The Performance Refinery - Ride.Lab Academy

08/29/2026

Foundational Drill 2: Not just a “core exercise”

For riders, Bird-dogs can be a foundational motorcontrol drill that teaches you to …

🧱 Stack your rib cage over your pelvis
🎯 Stabilize without becoming rigid
🔄 Dissociate your limbs from your trunk
🧠 Improve proprioception and postural awareness

🐴 Why does that matter in the saddle?

Because your goal is to keep your center organized while your limbs can move independently around it.

That’s the foundation for an independent seat, better postural control, and the ability to absorb the horse’s movement rather than brace against it.

Stack → Stabilize → Dissociate → Move.

🧠 Motor control: coordinating the trunk, pelvis, shoulder and hip while maintaining a stable lumbopelvic position.

🧱 Lumbopelvic stability: resisting lumbar extension and rotation as the limbs move (add a stability ball to begin if you struggle here)

🔄 Dissociation: moving the hip and shoulder independently while keeping the trunk relatively quiet.

🎯 Proprioception: improving awareness of where the pelvis and spine are in space.

💪🏼 Endurance: the deeper trunk and hip stabilizers have to maintain the position over repeated reps or longer holds

📍I like to start with 3 rounds of 10-15reps each side to cement patterns. But begin where you can and go for quality over quantity always

08/27/2026

🙊Myth buster ✨ You don’t always bounce in sitting trot because you’re weak. You bounce because the force has nowhere to go!

Every stride, your horse sends energy up through your seat. Your job isn’t to stop it … it’s to absorb it and give it back. That’s attenuation, and it happens through the lumbopelvic complex: hips, lumbar spine, deep abdominals lengthening a fraction to receive the load, then returning it.

Brace against it and the force skips your pelvis entirely. It goes straight to your lower back, and your head often rattles. Collapse behind the vertical and you just sink. No spring, no return.

Ball bouncing off the horse teaches the middle ground, where you can actually feel force transfer.

How to do it:
→ Feet under knees, sit bones central, ribs stacked over pelvis
→ Start gently. Let the ball push you up. You’re not jumping off the ball
→ Find your soft, rhythmic, quietness on top
→ Keep breathing. Holding your breath means you’re bracing

Two minutes a day. Your horse will tell you when it’s working & you will feel a new level of development to your seat mechanics 💪🏼

This is the kind of off-horse work that changes what happens in the saddle. It’s the foundation of how we train inside RideLab 🙋🏼‍♀️ Join us for more Rider foundations

08/18/2026

Our first drill for Postural Stacking … and it isn’t a Plank 😉

Your horse moves underneath you. Your legs move independently of your seat & through all of it, your ribs and pelvis have to stay stacked.

That’s the job description & that’s what we train for

Set-up for all four: Lie on your back, knees over hips, arms up to the sky, core ‘engaged’ with low back gently towards the floor. Ribs down, and they stay down.

1 · Short lever (heel taps)
Knee stays bent. Lower one heel to tap the floor, return. Slow. 5 each side.

2 · Long lever (leg extends)
Same tap, but the knee straightens as the leg lowers. Longer lever, more demand on the front of your trunk.

3 · Long lever + opposite arm
Leg extends, opposite arm reaches back overhead. This is the full pattern.

4 · Long lever, foam roller ISO (this is for if you just can’t keep your lower back softly down, no matter how hard you try): Roller across the thighs, hands pressing down into roller, knees pressing up at about 30%. Hold that co-contraction the whole time, then run the short or long-lever version under it.

The moment your low back lifts off the floor, you’ve found your level. Go back one.

That’s not failing. That’s training the range you actually own. 🐴

Friday: Circle back to join in on our Ball bouncing self-check that tells you where you stack is at. ⬇️

This platform is meant as general guidance only, not individual assessment. If you have ongoing back pain? Get seen properly 🙋🏼‍♀️

08/13/2026

Let’s talk about the “strength problem” that isn’t one. Nearly every rider over 25 that I have worked with is convinced her position falls apart because she’s not strong enough … so she doubles down on planks and core work and wonders why nothing changes in the saddle.

But here’s what often going on: your low back isn’t weak, it’s working overtime to compensate for what your hips and thorax aren’t doing. When the pelvis can’t move independently and the mid-back doesn’t have access to adequate rotation, the lumbar spine becomes the shock absorber for everything. Every stride, every transition, every half-halt. That’s not a strength gap. That’s a control and mobility gap wearing a strength costume (and not a fun Halloween one!)

And the research is loud on this. A 2024 systematic review of nearly 4,500 riders found low back pain more common in equestrians than in the general population and the general athlete population. In elite dressage specifically, one study found 74% were competing in pain and 76% of them located that pain in the low back. This isn’t a “you” problem. It’s the predictable cost of stabilizing from the wrong link in the chain. The repetitive loading, the demand for a stable-yet-supple seat, and the tendency to stabilize from an off axis stack over time.

This is the heart of our Rider’s Foundations work: breath, mobility, dissociation, then control in that order. You can’t strengthen your way out of a coordination problem. Swipe through for the low back connection ➡️

Next week we advance into some Self tests and NM control exercises 🗓️

* This carousel has x2 videos with it (go check out the original on Instagram as FB does not allow video & stills in the same post 😭 … psych FB ~ I also posted them in the comments below 👇🏼 )

https://www.instagram.com/brittapedersenphysio?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr

References for those interested:
- Lewis V. & Kennerley R. (2017). A preliminary study to investigate the prevalence of pain in elite dressage riders during competition in the United Kingdom.

