If you are using “creative padding” to get the saddle to fit the horse, is it possible it has changed the way you sit in it when you ride him now?
I know when I use a thinner or thicker pad ( depends on her weight) it can change my whole position in both my english or endurance saddle. That is on the same horse.
I suffer from the same issue. Here’s what works for me:
Geez. It just occurred to me that I have switched undies recently. I got those Soma vanishing line ones (that I LOVE under breeches), but they really don’t move. i wonder if that’s not part of the issue? Wow, I can’t believe I’m talking about undergarments and crotch blisters on the internet. How lovely.
Well, I call a certain very popular brand coochie wawa destroyers because I get injured every time I ride in one. I have a Voltaire now and no injuries lol.
LOL. I once burned…or blistered…my tailbone in a strength training class doing some kind of V-up / sit-up kind of exercises. I had done them before and nothing happened, but this was bad. I talked about my butt blisters with my co-worker and she suggested it might be the clothing…I definitely think that was the problem. Some fabrics are not good for certain things. Definitely worth trying to switch.
In my case it took more than a week; I remember because the following week I skipped those types of exercises because it still hurt a lot!. I think it actually took more than 2 weeks for it to all heal. I would definitely consider buying some sort of glide cream if you’re going to ride soon (before it fully heals).
Now I am very conscious of what I wear for certain things. I had no idea!
No one has mentioned yet, I don’t think, but over years anatomy changes, some places become thinner, others more padded, some flatter, etc.
Maybe if you have some of those natural changes, you may just have to keep working at finding what you can change in the saddles/clothing/horses/how you ride.
Letting things heal well first would be a good start and when starting to feel sore, don’t keep riding.
If your instructor is good, that it is female would help approach this, she should be able to tell if there is something in your riding that can be changed, what to avoid or add?
First notice I had of a student, generally older lady, had that problem was that it would start pinching with her knees, to stay a little above the seat.
That tended to make the then stiffer rider fall forward more, making the problem worse in sitting trot.
Asking them to try sitting on their pockets and letting legs hanging down looser at times helped, other not, if it was a developing saddle fit problem.
How about trying a seat saver for a bit, gel or sheepskin, see if that gets you over the hump?
Le sigh. I think I’ll have to. It feels like I’ve crossed some kind of invisible line into old ladyhood. I’m the lady that rides with the seat saver now.
Re undies- Jockey makes a great cotton blend seamless panty that is very comfy for riding. The High or French Cut ones hardly show under breeches.
If you’re not having the problem in the same saddle on a different horse, I would vote for the balance of the saddle being wrong. It is probably sitting too high in the back and pushing you forward into the pommel.
A seatsaver will make the seat smaller, and while it might cushion you a bit more, it won’t stop you from hitting the pommel.
Take a good photo of the saddle on the horse and look at where the deepest part of the seat is. Like a lot of things, it is sometimes easier to see in photos than real life.
I had a Barnsby Luxus that had virtually no rise in the pommel, might be worth seeing if you can find a used one. You’ll need to ensure a low/flatter type pommel is a good fit for your horse too, I had it for a very wide no wither horse so fit was good. That said, it can be a bit more challenging to ride a low/flat pommel saddle if you have a horse with a big trot. The Stubben Euphoria has a well padded pommel and narrow twist that was designed for more comfort, perhaps something to look at also.
Try reading this COTH favourite; https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…unnery?t=35083
Errrrrrrrrm - is it possible that you put more padding on your bootie during lockdown ?
I am also a size 28 breeches, and ride a 18.5" saddle. OP I think your saddle is simply too small.
Allrightythen.
I am not sure this will entirely fix your woes, but I will offer the hypothesis that your hips are stiffening a tad when they should not be and treating your pubic bone as a bit of an icebreaker attached to the bow of a ship built for arctic travel. That surely isn’t what the soft tissue between the devil and the deep blue sea signed up for!
But one way you can make that meeting of pommel and pink parts more harmonious is to make sure your side of the “rock and the hard place,” your skeleton, is soft. I’d take a few days off from the assault to give yourself some time to heal and then see if I could change my equitation some.
