[RC] Treeless Saddles - was Saddles, Pads and weird horses - Elizabeth Walker
You just brought up the major reason I keep putting off buying a treeless saddle. All of them have the same problem -- how to hang the stirrups. They all have either a strap or a plate from which the stirrups hang. That plate has to be somewhat flexible, too. Either way, the total surface area used to distribute pressure from the stirrups is pretty small. If you spend the majority of your time trotting, then most of the pressure is going to be on the stirrup plate, as opposed to other parts of the saddle.
Treed saddles aren't necessarily better, but - if they fit correctly and the stirrups are hung so that the riders weight isn't concentrated at the fork, they have a better chance of distributing the weight over a larger area.
On Jun 1, 2009, at 10:00 AM, Angie Fura wrote:
I am struggling with a similar issue. I had a custom Synergist made, but I don't care for how the stirrups hang. I moved to a Freeform, but am now having trouble with white spots under my seat bones or the stirrup plate (I haven't figured out which yet).
I found a saddle for my other horse. Its an all-purpose English saddle by Toulouse. I absolutely love it. I'm debating now whether to modify the stirrup position on the Synergist or to buy another Toulouse and have it custom fitted. Of course, the customer saddle fitter doesn't think I can get by with an average brand English saddle. They are recommending one that costs $3800.
I bought an Equipedic, Dryback Skito, and a Toklat with ultracell. None of these seems to help with the white spots under the Freefrom.
