Retraining hyperflexed ankles + balance

[Bloopie]

My trainer has been working hard to get me to stop hyper flexing my ankles and to rotate my femoral heads more straight instead of, and I quote, “riding like a hussy” (lol) and using the back of my calves. Now, I learned Saddleseat years ago and hyperflexed ankles were (are?) the norm. Anyway, deliberately raising my heels while rotating my leg more straight at the hip is wrecking havoc on my balance even though supposedly this more correct position is supposed to provide better balance? Like I sometimes go toes down or wind up in chair seat or get a little brace-y and all kinds of wrong. It feels like I don’t even know how to ride. FWIW my horse is green so I’ve been practicing on lesson horses who do not have tack fitted specifically to them and I can’t use my saddle, which is fitted specifically to my boy, on random horses. But my last ride on a new-to-me lesson horse was really tough for balancing.

I’m working on upping my strength but does anyone have any advice for retraining yourself? Any “older” riders who have struggled in correcting your position and found themselves flailing around at first?

[LilRanger]

My trainer had my drop my stirrups and swing my legs back before I started to ride. Just bringing my thighs back helped. But your physiology may just be toes out even when you’re knees are straight.

[blue_heron]

Think of pointing arrows on the front of your knees to the ground and having the balls of your feet “floating” over the stirrups or just resting on your stirrups. Even in posting trot, your seat/thighs should only come off of the saddle as much as your horse is bouncing you out of the tack, so no need to stand up over your stirrups.

Yes, this changes when you start training lengthenings and the like but then the weight in your stirrups is a tool.

[Bluey]

So, so many today ride with what we used to call “broken ankles” that stick out the side after collapsing inwards.
The best standard for jumping used to be legs draped around the horse’s middle, hanging about straight down and toes pointing forward, whole leg straight, not ankle bent and foot sticking sideways at an angle.

One way to start jumping so that doesn’t happen for those with a tendency to do so is to, along with aiming for slightly lower heels, think toes in, like you are going to cue your horse with your toe, not heel.
That tends to keep your ankle straight and normally forward, not sticking out sideways.
Ankle exercises on the longe line can include no stirrups and rotating ankles, writing your name with your toes, as the horse walks or trots, to keep ankles flexible.
You can try that at home while you watch TV also. Many people have stiff ankles and need to work on that.

Correcting already odd feet/angle/leg positions is very personal, hard to make rules for all.
Each one has to follow whatever our conformation determines and some riders just can do what they can do, no sense in trying to force them to change if they really can’t.

Every trainer can bring other to little problems, try asking other trainers, go to seminars and see what they suggest?

[JB]

Rotating your leg from the hip (from the femoral head) is something you need to work on off the horse as well as on, because it’s not just about doing it, but the muscle memory to keep it there. And, how MUCH you can rotate entirely depends on your anatomy and its relationship to your saddle

Has she given you any hands-on guidance for actually doing this? It helps to have someone pull your leg away from the saddle, rotate it inward as much as it can comfortably go, and lay it back down, so you can feel what it feels like. Then, you practice doing that, grabbing the back of your thigh to help

If you can’t do it, that’s part of the problem, you don’t have the strength to move your leg that way, Exercises to strengthen your abductors will help a lot

A fun little exercise, simple simple,is to stand on the ground. rotate your leg inward as much as possible, and then on a 45* angle backwards, just kick your leg back. Think of the movement originating from your heel. Leg straight, foot in the same dorsi-flexed position, and use your glutes and upper hamstrings to move your leg. It’s not a big movement, you don’t want your body tipping forward or to the other side. The goal isn’t to see how far you can move your leg, it’s to move it to the limit of that position and your strength

Work on this, it’s all about the upper leg, and then your lower leg and feet will do what they allow.

As for the hyperflexed ankles - that much weight shouldn’t be on the ball of your foot. Fixing your leg may help with this some

As for balance - how green is your horse? If he’s safe enough, a good exercise is to drop your stirrups, hang your leg straight down, stiff as a board, so you’re entire body is pretty vertical. Yes, you’ll be perched on your crotch a bit, but that’s the point. Just walk like that, lightly holding the pommel to help wtih balance when needed, but work on the balance yourself

[outerbanks77]

I am a recovering heels-downer post 4-H equitation classes. Heels down can feel secure because it can be helping you brace against the stirrup. So a test is whether you can stand in the stirrups and balance over your feet in all gaits. A few things I’ve found help:

Build ankle strength. At first, this might just be standing on one leg. Then you can progress. Lately I’ve been working on standing on the ball side of a Bosu ball (balancing on one leg on the flat side is good too). If that is too much, you can start with just doing calf raises, working up to single-legged calf raises.