To do that, I’ll suggest some exercises that might help you get there, but you should first realize what the job is. You are trying to move the muscular work that holds you upright and balanced and “going with” your horse from those strong, short muscles around your hip joints to your core. Another way to put this is that you are trying to discover how to relax your hips so that they follow along a bit better such that they don’t stiffen and bang the underside of your pelvis (anywhere) into the saddle.
Finding and relaxing posture muscle is much easier said than done.
But if this sounds right-- the diagnosis and the biomechanical plan-- the simpler way to understand your job is to discover how to change the way you post, specifically, and from there, change how you use your seat on the horse.
To that end, I’d have you do some stuff at the trot that never lets your body fall into a rhythm and the muscles around your hips fall into a predictable pattern of contraction and relaxation. So try riding the trot and changing from posting, to two point to sitting (maybe not initially) to posting on the other diagonal every six strides. If this seems hard, just start by changing your diagonal every six strides AND change by staying Up in your post, rather than sitting to change diagonals.
While you are changing things up so often, notice what you feel in your thighs, how your seat (really, the underside of your pelvis) seems to stay closer to the saddle (if it does), and in your belly. Ideally. your lower abs are getting more tired than you thought they’d be and your lower back isn’t stiff. It would be great if you felt that your thighs were extra melted down along the horse’s sides and your post was smaller than it had been previously. When you are riding well-- with that harmony between your skeleton and the saddle’s skeleton-- notice what you can anywhere in your body about that. Take a walk break and then, when you pick up the trot, see if you can re-create that position and feeling in your body at will.
If the post isn’t small enough, try exaggerating it (post higher, but not with driving energy, just post like a beginner) for six strides and then post smaller for six strides. Creating contrast in movement is how we gain body awareness, IME.
A couple of horse-related things. Relaxing your hips will be harder on a horse who you must beg and nag with your leg. If this is your best, pick up a bat and use that to reinforce your leg. Don’t let him sucker you into keeping your hips tense as a baseline because you always need to be tense in your leg.
If you can get him to raise his back, that will give you a nice soft (horse) skeleton underneath your saddle’s skeleton. If this horse can do that, do make him help you out. If he can’t and he’s got that big, suspended trot, you have a couple of options. You can ride him at whatever tempo and soft frame makes his back most amenable. It will help to find a “cruising along,” sustainable rhythm here. Look up and count in order to establish that, and then go to work on yourself. Or you can try riding him under tempo-- think asking him for a Western Pleasure jog. For weak, but lots-of-suspension horses, this can actually produce a rougher gait.
Generally speaking, just try to make his trot the most rideable for your while you work on your equitation. It doesn’t take too long to fix this kind of problem if you make a concerted effort.
I hope this helps some! And I speak from a tad of experience. I have a lovely saddle with great balance that beats me up where it should not. And I think I can ride. But when I don’t use my core on that saddle, I get punished. No other saddle has been such a stickler for me being correct in using my core rather than stiffening my hips. I do see why people divorce their saddles, even if they were the one to cheat in the relationship!
To follow up on the previous comment by Hungarian Hippo–
OP, i have a pet theory that 17.5 is a marketing gimmick because so many women react the way you do: “OMG an 18” saddle means I’m FAT". My personal experience is that most 17.5" saddles actually run small when you put an actual measuring tape on them. As previous posters have stated correctly, seat depth and balance all play a huge role in how you feel in the tack, but personally I have only been crotch busted on saddles that were very small in the seat for my build and body type.
My advice is to switch up your clothing (those Jockey seamless undies are wonderful btw), get some Body Butter or something designed for triathletes, and start riding different saddles to see what works better for you.
I was riding a pretty well conformed Arabian horse in my 18" Stuben Siegfried Extra Forward saddle. I had no problems, but the horse was not as free in the shoulders as I wanted him to be.
I researched and decided to try the Corrector saddle fitting system by Len Brown (now he calls it the Protector.)
I put it on him, saddled up and mounted to ride. His shoulders moved a lot more freely but my poor pubic bone was running all too intimately into the pommel of my saddle. I asked my riding teacher to ride for a few minutes and she had exactly the same problem.
