The Hulsebos Zadel Re-Fit Experience

I feel like within the horse world there exists little pockets or pools of riders who all use similar gear or tack. Like social media aficionados who have flocked to PS of Sweden and Lund. Or for instance, at my farm there's like a mini-cult of us who all ride in Hulsebos dressage saddles.

Personally, I blame my trainer P haha. She has been buying custom Hulsebos saddles for years now (fun fact: the saddle I bought from her this past winter was her first ever) and has sold a few of them to other riders at the barn. Likewise, her trainer is also a big Hulsebos fan and has also sold a few saddles to other riders at my barn too. So now there are a lotta us riding around in them haha.

the saddlery recently opened up a US-based branch and now has this neat little van for tooling all around town haha. i'm not totally sure where this van normally lives tho, bc they're only in maryland like.... once a year

So anyway. The saddlery is based in the Netherlands, with third generation owner Jan Hulsebos spending most of his time actually in France. He comes to the US reasonably often, I believe. And seems to come to our farm annually. At which point everyone who owns one of his saddles gets on the schedule for fittings.

lots of horses and riders getting evaluated!

He spends a lot of time with each horse and rider - like 45min to an hour. Many hours, in my case. He watches the rider take the horse through his paces, mostly silently unless there's something specific he wants to see. Then commences a process of problem solving and troubleshooting what might be causing any imbalances.

In my case with Charlie, it actually almost felt more like a riding clinic than a saddle fitting. He seemed more preoccupied with my bio mechanics in the saddle and Charlie's overall frame and carriage than with whether the saddle was a Yes/No fit for Charlie (bc hint: it's a Yes haha).

different saddle that i tried. not the right fit for me - but i guess it was the half blocks that he wanted to see in action?

Specifically, he accurately diagnosed my most fundamental positional flaw: I tip my pelvis forward and pinch with my knees, pushing my seat out the back of the saddle and upsetting my overall balance.

Jan said that this, combined with the saddle's slightly downhill balance, meant that Charlie's shoulders were restricted and that he couldn't truly come through over his back. So he wanted to see me and Charlie go in a different saddle. At first I didn't really understand his objectives here. I'm not in the market for a new saddle and the one he chose was clearly not a great fit for me (like hip pain almost immediately).

commencing saddle surgery lol

After talking more later tho, I understood that he wanted to see how I went with a different block configuration, and wanted to see if changing the saddle improved Charlie's way of going and allowed him to carry himself in a better frame. Which, ya know, seems reasonable haha.

cutting open the seams to expose the foam block

After watching me go for what felt like forever in the heat, Jan settled on his plan of action for my saddle. The mission, should I choose to accept it, was to completely remodel the knee blocks, cutting off the bottom half to turn them into half blocks - to the tune of ~$125.

exposing the foam block completely

His idea here being: if he took away the bottom half of the blocks, I wouldn't be able to jam my knees into them. And thus wouldn't be pushing my seat back up against the cantle of the saddle. This would allow my seat to come more forward in the saddle, and my leg to hang longer down through the thigh.

In turn, Charlie could be better connected over his back to translate his engagement behind into more freedom in his shoulders up front. And thus a better frame.

cutting through the foam to remove the bottom half of the block

I was on board with the plan, so after Jan finished the next rider's session (during which time I gave poor sweaty Charlie his second bath of the day, parked him in front of his stall fan, and retreated to my own air conditioned car....), he commenced a full on operation of my dearly beloved dressage saddle.

contouring the foam

It's always kinda shocking to see these saddles get taken apart, ya know? Like our tack is so treasured, so valuable, we're all usually really careful in handling them and storing them. Meanwhile to actually work on a saddle like this takes a fair amount of brute force lol. Leather is some tough stuff!

using a cheese-grater type tool to give the foam more shape

I was excited to watch tho bc I find this stuff fascinating. Like, c'mon tell me I'm not the only one who has browsed all through youtube looking for saddle making videos, right?? And he seemed happy to explain what he was doing, and what the process was, and why it's advantageous to do this right here and now vs shipping it away for the work.

