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…
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.
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.
It is easy. What is hard is that you are supposed to breathe at the same time.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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!
Jackie, have you contacted the maker Chris to see if he has run into this particular problem before? It seems that even if you have to wait for someone to help you mount, you are getting benefits. I am enjoying your journey.
When I ride a horse I ride Forward Seat with rather short stirrup leathers. My stirrup leathers are short because if they are any longer I just cannot get my butt off of the saddle when I try to 2-point. This means when I sit in the saddle it looks like I am in a chair seat, this is common in the pictures of FS riders. The original FS Italian cavalrymen did not look like they had this problem looking at the pictures, their legs just looked jammed up with their knees and ankles at a very acute angle. Civilians though definitely end up in the chair seat when sitting on the saddle with the leathers shortened for jumping.
Imagine being a WTC and low jumps rider who gets to ride a Lippizaner at the Spanish Riding school. That can end up being a true adventure as the very sensitive horse reacts to all the unschooled movements of its rider’s seat, hands and legs. The HH is just as sensitive to the rider’s seat, coming up with all sorts of unplanned movements while the rider finds their seat in the saddle. At least the HH is not going to give me an air above the ground or buck me off in response to my too heavy aids as I lurch around on it.
When I finally get my body fit enough to ride the HH more than a few minutes a day I am sure I will make faster progress learning how to ride it effectively. I am sure that the horses will thank me that wonderful day because I will have learned how to control my abysmal balance.
Maybe I should dig out one of my pairs of Prussian sided double offset stirrups and see how they affect the stability of my lower leg riding the HH. On these stirrups I have to put something (usually a Micklem bit snap or a chifney bit snap) in the eye of the stirrup to get the stirrup leather where it can prevent the stirrup bed from slanting too much for the comfort of my ankle joints. This type of stirrup definitely helps me keep my heels down and my ankle cocked correctly for FS riding though I am not sure how it will work when my lower leg is not resting on the horse’s barrel.
It got down to 24F this morning for the low, right when I would have been out at the stable and riding. I did not get to ride a horse this morning.
So I rode my HH, and today I made it to 7 minutes. Something interesting came up when I lengthened my half-hole stirrup leathers 4 holes (2 holes on regular leathers.) My husband commented that the right stirrup looked longer, I shortened it by a half hole and they were even. These are rather new nylon lined stirrup leathers so I do not think they would have had much chance to stretch, especially the right one. We never did find a horse that this saddle fitted real well, I rode it with either my Corrector shimmable pad or my BOT/ThinLine Contender II six pocket shimmable pad and the horses went fine at a walk and slow posting trot. I am now wondering if this saddle has a subtly twisted tree and that is why the other horses, without my types of pads, did not like this saddle. At least the HH does not care that much about a mildly twisted tree.
I went ahead and put on my spurs today (Spursuaders), the spurs help me feel where my lower legs are. So today I wore my helmet, protective vest, paddock boots, half-chaps and spurs though I am still not putting on my silicon full seat riding breeches/tights. That may come later. I get tired putting all this stuff on, but it is what I wear on a real horse.
Today I picked up my stirrups. With the stirrup leathers being longer my saddle fit me just fine, my knees fitted into the flaps at the correct place and my saddle did not feel 2 sizes too small, hurrah! I have yet to dig out my double offset Prussian sided stirrups, that comes next. I concentrated on keeping my feet at the middle, a little bit to the front, my heels down, and my ankle cocked so my big toe was the lowest one. I still missed having a horse’s barrel between my lower legs but I kept my lower legs more stable.
I “walked”, and the HH can move so that it almost feels like I am riding a horse at a normal walk, normal as in this walk would not be very fast or extended. If I want the feel of a super slow walk I am pretty sure that limiting the movement of my seat would suffice.
I also concentrated at finding the elusive central point while “standing still.” My torso seemed to end up quite erect when the HH felt more stable under me. Holding the reins I did not feel the HH rock forward when I looked down, when I slouched a little bit I felt it go forward a tiny bit, but when I slouched in the saddle like when I am exhausted the HH rocked forward. I did NOT feel the movement of the HH going on its “forehand” in my hands at all, just in my seat a little bit and in my sense of balance “saying” “you are starting to fall forward,” subtly until I did the full slouch when my body started going “YIKES!!!” When I tried a 3-point crotch seat the HH rocked forward.
I am getting used to mounting the HH, raising the pommel really helps me as far as getting my right leg over the cantle of the saddle. Getting off was interesting, I ended up, how I don’t know, getting off the the right side instead of the left side. A live horse would have been going “WTF Lady, what in the hell are you doing?” The HH did not care. Again, lifting the pommel helped my foot find a more stable point on the floor but today the more stable point ended up being under my right foot where the shims for the base of the HH did not stick out as far, and I ended up dismounting to the right instead of the left.
I hope you all are enjoying all these picky details. Learning to ride the HH is turning out to be as challenging as learning to ride my Pegasus Butterfly Claudia jumping saddle which needs me to stay centered to work correctly on the horse’s back.
keep on keeping on
I made it 12-13 minutes on my HH today! As usual nowadays I “walked” and stood at a “halt”.