I went home, thought a bit, and put one shim on each side in front. The shims were around 1/8" thick, if that.
The next ride was wonderful. My pubic bone did not run into the saddle. I got my riding teacher up and she had no problems.
We both marveled at how such a narrow shim could make such a difference in our experience.
I want to throw this out there because it’s something I recently figured out for me.
I’ll start with the saddle issue. YES different saddles can make SUCH a difference even when they seem to fit by appearance! I think I own 17 or 18 saddles, and I would say 2-3 of them absolutely murder my crotch every time I ride in them. My Stubben Edelweiss is the absolute worst! And has a lower/flatter pommel than most of my others. My Counties are are great, so for me that has always been my preferred brand (really mostly for the horse, but all have always been comfortable for me too). Now I have a CWD that I’ve been riding in a lot. I absolutely love it on a couple of my horses. Something about the flap configuration is so much more comfortable for me and helps me sit the big fences better. But I ride 1-3 horses a day without stirrups, and it really does hurt my crotch a lot more than other saddles, particularly when I’m riding without stirrups.
But crotch bruising/banging is a different issue to chafing. I was being chafed to death by my underwear for the last 4-5 years (and never had been before). My OB/GYN commented that women tend to get thinner more sensitive skin as we age and dismissed any reasons to be concerned about the change, and so for the last several years I’ve used body glide and tried to be really careful about which underwear I wear. But I have a few spots of discoloration in the skin around my pubic areas (and on my underwear lines where I chafe the most). A couple of doctors over the years have just commented that it’s totally normal and really not worth addressing. But I started wondering if that could be related to my awful sensitivity, and upon reading that jock itch (and related funguses) list “chafing” as a symptom (as well as skin discoloration), I started using a powder spray antifungal. That has made the absolutely biggest difference to the amount of chafing I have been experiencing. So this is my PSA that if you suddenly have terrible chafing issues and didn’t before, it might be worth taking a closer look at your crotch. My underwear line (where my leg meets my torso) was a slightly darker brownish color that looks like an area that’s been chafed for a long time, and is now started to return to a more normal color. So I think I have had a mild fungal issue (no itching, burning, or any other symptoms that you might think of with jock itch) that’s been making my skin super sensitive for years. And not terrible in general, as several OB/GYN visits have ended with a “everything looks fine” comment.
Obviously that will not help you at all if the issue is that your crotch is banging into the pommel of a saddle, but if you are chafing where clothing/underwear touch you, it might!
I have a Stubben Roxane and fits perfectly well and it does has a narrow twist and higher rise in front.
I had a Stubben Edelweiss that had a wider twist, flatter seat and lower rise and it did put me lower in front.
Although I didn’t have any problem from that, I can see how some may have.
What may work is so personal, I doubt we can make rules of thumb about what is a better fit, because everyone of us may just require a different saddle and underwear and way of riding and just getting it all so we are not uncomfortable.
Totally agree and certainly didn’t mean to imply that one saddle is better than another for anyone else! Just that I figured out that for my personal conformation I know what works for me. The gal who comes out and helps get horses ridden on the weekends HATES the saddles that I love, and conversely, I hate her Devoucoux with a passion! Totally personal at every level!
Which is the source of the COTH term,“The Inverness Problem”
I don’t have the chafing (I do get sore skin between my seat bones in a harder saddle though), but have had trouble riding in a saddle that’s too big. We embarked on the great dressage saddle search to find something that would fit my hard to fit horse and my growing child, who had outgrown my ancient 16" County. We ended up with a Bates Innova in their largest size (about 18"). Works great for the kid and for the horse. I figured I’d use it too, but I suddenly couldn’t ride worth a crap in it because it was WAY too big for me and put me in entirely the wrong position. I think it threw me up onto the pommel like in your pictures. So, I’m back to my 16" County from 1986 which is hard as a rock and requires a riser pad underneath, but at least I can ride again.
By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. You may also receive promotional emails from The Chronicle of the Horse. You can opt out at any time.
For Customers
Company
Terms of Use
