Hi, I'm India Parker Smith and I'm an equestrian performance coach. And welcome back to my saddle series. Today we are going to work on stability of the joints. So stability is basically, the amount of support you have through a joint, which is caused by having strong tendons, ligaments, and muscles.

So I'm going to run through each joint today, uh, starting from the ankles, working up the body on how you can help stabilize your joints for polo. Obviously, we need to have strong and stable joints to resist ride offs in every single shot that we do and to limit any ligament tears and injuries.

We are going on to the core. I enjoy doing compound movements for the core. So they're a little bit more effective and they simulate those movement patterns of polo in the saddle. So this is a static plank position.

If you do get back pain, you can always start on your knees and elbows and then work up to your toes. Completely up to you. But we're lengthening through the whole body. We're pulling belly button to spine, doing a slight pelvic tilt to protect the lower back and engage those lower core muscles. Now this is a really good exercise to progress up to. So you can do things like hip dips left to right. You can also then do plank rocks forward and backwards. And then you can do things like moving your arms forward one at a time. and raising legs and things like that. So it's a really good fun core exercise.

So continuing with the core, obviously we need to be really strong through those rotational movements. So we need that stability through those obliques on the side. This is a really good starter exercise for engaging these supporting muscles here, these obliques. So this is just a normal side plank, but if you want to take it a little bit further, come up onto both toes And you can hold that.

If you want to get the rotational movements involved, you can then rotate this upper arm underneath, and then back up, up and down. And then we can also add some pulses in with the hips. So another really versatile core exercise that will really help with that stability in the saddle with your trunk.

So this is a really nice starter core exercise called the dead bug. So this is when you lower your opposite arm to leg away from the center of the body and using your core muscles, bring them back to center. This is a really nice one just for anyone who's had any back injuries and is coming back to fitness and wants to engage their core.

So this is a more advanced exercise and maybe avoid this if you've had any recent injuries in your inner thighs or your shoulders, but this is the Copenhagen Plank. So one of, like, the ultimate exercises to strengthen, stabilize the inner thigh muscles, because obviously we get a lot of rider muscle injuries and then also with that connection with the obliques on the left side, the opposite side.

So you can begin by just holding this for up to 10 seconds, take it up to 30, or you can add some hip dips in.

Oh, they're nice. And then you can also do some leg raises with the bottom knee as well. Again, getting a little bit more movement through the inner thighs.