(Hint: the advantage is that we could put it back on Charlie and ride again so he could assess the work and tweak if needed).

lots and lots of cheese grater action haha

Basically what he did was: carefully cut the seams where the leather covering the foam blocks met the sweat flap. He cut the entire way down the block (leaving the front edge at the face of the saddle intact), exposing the entire foam piece.

the flaps of removed leather that previously covered the bottom portion of the blocks. he said these would be my "lucky leather pieces" lol

This piece was then cut in half with a razor, then shaped with a cheese grater type tool. Once the block was contoured to Jan's satisfaction, he trimmed the excess leather covering and hand stitched it back into place on the flap.

hand stitching the leather up around the newly remodeled half blocks

Then repeated the process on the other side, using the first cut piece of foam as a measurement to ensure both blocks were the same size.

more stitching, lots of careful, deliberate stitching

And just like that, in the space of about an hour or so, my saddle had "new" blocks.

assessing the flocking

Next he moved on to the more standard part of the re-fitting process: adjusting the wool flocking in the panels to improve overall balance and fit for horse and rider.

moving the flocking around

For me and Charlie, this meant changing the front-to-back balance of the saddle. It currently has a bit of a tendency to sit a little downhill on the horse. And since the horse himself can sometimes be a little downhill, and since my habit already is to tip forward in my pelvis, we end up with kinda a snowballing bio mechanical disaster lol.

adding more wool

So his plan was to take down the back of the saddle a little bit, and lift the front. Seems like a simple change, but hopefully this combined with the new block configuration should give me basically a whole new feel in the saddle.

Oh, and also combined with longer stirrups. Jan was a BIG FAN of lengthening basically everyone's stirrups lol.

ta da! fresh remodeled half blocks!

Once that was done, another rider had their session and I went on back down to the barn to retrieve Charlie again. Poor guy, he was not really super happy to be going for another ride in the heat lol.

tools of the trade - surprisingly compact little tool box too

Esp considering we had to walk up past the big July 4 party preparations and Charlie was pretty sure they were roasting his pony friends on the grill and that maybe he was next. At least his "spook" habit of just stopping and staring happens to make him look mighty handsome ;)

nothing left to do but retrieve the pony for more testing! meanwhile charlie went full-blown DEFCON MAJESTIC walking past the house as they were setting up tents and grills for the impending July 4th mega party haha, after which he spent the rest of the walk whinnying pitifully. perhaps he thought that was one of his friends on the spit??

Anyway we finally made it back up to the dressage ring and got Charlie saddled back up again in the newly fixed up saddle.

new fit with adjusted balance front-to-back, and new half blocks

I got back on for another ride and definitely felt a difference in my knees - esp in not bracing. Tho I ended up shortening my stirrups again bc yea I just don't love the feeling of reaching for the irons, and need that stability in the saddle to be effective in my own weird pretzel way.

Still tho, it was a pretty big difference. And especially with the added lift up front in the saddle, I was quiiite pleased with that feeling. Anything that helps me feel less like Charlie's about to drill a hole to China with his front end is much appreciated lol.

you can see where the blocks used to extend, and the old lines from the original machine stitching. pretty cool, huh?

So overall I'm pretty excited about the changes. Will need more time in the saddle to really see the results. Like, will this be the magic fix I've been looking for?? Ha, probably not. Like, probably I still need to modify my own position to really be more correct. But this should help.

Also helpful is the bottle of Hulsebos conditioner I picked up from Jan too lol. This saddle is kinda old and spent a few years sitting in a closet and... you can tell lol. So hopefully I can get it some new TLC post face lift!

All said, it was an unusual saddle fitting experience for me - I definitely didn't expect the all out reconstruction process that happened. But it was pretty cool. Jan liked my horse too, and right away acknowledged what a good, kind boy he was. Always nice to hear ;) Also nice was the fact that Charlie was more or less his normal level of soundness for the appt. Small wins, y'all.

I'm sure I'll have more to write about later as I spend more time in the adjusted saddle (and esp after I can get some pics of what we look like now to compare to older pics). For now tho I just wanted to get this all recorded for the sake of remembering everything.

Have you ever had a similar fitting experience? Or made any major adjustments or modifications to your saddle? Have you ever had a fitter that basically just took the thing apart right in front of your eyes? Do you like seeing how these saddles are built too? I'm always super fascinated by this stuff lol and would love to hear what all work other folks have had done.