I finally made it to “center” back to front. I had to sit completely upright and it felt like I was leaning back, but the HH was pretty stable under my seat. From this alone it seems to me that the HH might be more suitable to practicing a dressage seat than the Forward/jumping seat. On the positive side it proves that my Forward Seat does move my weight forward some, important for “freeing” a horse’s back and putting my weight where the horse can carry it more easily, often off of the horse’s aching back muscles from improper riding by the other lessons students.
So I started myself getting used to the forward tilt of the HH when I did the 3-point crotch seat, what Littauer called the Forward Seat for Slow Equitation in one of his older books. I will probably have to shorten my stirrups at least a hole before I can get my butt out of the saddle completely and I will just have to get used to the HH tilting forward while I do so. It will probably be the same for “posting” only then will the HH swing back and forth? That will be a new exciting thing to get used to.
When my torso was erect I tried experimenting with weighting each seat bone separately. There was the tiniest shift to the side of my weighted seat bone but nothing dramatic.
It was hard to get my feet in the stirrups, if I look down the HH sways to the side and there is no barrel to keep the stirrups from swinging in towards the center post. My husband had to help me a lot there. When I swung to the side my husband was more freaked out than I was since I am beginning to trust that the HH won’t tip over on me.
When I worked on my crotch seat, keeping my heels way down, I felt the end of my right heel barely grazing the HH platform while my left foot was swinging freely. Is it the saddle? Is it because one of my legs is around 1/2" longer than my other leg? Am I doomed to unequal length stirrup leathers for the rest of my life? You see when my stirrup leathers are of unequal lengths it REALLY disturbs my riding teacher, though the horses don’t seem to think that it is a big deal.
I then took my feet out of the stirrups and put them on the HH platform. In stirrups I could keep my heels down somewhat, with my feet flat on the platform my ankles were doing all sorts of movements compensating for the movement of the HH. THAT could interfere with my riding and my riding teacher probably would not be too pleased with me either.
I forgot to put my Q30 neck collar on. Once I got off my neck started hurting worse than usual after a ride, so it seems that the Q30 collar does help me that way.
If the Universe cooperates with me I will have a riding lesson tomorrow on a real, live horse. It will be interesting to see if my riding is any better than it usually is after I don’t get to ride for a week or two.
I have noticed that my mood is much more cheerful now that I have a decent option to use when life interferes with me riding a real horse. I now can get in a saddle 7 days a week if I have some help getting on and off.
I had my lesson today. I was not riding that much better (I was not horrible, just not much better than usual) but I had an “unlisted side effect” from using the HH.
I did not get as tired during my lesson. I managed 3 posting trots that are lengthy for me (1/2 way around the ring up from 1/4 way around the ring), one more than usual. Remember this is after I had RSV for the first 10 days of this month plus I had a broken tooth dug out by a dentist 8 days ago, and my mouth still hurts. Not only did I make it through my lesson, after I got home, ate, and rested an hour I was able to vacuum the floors of several rooms in my house.
Usually after my lesson I am just too exhausted to do anything at all, I just lie in bed the rest of the day. Ever since I started riding again over 10 years ago I have never been able to do any housework the rest of the day after I ride a horse.
I do not know how this “extra” energy came from just 24 minutes of “riding” my HH over four days (one minute the first day to 12 minutes yesterday.) I sure hope this continues!
This is encouraging😀!
What I experienced this morning–well you can put it under “unbelievable results.”
I had removed the shimming I put under the curves of the HH base. The last time I had ridden the HH without the shims I was swaying uncontrollably in every direction and center did not exist at all. I was surprised I did not get sea sick even though it was a minute or so.
So I climbed on the HH this morning. I did not pick up my stirrups today, and I only picked up the upper rein (the “snaffle” rein). I stayed pretty well centered, I did my walking movements with my pelvis, and when I “halted” I found center, no problem.
So since I started riding my HH on 11-23-22, minus 12-1-22 to 12-16-22 I did not get up on the HH or ride a horse due to being sick with RSV, then breaking a pre-molar that had to be dug out. Then over 3 days I rode my HH maybe 20 minutes total, plus my riding lesson on a real horse, for 30 minutes yesterday.
I was expecting a wild “ride” without the shims for the HH base, I was expecting never finding center, basically I was expecting chaos and confusion, just something I had to adapt to so I can ride horses better.
I was NOT expecting the growth and development of a Central Nervous System based sense of balance that WORKS. I have not had one of those for at least the last 30 years.
I even “posted” on the HH (feet flat on the platform) for a short while with the HH remaining pretty stable under me.
I really concentrated on keeping my weight in my heels while relaxing my toes at the same time. My toes wanted to slant upwards and stay clenched in that position and it was a struggle to get my toes to relax.
I am greatly encouraged. If my balance continues to improve it makes the money I spent on the HH the best money I’ve spent in learning to deal with my MS.
Neurologists know that nerves can grow, and that nerves can develop new connections. Nerves do not do this unless there is a new demand that the nervous system has not adapted to before. The HH seems to be giving my nervous system the proper demands that inspire my nerves to grow and develop the new connections I need to move properly.
I never dreamed that I would ever have a sense of balance again in my life.
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