Theoretically, would a standard exercise ball have the same effect as the HH, or at least similar? I can’t DIY stuff for the life of me and I feel like I’d destroy my Bosu trying to attach stuff to it but I also have one of the big exercise balls that’s all set and ready to go
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For me, the HH is very different from an exercise ball. I also am miserable at most DYI. I do a lot of balance exercises and the HH is different. I bought it primarily to work on my ability to hold my head up and still when riding. I think it’s helping as my neck is sore. It also works my obliques in a way nothing else I do, does.
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It has been a while. I was just starting to get over my cold this week then one of my teeth broke. It sort of had to be dug out. My body ended up wonkier than usual for a few days from this last “insult” to my body.
Today I got to try out my Home Horse with the stabilizing shims under the base. I lasted maybe a minute when I finally got up on it. My saddle is on the HH so I put on my boots and half chaps and helmet.
It did feel a little bit more stable once I was seated. I did not pick up my stirrups since I was not up to the pitching and swaying that would come with picking up the stirrups, so my feet were flat on the platform. I did not pick up the reins either. I was not ambitious, I just sat or tried to replicate the forward and back movement of my pelvis for riding a horse at a walk.
I did try a new experiment. I wanted to see if the Home Horse “reacted” if I looked down. Keeping my seat still I started off with my face vertical and looking forward, then I tilted my head maybe 5 degrees so I looked down. This resulted in a really subtle shift to the “forehand”, not much, hardly noticeable, but I felt the HH roll slightly to the front. Since the weight of the double bridle extension plus two pairs of reins tends to put the HH on its “forehand” anyway I will have to experiment with this later without the bridle extension on.
My body really appreciated the greater stability of the HH with the stabilizing shims in place.
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When I got mine, I concentrated on riding it first before even thinking about reins. Good to hear your getting there!
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Oh my, I’m glad you’re feeling up to trying it again! I tried the rein attachment out for a short while when I first got my HH, but I have taken it off for now. I get plenty of benefits from just riding the HH without the reins, like gardenie. Eventually I’ll put them back on, but there’s plenty to think about for now!
It’s still helping me reduce the stiffness in my back. I can tell a big difference when I go out of town (can’t take it with me, unfortunately.) I think my core strength has improved as well. I got a saddle to put on it (all I had were Lane Fox-type saddles, and they just didn’t seem to balance very well. I decided to get a cheaper practice saddle that was built more like a dressage saddle, though it actually appears to be an English show saddle, so we’ll see how that feels.) I can’t wait to try it. I was using a ThinLine bareback pad as a cushion, but I’ve actually started to remove all cushioning for short periods because that makes it even more challenging.
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I haven’t put a saddle on it yet. I just use it as is … I can tell if really works my neck muscles. I’m not sure about my core yet, but I think it’s making a difference. I think it’s improving my coordination, as well.
I went to the HH website, where the directions say to have a helper hold onto the horse while the user mounts. Is this really necessary, every time, even after a user becomes accustomed to the HH? Is it unsafe to attempt to mount on one’s own?
"1. To mount your Home Horse it is important to have someone stand in front of the HH to actively spot you and hold it and you steady as you attempt to mount. "
No, it isn’t necessary for me. I never had someone there to help me mount the HH. I did keep a sturdy, solid object within easy grabbing distance the first few times, like a sturdy desk. I don’t need anything now.
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I had what turned out to be my last lesson with Susan Harris in 11/2019. We were giong along nicely at the trot when things changed just enough to get my attention. We went back to the walk and she says "Now that was an interesting sequence of events. Do you know what caused it? " Uh, no?
“You looked down.”
Wow! You got the same result on your HH. It sounds like it is as close as you will get to stalling your horse in the living room so you can ride when the weather stinks…
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One thing that really irritates me about watching a lot of dressage riders is that a LOT of them look down all the time, just enough to keep an eye on the top of the horse’s neck. And you know something? I think that the horses are copying the head carriage of their riders and that is why so many horses ridden dressage have their faces behind the vertical.
