I’ve been eventing for 2 years and riding total for 7ish years. I’ve always had this problem with my upper body rounding over jumps and while I’m jumping. I know I need to pay attention to it but my horse is also pretty hot so there’s a lot of stuff to think about other than my own position. I finally secured my lower legs and they don’t really swing back anymore, but I can’t seem to fix my shoulders??? Do you guys have any good exercises for that? Occasionally when I do ride well with a good position over jumps, I feel a pull on my hamstrings right over the jump. Is that normal? I feel like my upper body is partially due to a stiff hip with tight hamstrings that doesn’t fold, partially due to bad habit from riding a hot horse(going for the “fetus” position). Anyways, any advise would be great!
Posture starts on the ground. It’s going to be way harder to fix if the only time you address it is in the saddle. And, yeah, it can be really tough to “equitate” when you’re riding hot, naughty, or green horses. Been there, done that!
A few ideas to work on, in and out of the saddle:
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Try to find a neutral, but tall spine. Your spine naturally has curves in it, so it isn’t necessarily about taking the curves away (you can’t) but finding where your spine aligned properly and your core is engaged. Think about rocking the top of your pelvis back, or the bottom forward.
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Think about WIDENING your shoulders instead of pulling them back. A great exercise is to stand in front of a mirror and pull your shoulders away from your spine and then toward it. You’ll have to play around with it, but you’ll start to feel how you can widen your shoulders away from your spine, which will help your posture. Be sure not to let them drift up toward your ears, too!
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Think about LIFTING your sternum. You want to feel like it is being pulled upward, which will help keep you tall (we tend to fixate on our back instead of our whole body when we want to sit up tall).
Remember, you have to work on this 100% of the time. And while your weakness may show up the most in your shoulders, you’ll find that your whole spine and core are weak. Engage your core (that pelvis exercise is a great one to think about), lift your sternum, and widen your shoulder blades away from your spine. Do this in and out of the saddle, constant little posture checks, and you should start to see more stability in your form.
I have tons of little exercises I would love to play with with some riders that I have learned from ballroom dancing. Posture fixes that have fixed YEARS worth of issues that even Olympians haven’t been able to fix on me (you gotta address the right body parts!). These couple of things are the very easiest I can think of without being in front of you demonstrating or helping you get into proper alignment. In other words, if you want an eye opening posture experience, find a good ballroom instructor 
GREAT advice YB. Mental images I’ll be living with as I attempt to combat “old lady slump”.
I’ve been notorious for slumping for ages and nothing helped (including the old “if the horse stops you’ll fall off” - because experience had proved otherwise almost all the time!), until I went to a personal trainer with a background in PT and knowledge of riding. For me, it’s a question of setting my shoulders down and back, and sort of pinching my shoulder blades together. Working with the trainer taught me how it felt to get it right and got the muscles developing in that direction, and I’ve been able to maintain it. Rowing helps me a lot. And like YB says, you have to work on it all the time - but til I went to the trainer, I didn’t really have a clear understanding of how to do it. Other things that have helped me are building on that - keeping it in mind while doing lunges and squats, especially.
My riding teacher had been getting after me for my slouch for over a decade.
Then I got an Equicube. I carry it maybe 1 to 3 minutes each lesson. Now my riding teacher praises my back, even when I am not carrying the Equicube.
I know it is a gadget, but I had done various things to improve my shoulders/back (pushing out with my diaphragm helped a lot!) without getting my upper back out of its perpetual slump. I just could not “feel” the correct muscles to get everything up to my riding teacher’s standards.
Now I push out with my diaphragm to get my shoulders back and I carry the Equicube to get the upper part of my back (above the shoulder blades up to my neck) out of the slouch, and my riding teacher is very happy with me!
I’m seriously tempted to do some Youtube videos on the stuff I’ve been taught. But I need to test the theories out myself a little more in the saddle (a consistent issue is mostly resolved after we realized it stemmed from my ribcage and NOT my shoulders, as every coach ever had told me) and on some guinea pigs. I did give some tips to a friend of mine who said they helped a lot, but I haven’t actually been on the ground and helped someone with them. But maybe one day I’ll have time to do it!
Also, on the whole “think about it all the time” thing, I was telling my dance coach yesterday (after not seeing each other due to traveling for both of us). I was telling him about my inner monologue regarding my sore back while I was in FL. Lots of driving on top of being sick a whole lot this year had tweaked my back, and I kept finding myself not supporting my back where it hurt by engaging my core, tipping my pelvis back, etc. Every time I thought about it and did what I needed to do, I got instant relief. As soon as I stopped, bam! Pain. It was a conscious effort to STAY ENGAGED. So, even when pain is involved, if you don’t think about it, you won’t do it.
It’s amazing how we will continue to create the pain even when we know how to stop it when it comes to postural issues. Just too much work to do it right I guess. And is there any analogy with our horses? Naaaah, they always do things right!
I have horrible upper body posture, even just walking around no less in fetal “oh crap” jumping position. I tried them all, shoulders back, shoulders open, grow tall, sit up, you name it. Last week I was riding around and a new phrase popped into my head. It was “back straight”. I immediately made my back as flat as a board and bam, I was in a perfect position. I popped over a few fences and it was awesome. Just try to find the phrase that works for you and keep reminding yourself to do it.
