I have just been reading a Dr David Marlin blog about treed and treeless saddles. There is a certain tunnel vision in this article namely regarding riders using treeless saddles.
I designed the WOW saddle, a treed saddle that can be is adjustable and moves with the horse as it is flexible laterally.
However, I am not going to stand up in defence of treed saddles! I’m going to defend the treeless manufactures.
For over 25 years we have been testing saddles, our own and our competitors to ensure that the improvements and our claims about our own products are true. No, this testing is not peer reviewed and there is one simple reason, it takes too long to organise, get it done and the results given. If you want a job doing….
I personally asked for independent research to be carried out on a NEW product by those who will remain nameless and 18 months later I was still asking, almost begging for it to be done. Not good when you are launching a new product!
The court of public opinion and word of mouth was better evidence in the end that the product does do what we claimed. That was the FreeSpace girth.
I digressed.
If you use a 70Kg rider (3 sacks of feed) on a mechanical horse, we can all picture what this person looks like. Now imagine them sitting on your lap! Do you think you might find their bony little backside uncomfortable on your thigh? They will have seat bones like stiletto heels! Take a more rounded rider, built for comfort not speed. More pressure, but better distribution.
We did a little study at our HQ with a treeless saddle company and a rider of more generous proportions and a 67kg rider. I should explain that this treeless saddle was a TCS that has no seat, it is really a surcingle with stirrup bars. Therefore, the rider was sitting on nothing more than a poly pad, to all intents and purposes bareback.
We achieved the same results as Dr Marlin with our 67kg rider. One could also see that the horse was showing a small degree of discomfort. However, when the well-rounded rider was on board the results were outstanding! They were better than any saddle that I have ever made or tested! The bearing surface was huge, the average pressures were very low and very even.
It drew us up short, I have to admit, I had started this testing without an open mindset, thinking I know what the results would be before even putting the pressure mat on the horse. Yes, my thinking was biased.
Because this rider in crude terms carried their own padded shock absorber with them, they moulded around the horse everywhere their body touched the horse. The horse itself was not at the peak of its’ physical prowess and carried its own cushioning as well, it must be said. The horse went happily in all gaits. Yes, the horse was heavy, and the rider was heavy. They did not have aspirations to go 3 day eventing! It was a coloured cob that was used for pleasure riding.
What came out of this was that lighter riders had more potential to do damage by concentrated pressure points. An optional seat was designed so that the light riders had better weight distribution. This proved to be both effective and popular with riders.
My warning to our illustrious academics is that YOU must be very careful that YOU are not responsible for providing the ammunition to the people that want to stop us riding by being tunnel visioned, treed it is good, treeless it is bad. Therefore, the inference is that all those riders using treeless are not looking after their horses. In my experience nothing is that cut and dried.
We also use the Tekscan Dual Conformat System, at 100 frames per second. The pictures at the end of this comment show the results of the tests. These are the average pressure map of the whole of the tests. This is the heavier rider. I see no seat bones!
Every rider and horse combination are different. Their expectations are different. What works for one does not work for all. I learnt a very good lesson from our study, and it made me reassess my own tunnel vision. We are learning all the time.
We should be better informed but not at the expense of sucking the pleasure out of wonderful pastime. Please note, pastime, not sport. Far more people that enjoy horses do not compete than those that compete on a regular basis.
David Kempsell
Designer of the WOW Saddle
Managing Director of First Thought Equine Ltd.