Keep your face vertical if you want to keep your horse off its forehand. This is easy, it is simple, and there are hundreds of years of equestrian literature written by top riders all emphasizing that it is best to look UP and forward instead of down while riding a horse.
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I have started to experiment with this. Today I told my husband that instead of holding the pommel of the HH down the next time I mount it, to hold it UP just so I can get my right leg over the cantle more easily.
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It is easy. What is hard is that you are supposed to breathe at the same time.
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I live alone and use it daily. As I got better at some of the exercises, I realized it rotates and walks a bit. I have it between a wall and my dining room table-it walked away from the wall and the table so it took me a minute to figure out how to get off. I use the neoprene seat it comes with on the “floor” of the HH. It helps me w mounting and dismounting. I hope this is useful to you.
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Thanks for sharing your experience with it moving with you.
One of these sounds interesting for bad weather days, etc., but not if I can’t use it successfully (and safely) all by myself.
I woke up this morning and my back muscles were not “happy”; as if there were teeny tiny tears in the muscle fibers. Nothing major, I put on my BOT T-shirt, and I can walk fine. I thank the Universe for the BOT stuff, it really can help with the pain from my mis-firing central nervous system.
I sure hope I can figure out a way to safely mount and dismount from the HH if I am home alone. Since my MS has messed up my sense of balance I totally rely on things being stable under me. I can adapt fine to the horses’ movements, it is like I am dancing with the horse, I could probably adapt again to being on a ship on mildly brisk seas since the movements are predictable, but when I try to mount the HH the platform is moving in every different direction faster than my nervous system can adapt to.
For me to successfully mount a horse I NEED a stable reference point physically. The horse kindly standing still for me (hey, I’m clumsy), a mounting block that does not move, if I have the stable reference point I can deal with it all. It is not pretty but I end up on the horse’s back, often apologizing to the horse for failing to clear his croup.
With my foot on the ever moving platform and my hand on the ever moving pommel I have no chance in mounting the HH from the side. When I feel better I will start experimenting with lowering the back of the HH so the cantle of the saddle is much lower and see if I can sort of scoot on from the rear.
I am trying to save up for an Equicizer. It will take me a while, but it looks like with the Equicizer I could mount with my left foot firmly on the ground. It also looks lower to the ground than the HH, often I have wished my legs were 6" longer when I try to get on or off the HH.
From what I’ve seen and read on-line the HH and Equicizer are the only riding simulators that can mimic the effects of the horses’ back muscles working under the riders’ seats. I do not need to ride a motorized padded jackhammer that just goes up and down, I need a riding simulator that goes up, down, to the sides and to the sides diagonally under the influence of my seat or 2-point.
At least the basic Equicizer costs less than a lot of jumping or dressage saddles. The great thing about the HH is that it costs more like a Wintec. I could save up for a Wintec, real life would interfere with saving up for a high end saddle. It took an inheritance for me to be able to buy a better saddle.
And they are so much cheaper to buy than a horse.
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Because I live alone, I have my HH positioned between a wall and my dining room table to get on and off. I just sit on the bare wood saddle; not really very comfortable but it is the way I can manage alone. The saddle is low enough that my feet are on the base. To get on, I hold on to the table and mount as normal. To get off, sometimes I rock it forward and slide over the pommel. I hope one of these ideas is helpful.
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I just found this online – very expensive for normal exercise purposes (custom French saddle territory), more of a medical device, but interesting as it’s really trying to successfully replicate the motion of a horse walking:
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Yes, this is very, very interesting and I certainly could use one, but first I would have to win several thousands of dollars from the state run gambling games.
Since I got my HH I have been concentrating on how my pelvis moves when the horse walks, and I can replicate the movement with the HH–somewhat. Of course with the HH I do not get the effect of when the hind leg pushes, which the MiraColt seems to replicate.
Right now I am saving my money. When I save enough to pay for another HH I will probably get one for my lesson stable so I can still get a riding lesson when the weather does not cooperate with my schedule (and my riding teacher has plenty of saddles she can use on it, jumping, dressage, endurance and Western). Then I’ll get to save up for an Equicizer.
I fear that I would not live long enough to save up enough money for a MiraColt also, however enticing it looks.