+1 for pointing the knees to the ground. This can also be thought of as “kneeling seat”. If you’re vintage, you might remember those kneeling chairs from the 80’s. It’s kind of that feeling. Sally Swift talks about “stubby legs” where you’re focusing on your leg down to the knee, which can also help reduce the ankle hyperflexion. Then when you’re progressing, think a little of pushing the balls of your feet into the irons. Kind of like pressing the gas pedal. If you lock up in your knees and hips, shake it out and repeat.

Another thing to try is to just put the tips of your toes in the irons. This might not work if you’re posting, but it will be pretty hard to push your heels down too much if you can’t push a lot of weight into the irons.

For hips, you can try pulling your inner thigh back/in to the saddle so that your knee and toe point forward. This can cause hip muscle spasms, so I like to have a whip with a smaller handle end that I can use to work on the tight muscles while the horse is walking. And of course off-horse hip stretches and abductor exercises will help.

[Bogey2]

Love what Outerbanks suggested…when I first started in dressage I had to pick my thigh up with my hand behind the leg and pull it back, I had to think kneeling when I posted and lastly I always did heel out never toe in. Heel out rotates the whole leg where toe in just rotates the angle.

[Bluey]

@Bogey2

Love what Outerbanks suggested…when I first started in dressage I had to pick my thigh up with my hand behind the leg and pull it back, I had to think kneeling when I posted and lastly I always did heel out never toe in. Heel out rotates the whole leg where toe in just rotates the angle.

When using heel out to correct a position, think you are wearing super big spurs and we don’t want to accidentally poke with them.

Learning position is about making our bodies aware of where parts of it are and how we use them, building the correct muscle memory so we can then depend we will automatically do it this or that way.

[MadTrotter]

Hi! Reformed hyperflexer here. Another thing to try out is a good sports massage therapist who will work on your hip flexors and psoas. Warning…these are not “fun” spa massages but can hurt quite a bit. But I’ve experienced pretty radical improvements on posture, back pain, and hip alignment with just a few sessions. Then you can take what you’ve learned and torture yourself at home

[Willesdon]

Sometimes a mental image can help. Think of your feet resting flat on the floor. Nothing more, relaxed, no pressure. My personal observation is that my own softness, suppleness, is key when attempting dressage: the more relaxed I am in my body the more I can feel the horse, even if I’m very busy fooling myself into believing I’m relaxed. Unfortunately, foot position comes from what is happening in one’s hips. That is the hard bit! I second @MadTrotter and the suggestion for massage.

[AllSport]

I am you! I was taught “toes out, heels down” as a kid, so I feel like I’m practically built that way when I sit on a horse. I try what LilRange said or something like a quad stretch while in the saddle. That helps some. But it almost hurts to try to put my toes more forward by rotating my femur, etc. I had one dressage trainer tell me my old ways were working so why stop after I asked for help with this very issue. So one argument is that if its throwing you off balance and making it hard for you to ride, maybe you actually shouldn’t. I had a one time lesson with a trainer who literally had the previous rider, and the myself, riding with exaggerated heels up. It looked incredibly dangerous. Her boot heel was almost going through the stirrup and if the horse spooked she’d be gone in a second. We both had horrible lessons. That was my first and last lesson with that trainer.

[SaddleUp158]

I am/was the same way before I stopped riding. I was never the kid that the instructor had to tell me to drop my heels, they naturally were down really deep.

JB gave some really good and helpful tips, so I won’t repeat any of those.

When attempting to retrain myself I found I was telling myself to think heels up, (after working on my upper leg/thigh rotation). While my heels weren’t actually coming up it kept me cognizant of not dropping all my weight down into my heels. Mine were deep enough my stirrups were constantly popping off my feet. Found out when I started learning dressage it was because my heels were too deep and my weight was not on the ball of my feet either. In fact, I had more toe contact with the stirrups than the ball of my feet. So for me thinking heels up helped with the mental image I needed to go alongside the thigh rotation. Riding without stirrups was almost easier for me much of the time - nothing to brace against is what I learned. I also find I have weak ankles and I tend to roll them easily. This actually made it harder to ride correctly because when I didn’t have them “locked” in a deep heel position I would actually roll my ankle while riding. If/when I ever get to ride consistently again, this is something I will have to address right away. I never did fix it completely, but it did get a lot better!

