 All right. Hey everybody. So I am doing this series on How to improve your riding when you are not able to ride when you're at the barn in your car Or not at the barn excuse me when you're not at the barn if you're like in your car We're sitting at your desk that sort of thing. What can we do in our everyday life to improve our riding and incorporate some Movements and postures and ideas Into our life so that we're able to come to our ride more prepared and then the more prepared we are the better we are for our horse of course and therefore today I'm going to give you a simple trick on how to lift your sternum and the sternum is like your breastbone and When we ride, it's really important that we that we lift our sternum. We have an open chest With shoulder blades that are that are back and down if our sternum is dropped Our shoulder blades don't have a place to sit our shoulders don't have a place to go and it rolls everything forward Once we're rolled forward here. We are now not stacked up in a balanced position So therefore it's harder for a horse to carry us as as riders So therefore having an elevated sternum is going to be really beneficial to your rides And if you can kind of think about it during the day as you're sitting at your desk or in the in the car Then it can it can help when you actually get on your horse because it's a posture That is something that's familiar to your yourself and your body You're creating the neural pathways that are going to help you rediscover that once you're back on the horse So therefore it everything becomes a lot easier now another benefit of having an elevated lifted sternum is When we have our sternum lifted We don't have to focus on the shoulders so much Because the shoulders they end up having a place to just sit and rest If you have a dropped sternum, but then you're told to get your shoulders back It becomes uncomfortable because you're having to use muscles to hold your your shoulders there Whereas if you lift your sternum you have an elevated rib cage your shoulders have a natural place to sit And you will not have to use muscles because you're stacking up your bones in a way that they're supporting one another now Something that that I'll do regularly during the day and I'm going to get off of my Computer chair so you can see my computer chair here. So and I'm wearing snow pants. It's uh, it's freezing out here in Wisconsin right now But anyway, so I'm going to sit on my chair and I'm sitting on it backwards So I took it from this position To this position and you can do this with most chairs so now I'm sitting on my chair backwards and What I'm going to do in this in this position before I tip forward is I'm going to roll my seat underneath So if I were like a Dog I would tuck my tail between my legs. I roll under to the back of my seat pockets This is going to put my lower back in a neutral position. My goal is when I Start resting and I have to make sure my microphone is right there. Okay, so when I start resting and leaning forward What I'm doing is I'm keeping that lower back in a neutral position. I'm keeping the lower back flat it's really important that when my lower back is is Flat I lift my sternum and I lift my rib cage from that position What you'll feel if you're a woman you would feel yourself lifting from like approximately your bra strap We don't want to be hollowing our back Hollowing our back. We would be putting our tailbone out behind us And we're going to be building in bad habits that we don't want to take to our everyday ride So therefore keep your your pelvis rolled under and then you're going to lean forward And now when I'm working at my computer I can I can feel supported in this position because my chair is actually Holding my rib cage and my upper body up. So my chair is holding me in this position I'm keeping that lower back flat and then I just think about rolling my shoulders up to my ears Bringing them back and letting my shoulder blades lay on the rib cage So now in this position I can do a lot. I can type I can you know use my mouse I can click around on my screen and I am supporting the the lifted elevated sternum It's keeping it in that position something that you're going to notice when you're in this position, which is super awesome is You will start to feel like you're breathing changes because your rib cage is elevated You're going to be able to breathe deeper The diaphragm has more room to go down because you're not scrunching and holding a position where you're you're Basically restricting the the movement of the diaphragm and you're going to also feel your mood changes You're going to feel like you get a more positive feeling through your body Now I know I said these are things that you can do in your car So I'm sitting on my chair backwards can't do that in your car, right? But every so often I'll obviously do this in a safe place I don't recommend doing this at like 65 miles an hour going down the freeway But sometimes what I'll do is I'll put my hands over the steering wheel like this Maybe a stoplight right, you know, you're gonna be there for a while and I'll lift my sternum And I'll stretch back. I'll bring my shoulders back and then I just take that posture and I drive in that posture So I hope this is something you play around with and incorporate into your everyday office work Driving in the car that sort of thing so that when you go to your rides, you can stack your bones on Upon one another in a way that's that's biomechanically correct So you don't have to use a lot of muscle to hold yourself and therefore It's going to make it a lot easier on your horse because remember horses are great mirrors So if we are tight in our lower back Guess what our horses tighten their lower back if we are tightening our shoulders You're going to feel the same thing in your horse. They're going to get tighten their shoulders and then their neck So therefore practice these things at home get better while you don't ride so that you when you do ride You're even you're even better yet Don't make your horse have to put up with all of your all of your baggage and all of your stuff Do your homework before you go to the ride and it makes everything so much better for yourself and your horse And you're going to notice a lot of progression. So anyway, I suppose until next time happy riding