Effects of jockey position and surfaces on horse movement asymmetry and horse-jockey synchronisation during trotting exercise.
Authors: Horan Kate, Pfau Thilo
Journal: PloS one
Summary
# Effects of Jockey Position and Surface on Horse Movement and Safety During Trotting Exercise Routine trotting—whether accessing gallop tracks or warming up—exposes both horse and jockey to injury risk, yet little is known about how riding position influences equine biomechanics across different footing types. Horan and Pfau used wearable inertial sensors (XSens MTw) placed on six ex-racehorses and a single jockey to measure stance and flight phase timings, vertical body asymmetries, and synchronisation between horse and rider during trotting in rising and two-point seats on artificial, grass, and tarmac surfaces. Jockey position proved far more influential than surface type: the two-point seat created 1.8% differences in stance phase timing and significantly altered weight-bearing asymmetry at the poll and push-off asymmetry at the withers and sacrum compared to rising trot. Most notably, when the jockey stood in their stirrups (whether rising or two-point), their vertical movements lagged 2.8–4.5% behind the horse's, and during two-point seat the jockey's peak displacements occurred 9.3–11% after the horse's—suggesting reduced shock absorption and load sharing at critical biomechanical moments. For practitioners, these findings suggest that rising trot may promote better synchronisation and more symmetrical movement patterns during routine exercise, though the specific injury implications remain unclear and warrant investigation with larger populations and direct injury outcome data.
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Practical Takeaways
- •Jockey riding position significantly influences horse movement symmetry during trotting exercise—consider position selection for warm-up and track access to minimize asymmetrical loading patterns that may increase injury risk
- •The two-point seat and rising trot create different movement compensations in the horse; monitor for potential repetitive strain injuries when using consistent jockey positions during routine trotting
- •Surface type has minimal impact on horse-jockey synchronization; focus rider training on consistent position control rather than surface selection as the primary injury prevention strategy
Key Findings
- •Jockey riding position (rising vs two-point seat) significantly affected stance and flight phase timing offsets (1.8% and 0.9% differences respectively, p<0.05)
- •Rising trot reduced poll asymmetry during seated stance but increased withers and sacrum push-off asymmetries after seated stance (p<0.001)
- •Jockey-horse synchronization delays increased by 2.8-4.5% when jockey stood in stirrups compared to seated position (p<0.001)
- •Surface type had minimal effect on movement parameters; tarmac showed only 0.6-0.8% increased jockey delay compared to artificial surface