In 1997, I gave a seminar called Preparing to Ride Without the Horse at the local riding center. In preparing for this seminar, my wife, who has ridden for thirty years, asked me to watch her ride our horse and give her feedback about her posture. I observed her lower back was slightly concave and asked her to flatten it by bringing the front of her pelvis up. As she did this movement and continued riding, I watched her horse change how he moved. His head lowered and his strides lengthened. She later told me that adjusting her pelvis in this manner enabled her to achieve what her riding instructors had been instructing her to do, but she had not been able to consistently accomplish.

Seeing how well this worked for her, I too began leveling my pelvis when riding. By leveling my pelvis, I was able to feel stable and balanced for the first time when moving faster than a walk. I also discovered that this had the additional benefit of toning the muscles on the inside of my thighs. For the first time, I was able to follow the movement of my horse.

I began offering bodywork sessions at the local riding center. I realigned and balanced a rider’s body using Zen Bodytherapy® alignment techniques and Zen Triggerpoint Anatomy® work. During these sessions, I asked each person to flatten his or her back against my table. Most of the riders who did this tightened their abdominal muscles when bringing the front of their pelvises up in order to flatten their backs.

In the process of working with about twenty riders, two of them did something completely different from the rest. Both were able to flatten their backs while their abdominal muscles fell back and softened. This was something I had seen before, but only in bodies that had completed the series of Zen Bodytherapy® sessions. It indicated to me that these riders were using their psoas (used for both singular and plural) muscles to flatten their lower backs. I asked both riders where they had learned to do this, and both said it had been while riding bucking horses when they were young. I considered these riders to be expert horsemen and both were using their psoas muscles to adjust the position of their lower backs!

I later had the opportunity to ask an expert rider if he used his psoas muscles when riding. Although he had not previously heard of the psoas, when I showed him a model of the spine and the psoas muscles, he said they were in fact the muscles he used. He went on to explain he used these muscles to distribute his weight over the horse’s back and this was important in enabling his horses to jump correctly. This confirmed my theory that accomplished riders were using their psoas muscles to stabilize themselves on their horses.

After discovering how important the psoas muscles were in riding, I went to my riding books for confirmation. Much to my surprise, I found very little additional information about using the psoas muscles in regard to riding. I searched the Internet under “riding and psoas” and found only one article at a classical dressage web site in England.

While conducting subsequent seminars, it became apparent the experienced riders knew how to use their pelvises when riding, but the muscles they were actually engaging to do this had been a mystery to them. Many of the instructors remarked they could use this information to help their students progress faster in their respective riding disciplines.

To bring the back into alignment, a rider must lengthen his or her spine from top to bottom. Adjusting the relationship between the head and neck will lengthen the top of the spine. Adjusting the relationship between the lower back and the pelvis lengthens the bottom of the spine.

Many a rider carries his head too far forward, with the chin sticking out. To remedy this, he must find the top of his head and pull up at this point. The chin will come in and the ears will align with the shoulders.

To lengthen the spine at the bottom, a rider needs to adjust the relationship between the lower back and the pelvis. In the Translator’s Preface of the 1976 edition of Riding Logic by Wilhelm Müseler, it says there is no adequate English translation for das Kreuz anziehen, a certain action or movement of the rider’s back that is well known to European horsemen and which is extremely important for all riding. The translator says that even though this action concerns the loins and small of the back more than the actual spinal column or back, he has used the term “bracing the back” in his translation.

Müseler explains that das Kreuz anziehen occurs when the lowest portion of the spine is pushed forward. “This has the effect of pushing the rear of the pelvis back and down, and the front of the pelvis upwards.” Because this movement has been translated as bracing the back, many riders either tense their abdominal muscles or lock their pelvises in trying to achieve it. This actually creates the opposite effect of what Müseler was describing.

I found the following in a German dictionary: das Kreuz, referring to the small of the back, and anziehen, meaning to pull, adjust or draw up. By adjusting the small of the back, the lower spinal column becomes aligned in the pelvic girdle and the muscles of the inner thighs are engaged. Therefore, a different translation referring to this action of the back and its muscles would be to align the lower back. The lower back is aligned by correctly engaging the psoas muscles.

Where are the Psoas?

The psoas muscles are the bridges between the upper body and the legs. They are the only muscles that directly link the spine to the legs. The psoas attach directly from the lower spine to the top of the inner thighs at the lesser trochanter of the femur. They do not attach directly to the pelvis, but influence it through their connection to the iliacus muscles, which are attached to the walls of the inner pelvis.

The psoas muscles flex your thighs at the hip, enabling you to raise your knees, thus lifting your feet off the ground. Since the tendons of the lower part of the iliopsoas attach to the inner thighs, when flexed, they also tone the adductor muscles located on the inside of your thighs.

The psoas muscles flex differently depending upon the curvature of the lower spine and the position of the pelvis. If the lower back is concave, with the front of the pelvis tipping downward, the psoas will tighten and become shorter as they are flexed. When the psoas muscles are flexed in a balanced body, they lengthen and fall back toward the spine. Balanced flexion takes place as the pelvis is leveled when the lower back flattens. This aligns the lower back in the pelvic girdle.

Balanced flexion of the psoas muscles is the action of das Kreuz anziehen. It enables riders to tone the inside of their upper thighs and to follow the movement of their horses with their pelvises. The psoas are the link between the upper and lower girdles of the body and enable experienced riders to influence their horses with their seats and legs. They are truly the missing link inexperienced riders must learn to use in order to follow the instructions of their riding instructors and to feel their horses’ movement. By mastering the use of these muscles, riders will be able to maintain self-carriage, both on and off the horse.