A connected leg 2

We continue with the hip joint in this posting. The hip joint is where the torso meets the legs. Along with the pelvis the legs form a "bridge" over which our weight from the trunk is distributed over our feet.

Since the hip joint is a ball joint, it theoretically have the same mobility as the shoulder joint. What keeps us from being able to rotate the leg as we can the arm is muscles and ligaments that surrounds the joint, they restrict the movement and stabilises the relationship between the legs and torso. (The pictures are from Wikipedia, a source I hope to be able to return to...)



Here we see the deep muscles of the hip, these muscles function to support and stabilise the hip joint. The sciatic nerve passes through between the Piriformis muscle and the Quadratus Femoris and if these muscles get into a spasm the nerve might get squeezed and we suffer from sciatic pain.

The muscles that we place on a chair or a saddle seat is the gluteal muscles. They are actually three muscles; maximus (the most bulging muscle in our body), medius and minimus (not seen in the picture but lays beneath medius).



The gluteal muscles are connected to the hip joint as well as the postural muscles in the back. Medius and minimus stabilise the pelvis sideways when we walk and maximus contributes to keep the torso upright above the hip joint.

If we sit in the saddle and tense the gluteal muscles we push our seat bones out of the saddle seat, the upper thigh contracts and that brings the upper legs away from the saddle, knees and heels loose their position and "climbs upwards" and the lower legs leaves the horse's sides. All in all we lose our balance and become "like butter on a hot potato", the imbalance often causes the upper body to tilt backwards and to overcome the insecurity and imbalance we start hanging on to the reins and thereby in the horses mouth.

Inbetween the hip joints we have the pelvis and pelvic floor, a region of importance to us as riders and the scope for my next posting.

A converation around the kitchen table between me and my second son, 7 years.

- You can not have everything, I say (a typically boring adult comment)
- You always have everything of one thing, he replies. We all have a whole life.

PS!
A book that I return to often is Anatomy of the Moving Body, by Theodore Dimon Jr. A great book about our human body written with an Alexander Tehchnique perspective of use and movement.