Luckily I have two Crosby jumping saddles I no longer use on the lesson horses since my Pegasus Butterfly jumping saddle, with a 6 pocket shimmable pad under it, seems to fit the vast majority of horses I ride now. If I ended up with 3 separate systems of riding simulators I’d have to invest in yet another saddle so it would be ready to ride at all times.
I just wish it was safe right now for me to get on and off my HH. Then I could be reasonably content even though it is not a real horse but an amazingly built simulator that seems to allow me to replicate most of the ways I move my seat while riding a horse.
And I have yet to see a riding simulator that replicates the motion of the horse’s back when I sit the trot, one seat bone going up and forward while the other seat bone goes down and and sort of stays in place while my seat sort of swings from side to side. And trying to post while on the HH reminds me of practicing posting when the horse is walking, there is no push from a hind leg to make it easy for me to get my seat out of the saddle when I rise.
Of course when someone finally invents a riding simulator that does all I would want it to do there will be no way in Hades I’d be able to afford to buy one before I die just by saving my spending money every week.
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Today I tried out the new saddle on the Home Horse. The saddle added quite a lot of height, so my feet could no longer touch the base fully no matter how low I set it. It also felt like it slid easily over the wood form, so I’m looking for a thin non-slip pad to put under it. It didn’t keep me from getting off the way I normally do (tip the HH all the way to the left, put my left foot down half on the platform and half on the floor, put my weight into my heel to hold the platform steady, and swing my right leg over (usually the front.) I think I will use a mix of saddle (maybe with stirrups) and no saddle on the HH.
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Today I made it around 4 minutes on my HH.
When I mounted I had my husband hold the “pommel” of the HH up and it was easier to get on. Unfortunately this put me in the wrong place in the saddle resulting in some swinging as I tried to get centered.
I was bold, sort of, I picked up my stirrups and reins. I really could not feel the difference when I looked down today, not surprising since it was so subtle a difference. I think I have to lengthen my stirrups 2 holes since one time I looked down and my knees were well beyond the knee area of the flap (I don’t have knee rolls on this saddle.) My attempts to get my seat centered front to back failed, of course they failed, my stirrup leathers were too short. I felt like the seat of my saddle had shrunk at least an inch, and my legs did not hang right.
I really missed having a horse’s barrel between my legs, I feel so much more unstable when I am not able to use frictional grip with my legs.
Right now it looks to me like the HH is ideal for teaching a rider to not clench with their lower legs. There is nothing to clench on to, my legs were blowing in the breeze, and I had to concentrate on keeping my lower leg sort of stable with no reference point of stability.
Holding the reins with light contact on the upper rein seemed to prevent the HH from getting on its “forehand” when I looked down, or if it did it was too slight for me to notice within all the other movements of the HH.
Picking up my stirrups was an adventure, hopefully this will improve when I lengthen the stirrup leathers. All of a sudden the seat of my saddle felt two sizes too small, versus when my feet are on the platform and my saddle feels like it fits me. Yeah, I need to lengthen the stirrup leathers.
Getting off was a lot easier when my husband lifted the pommel up. Since the platform is not as wide toward the rear I was able to get my left foot on the ground giving me a stable point, and lowering the hind end of the HH made it so much easier for me to swing my right foot over the cantle so I could get off.
All my descendants are coming for Christmas, weather permitting. My grandsons will have a new toy to play with and RIDE though I will probably have to shorten the stirrup leathers for the youngest grandson. My eldest son’s fiancee is also coming, she is very athletic (like she runs 10 miles a day at the gym), a skilled fencer, and a very small woman, I might have to shorten the stirrup leathers for her too. My riding teacher had given my son’s fiancee a lesson years ago, and judged her a natural rider who my riding teacher could have taught how to be a jockey if she had come to her while she was younger.
At least now I have a piece of exercise equipment with which my grandsons can get their yah-yahs out when it is 14F like it will be one morning while they are here. Normally it sounds like a herd of pygmy elephants is running through my house as they run down the long hallways, and they keep on running for a while.
Now I can tell them to get up on the HH and RIDE!
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