercise helps strengthen your ability to put your leg in the right place, but tight muscles across the back of your leg and hips and glutes will just keep pulling it back around.
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What @JB said. The toes pointing forward is more an indicator of a correct, effective overall leg, and not so much a means to an end in itself, and needs to be addressed at the hip joint.
If the horse is reliable, what I like to do is drop my stirrups in warmup, and alternate picking up one leg and rotating it so the inner thigh is more against the saddle, and then the other leg. Let the motion of the horse ease out the tension in your hip joints. Sometimes the muscles around my hips get a little spasm-y, so I use the handle end of my dressage whip to work the knots out. Once you have that, you can start playing with keeping the thigh against the saddle and pulling the whole thigh back from the knee. Sometimes I do physically grab my leg by the hamstring and pull it, back, and let the walking movement help loosen things up. This process can help you locate and ground your seatbones during the warmup as well, so it does double duty.
For me it also helps to think of a kneeling seat in the saddle, where I’m keeping my torso erect from an opening hip angle. If you’ve ever sat on one of those kneeling stools (also a gem from the '80’s), that is what it kind of feels like. And if I combine that with thinking I’m a little knock-kneed, the whole femur will rotate and drop, and the lower leg hangs in alignment below that.
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I searched hip opening and hip stretching on YouTube and do exercises every day. I also sit/stand/lay in the opposite direction of what feels natural/comfortable. I definitely see improvement, but I literally do it every day and it took months before I saw an improvement.
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My daughter has this issue, we sent her to a physical therapist that showed her 10-15 exercises to do daily to help. Has helped tremendously not just in riding, but her balance and hip pain.
Many of the exercises are on YouTube about opening hip flexors and increasing hip mobility.
Yes! This doesn’t happen overnight, or even in a few weeks. Overcoming years of muscle memory, tight muscles, takes months and months of daily work.
And it really requires being conscious of and checking in with your body throughout the day. You can’t do exercises to “sit up straight”, and then lean over the center console in your car while you drive.
It means, if when you are standing for periods of time and you regularly rest your left leg and weight your right leg, you need to spend a LOT more time doing the opposite.
But for sure, you have to do off-horse concentrated work to really make headway
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yoga!
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Definitely try all the exercises that are mentioned above, but know that turning the leg out is associated with riding in a saddle with a twist that is too wide (pinching with the knees is associated with a twist that is too narrow). If you do a bunch of exercises and it isn’t getting better, you may just be fighting your tack.
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Agreed. Toes turned out is either a tack issue or a tension issue. It sounds like you are using your stirrups as your base of support instead of your thigh and seat. The question is why. Is your core and inner thigh not strong enough? Is your horse forward enough? Are you posting or sitting the canter incorrectly? Is your saddle too wide or your stirrups too long?
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At my lesson yesterday my coach was into this thing about being legless. She kept saying that i should think of my legs as being cut off…just nubbins. So during my entire 2hr lesson (on two diff horses) She would say things like: “Now use your left nubbin to push him to the inside …” LOL.
…so, CindyCRNA, if you had my coach you wouldn’t need to worry about your feet!!
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I have friends who point out to different degrees with each toe. For both its connected to known physical issues, in one its the hip and the other its scoliosis.
I had a good natural toes ahead thing as a kid. As a returning rider it took me a few years to get toes ahead again so there’s a strength component there even if you have nothing blocking you.
I agree it is about the whole leg and you are just messing up your position to force it by twisting at the ankle.
if you’ve had horses a while chances are you’ve more than one or two broken wonky toes! My feet are uuuuugggggLEY!
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Turned out toes are an upper leg issue. You need to sit on your seat bones (where you thigh meets your butt), and put some weight on the inner thigh. Almost act like you’re kneeling in the saddle.
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Does human conformation have a role also? If I stand with my knees straight forward my toes naturally point east and west … and rather dramatically lol. If I position my feet facing due north, straight ahead my knees are now twisted in towards each other. So it’s quite the balance when I ride to not turn my toes out but at the same measure to accomplish that without a turned in pinching knee. I would surely fail a PPE.
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Ah I really meant feet point out