- Nguyen-Feng et al. (2024). Prevalence of Lower Back Pain and Risk Factors in Equestrians: A Systematic Review.

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08/11/2026

The Wall Test Challenge:
Your 60-Second Rider Posture Check 🐎

Before you get on your horse, there’s a simple test you can do almost anywhere at the barn.

No equipment. No mirrors. No complicated movement analysis.

Just a wall.

I use this as a quick postural awareness screen to help riders understand where their body is starting from before they ask it to stabilize, absorb movement and communicate with the horse.

And there’s one rule that matters most: 👉🏼 Start with the pelvis. Then the shoulders. Then the head

Can you maintain that stacked position whilst breathing & without feeling rigid or pain?

Because the goal isn’t to ride your horse while thinking about a wall. The goal is to teach your body what organized alignment feels like, so you can eventually find it dynamically in the saddle.

Your foundation comes first.
Pelvis. Then shoulders. Then head.

And sometimes the quickest way to understand what’s happening in the saddle is to simply… stand against a wall.

Take our challenge 👉🏼 & comment below to keep up with our Riders Foundations Series

🎥 Elena Dotoli Photo & Film
👚 Sync Equestrian

08/08/2026

That rider who makes it look effortless? They’re not more talented. They just found their stack … and they built it from the ground up.

Watch the order in this reel: pelvis, then ribs, then head. The base sets everything above it, which is exactly why starting at the shoulders never worked for you if your base of support is not on axis.

Tip the pelvis forward for extended periods of time and the ribs will eventually counterbalance you by flaring. You end up behind the motion and gripping with your lower back to hold “good posture.” Two dysfunctions, one root cause and it lives in your stack 🥞

Try it while you watch: little fingers on your hip points, thumb on your lower ribs. What happens when you tip your pelvis forwards? Feel that space open and close. That relationship is part of your stack.

Effortless isn’t talent. It’s alignment & is trained from the bottom up.

Hope this gave you some depth of understanding for our Riders Foundations. We build slowly from here, but need to have this concept grasped first 1️⃣

Next week we delve into a great “test” that you can do at the barn ➡️

📍Comment a TEST PLEASE to make sure you get notified to follow along on our Rider Foundations Series

08/05/2026

08/04/2026

📍SERIES: The Riders Foundations 1️⃣

🐴 The Rider is Built From 3 main building blocks. Master them & master efficiency in your rides

Ever feel like your horse is “just having an off day”? Before you blame the weather, the footing, or that spooky corner … let’s look in the mirror. 😉

Here’s the truth every rider needs to hear: YOU are stacked from three building blocks 📦📦📦

🧠 The Head: your compass. Where it goes, your balance follows.
🎯 The Thorax (Rib Cage): your center of steering and stability.
⚡ The Pelvis: the POWERHOUSE. This is your base of support, married to your horse’s back through connection with the saddle. It’s the conversation your seat is having with your horse every single stride.

When these three blocks stack cleanly on top of one another = Magic & Harmony. That “poetry in motion” feeling we all chase.

But if we knock just ONE off axis … your horse pays for it 🎒Think of it like a backpack loaded unevenly … heavy on one side, straps twisted. You’d shift, brace, and compensate with every step just to stay upright & balanced. That’s exactly what your horse does when your blocks are misaligned. They’re not being difficult. They’re being kind, quietly carrying your imbalance and adjusting their whole way of going to keep you both moving.

The good news? Alignment is a skill, not a gift you’re born with. And this month’s Rider Foundations Series is going to walk you through every block, one by one. Today was about understanding your “Blocks” 👉🏼 follow along for the rest of this month on delving into all the components and how we address them 🤓

Your horse has been waiting for this conversation. Let’s give them a rider who’s easy to carry 🦄

Question: Which block do constantly adjust or think trips you up the most? Drop it in the comments below: Head, Thorax, or Pelvis?

05/22/2026

Raise your hand if you’ve ever whispered (or shouted) “WHY won’t my body just DO what I’m asking it?” 🙋🏼‍♀️

As adult amateurs, we often come to riding with years of tension developed over ‘life’s activities’, asymmetries and muscle patterns built from desk jobs, old injuries, and real life situations. Our horses feel every bit of it & they tell us.

The good news? Your body can be retrained. And when it is, everything changes 💪🏼✨

👇🏼What’s your biggest physical struggle in the saddle that you’d love some help with?

1️⃣ Stiff hips / can’t follow the movement
2️⃣ Collapsing to one side
3️⃣ Tipping forward OR chair seat
4️⃣ Tight hands / locked elbows
5️⃣ Lower back pain

05/09/2026

📍What does it actually take to ride better?

Stellar Clinic at in Oregon, where we spent two full days answering exactly that … 21 rides, real riders, real results 💪🏼

Here’s what I found and some brief snippets of how I turn it into functional treatment:
✅ Pelvic torsion → full functional correction with resistance band facilitation
✅ 360° breathing for stability and relaxation
✅ Rider Sling training for functional length and stability = Axial elongation + deep stabilization
✅ Scapular stability for efficiency and integrated independent control
✅ Dynamic deep core for a true following connection to the bit
✅ Pelvic stabilizer activation exercises ringside = immediate in-saddle carryover

The horse can only be as free as the rider allows. My job is to assess/diagnose & free up the rider so the horse can perform its job better!

📍 Alliance Equestrian Center, Oregon
👯‍♀️ Thanks to Trainers & for trusting me with themselves & their riders