[Long_Time_Lurker]

There is a new book out by Joyce Kramer, called Stable Core Training. She addresses all kinds of balance and stability issues and their relationship to position, along with exercises to improve. You can find it on Amazon.

[JB]

@AllSport

So one argument is that if its throwing you off balance and making it hard for you to ride, maybe you actually shouldn’t.

The OP’s description makes it sound like the position is fairly extreme

@Bloopie

“riding like a hussy” (lol) and using the back of my calves.

That’s not truly functional.

Think of how many riders lean forward all the time, leg back, pinching at the knee, gripping. For sure, trying to fix that is going to make them feel off balance, because that dysfunctional positioning came about because nobody taught them to balance with proper position, so they adopted instinctual habits to help feel secure. It just takes work to learn what it feels like to have good balance within reasonably functional positioning of body parts

I think it’s one thing to accept fairly minor position flaws and just learn to use them. It’s one thing to work with the conformation of the rider - some hips absolutely will not have a nicely rotated inward leg. But at some point, being out of position too far isn’t helping become a more functional rider

[Demerara_Stables]

Pointing toes forward doesn’t work for every conformation, and it might not work for yours. I physically cannot point my toes forward and have equal weight distribution across the ball of my foot at the same time, neither can anyone that I’ve ever taught that asks me about toes forward. IMO, equal weight across the ball of your foot is more important than where your toes point.

As far as “hyper flexing” your ankles, if you’ve been pushing down in your heel for years, your ankles will be highly flexible. Pushing on your stirrups using the ball of your foot isn’t the answer - that will just make you brace and bounce when you’re trying to sit. Why is sitting trot easier without stirrups? Because there’s nothing to brace against. You shouldn’t push in your heels or your toes - your joints are your shock absorbers, so when you sit, and your weight comes down into the saddle, that weight should transfer down your leg and your ankle should flex down then back up again on its own because you are soft and not bracing.

[Pico_Banana]

Sharing my own recent experience: I am not a hyper flexer, but I’ve had enough different trainers, some better than others, that I cultivated a bit too much weight in my heels which of course then pushes my whole leg forward. Am trying to work on that, and then I recently decided to try the stirrups with the angled footbed on my gelding. I have had them on my mare’s saddle for a while and like them there, but she is very wide and he is on the narrow side of normal. On him, my feet feel like there’s nothing to brace against, so they are actually helping me stop over relying on a jammed down heel. Seems counter-intuitive, but that’s what is happening.

[joiedevie99]

I work with an equestrian-focused personal trainer and this is one area we focus on. My left leg is normal and my right has its own ideas. We do a lot of single leg isolation stuff - glute bridges with one leg lifted, making circles, pressing out against a band, etc. We also do standing psoas engagements with a band. It really makes a difference for me.

[JB]

IMHO, every single person should be doing asymmetrical exercises. Even if you don’t have a glaringly obvious imbalance, you have an imbalance, and the longer you ignore it, the more “suddenly” you have a problem.

[netg]

I’m hypermobile, so my really deep ankle flexion was seen as amazing in hunter equitation, and totally blocked my seat in dressage.
Thinking heels up never worked for me, it just destabilized me.

What did work to get the locked heels unlocked was thinking of curling my toes around the stirrups, and also rhythmically tapping my toes in my boots. Your calf muscles may actually have to get stronger if you are hypermobile, in which case doing stair lifts - toes on the edge of a stair, raise yourself up - in which you never go down beyond a flat foot will help.

I also had to get my legs un-locked-in-place, and soft instead of gripping. This is one of the functional reasons to not have a deep heel and to have a correct leg position. My trainer would have me think of breathing through my legs, and it would help soften them a lot. I also did a LOT of two point, in which I had others correct me if I started to drop into my heels or turn my toes out, to make sure I didn’t grip and held position by balance rather than force.

[halla]

I’ve been told to point my toes forward as long as I can remember and was never able to do it until really recently. I’ve been stretching the muscles that turn my legs out at the hip, and low and behold when I think about relaxing them my leg doesn’t rotate out in the saddle nearly as much and that means my foot isn’t pointing out. I’ve had some similar success thinking about relaxing my collarbone area (is there a muscle there? no idea) instead of pulling my shoulders back. So for me at least thinking not about where I want something to go but instead about releasing what might be holding it in the bad position has helped.