Multiple studies have compared the balance of different athletes and time and time again that the higher the performance of the athlete the better their standing balance (provided the sport or competition occurs in gravity – sorry swimmers).

This finding goes as far as to predict the ease at which dancers and gymnasts can learn and execute new floor routines. With this in mind Balance Concepts and The Horse Riders Chiro (more here) developed a prototype saddle stand for in saddle balance testing.

“in saddle balance testing”

Standing balance is obviously important to every day activities as it allows us to stand resisting the perturbations of out heart beat, the movement of breathing and provides a stable platform to allow all controlled movements. Sitting balance involves a shorter kinematic chain as the majority of balance is then spinal and assisted by foot placement. Horse riders however need to manage to anticipate the movements of 1/2 metric ton animal while sitting on average 14-16 hands from the ground. Obviously this makes the stakes much higher than sitting on your average bar stool!

“1/2 metric ton animal”

The better the rider is able to predict the horses movements the easier that the rider can allow the horse to move while guiding direction, stride length, and appropriate transitions.
We predicted that:

1. The better the rider, the better their sitting in saddle balance
2. The better the standing balance the better sitting balance
3. Would we be able to predict performance on the day with balance scores alone?

The Saddle Stand prototype was displayed at the Sydney International 3 day event for rider balance testing. The saddle performed perfectly and gave us lots of nice squiggly results and we did tests with both eyes open and closed.

Sadly we did not manage to get enough results to answer all of our questions – Normative data only exists for eyes open, closed on hard and soft surfaces for the Pondera2 balance system, not yet for sitting horse riders. Also because of the design of the stand the AP and ML directions were switched .

Keep posted for more interesting trials we are doing with the Pondera2 Balance System and we will keep getting data form The Horse Riders Chiro as they go to more horse shows.

We would love to hear from you if you are doing anything interesting with your force plate!

Pictures below!