Keep loosing stirrups

[Horsechick200]

I’ve ridden for 10 years and starting about 4 years ago I started to loose my stirrups if I pushed down in my gel at all. If was really annoying and affected my stability so my instructor at the time told me to get cheese grater pads for the stirrups on my saddle. Problem solved.

Fast forward to today. I am taking lessons at a local barn so obviously can’t use my own saddle on the lesson horses. The problem is back with stirrups and is actually worse. I can’t drop any weight in my heels without loosing my stirrups. It is worse on my left foot. The tread in my boots is good and so is the tread on the stirrup pad. Any suggestions? It really affects my riding. I will be talking to my instructor about it next week too.

[findeight]

Probably standing on your toes and pushing the heel down instead of letting the weight sink into the heel all the way down from your glutes to hamstrings then the calf and Achilles’ tendon. It’s not about how low the heel is, its where the weight is and often the really low heel looks great but is not properly carrying the weight. Judges sometimes reward the position without realizing it’s exaggerated and not properly carrying the weight, until they lose an iron anyway or get jumped loose.

Took me a very long time to get that, my regular trainers didn’t really realize it (trainers keep learning too, new thoughts and / or how to better present them to clients). Took a popular clinician to point it out to me and my trainer that the problem wasn’t not being able to get the heel down, it was not much weight was making it to the heels. He described it as getting lost on the way down to grippy thighs and pinched knee. The heel has to carry the weight to stabilize the leg which anchors the foot in the iron.

Hope that makes sense, it was a huge breakthrough for me and the feeling when you get it right is amazing…but you get sore all the way down the back of your leg, almost from the waist down when you start getting it. Increasing core strength really helps you master being able to align your body to allow that weight to get where it belongs.

I wasted a lot of time trying to push the heel down without understanding the lower heel meant nothing if the weight was stopping in the ball if my foot, more mimicking correct position without really creating it. Blamed inflexible ankle, injury, etc. instead of the real root problem. Makes a huge difference in how strong and secure you feel thru your legs when you “get it”.

Try taking a proper position then standing in the irons dropping the heel as far as you can then sit down without moving your lower leg forward. Do not let shoulder fall forward either. It’s a feel thing more then anything else, feel it down the back of your leg, in your calf not your ankle. Then do it at the walk, sounds silly easy…it’s not.

BTW, proper position in the saddle is a line from ear to shoulder to hip to heel. Hold that, you’ll better control where the weight goes…sometimes learn your saddle isnt doing you any favors as well.

[merrygoround]

Too much emphasis is put in getting heels down, versus allowing the weight to drop through your heels. Getting heels down as mentioned before can caused a locked ankle, it also blocks the weight from passing down through your knees, and down through your heels. This results in a stiffening in your leg which allows your knee to come up, and then the stirrup floats off.

[airineek]

Without actually seeing you ride, losing your stirrups when you put your heel down, and particularly more on one leg than the other, probably has to do with your leg position and distribution of contact down your leg as a whole. Some riders develop a habit of bracing against the stirrup which will actually cause the foot to slip out (this happened to me for awhile with one leg). What fixed it was doing some stirrupless work so that I couldn’t use them as a crutch and thinking about distributing contact through my entire leg; thigh calf and ankle. It’s all I thought about all ride for awhile to help form some new muscle memory and habits. In my case, I had to bring my knee in and think about not letting it come off the saddle so that I could distribute the pressure throughout the rest of my leg appropriately.

Schooling tack that is not yours and does not necessarily put you in the best balance can augment problems, but probably not cause them. You could ask if you could put your cheese grater stirrups on the schooling saddle, but I would mainly be working with your instructor to try to figure out how you can fix your equitation to avoid losing your stirrups. I have found that when you can make your position more secure, riding is so much more enjoyable! It’s worth it to be persistent and figure it out.