Breast Support in Equestrian Sports: Body Image, Performance, and Dressage Scoring

Welcome to a truly intriguing episode of Equestrian Edge, where we tackle the critical and relatively untouched subject of breast support for horse riders. Ever wondered how your body image influences your performance in the saddle, or have you pondered over the potential bias against larger riders in dressage scoring? Join our enlightening conversation with Lorna Cameron – a  Lecturer at Hartpury University, who is at the forefront of research in this domain. Listen in as we navigate through her captivating research journey, and explore how different breast tissues and support can significantly affect a rider's performance.

The conversation takes us through an in-depth discussion about breast composition, the role of intrinsic and extrinsic support, and the impacts of body image on riders. Lorna brings forth compelling insights into how different ratios of glandular and adipose tissues constitute the breast and how they can influence the effectiveness of support. Furthermore, we delve into the important, yet often unspoken topic of body positivity and its role in breaking down the stigma associated with body image in equestrian sports.

Finally, we explore the realm of breast movement in riding and running, discussing how different levels of support can impact a rider's range of motion in the wrist, shoulder, and elbow. Lorna shares her extensive research on the effectiveness of various breast support products, offering a fresh perspective to all equestrians out there. We round off our episode by highlighting the need for more research in this critical area of equestrian performance. So, saddle up and let's embark on this enlightening journey together.

@riderstrengthcoach
www.riderstrengthcoach.co.uk

Transcript

Liv: 0:01

Hello and welcome to Equestrian Edge, the podcast that bridges the gap from research to rider. I am your host, olivia Cornick, and I am an Equestrian Strength and Conditioning Coach, but in today's episode, we are interviewing researcher Lorna Cameron and talking all about your treasured chest. That's right, we are talking about bouncing boobs and how our questions can best look after their chests. So let's dig in. Don't forget to tie us in social media with any questions that you have, and don't forget to subscribe so that you can keep up with the latest equine and equestrian research. Today, I am delighted to have Lorna Cameron with us. Hello, lorna. Hi there. Thank you so much for joining us. I am really excited to have this conversation. Please can you just give an introduction to yourself?

Lorna : 0:51

Hi, my name is Lorna Cameron and I am a senior lecturer at Hartbury University. But my background is varied. In performance riders and horses I was an international competition groom for quite a lot of years and then retired to become a lecturer and those of you working with horses at that level will know what I mean by that and then I worked for a lot of years at University Centre Sporchel and then two years ago moved to Hartbury. But all that time I have been researching rider performance, with a specific interest in breast support and how that impacts riders, and that is working alongside the University of Portsmouth and their research group in breast health.

Liv: 1:34

Amazing. That is so cool. I think this is a really important topic to actually be discussing, because there is a lot of embarrassment that surrounds breast health and bouncing boobs. I think this is a really good topic to be discussing, so thank you for joining us. You are pretty much a boob movement expert.

Lorna : 1:55

No, I am certainly not an expert because we do not really know enough yet about the breast and the requirements of breast support in horse riders. My colleagues at Portsmouth have done a lot of work on breast support in runners, for example. For my runners they do a lot of work with the Ministry of Defence and with the police force, for example. There is a lot of expertise surrounding that within that group. But really we have just started with riders because, for example, we are not sure. Should we just be recommending that riders go out and get themselves a really good running bra and is that appropriate for riding? Is the movement of the breast in horse riders completely novel and we are just beginning to establish that at the moment? I do not think I could call myself an expert because we do not know enough to be expert.

Liv: 2:52

You are making the movements on the beginning. We are trying, definitely I am considering almost 80% of riders are female. Why the weight in this sort of research that is needed?

Lorna : 3:08

I think we quite often in the equestrian world just suck it up and accept things. We are quite traditional and everything is always about the horse. We have all done it. We spend an absolute fortune on the physio for the horse and yet we will be limping as we get on and saying, no, I am fine. That is typical of riders and women to a certain extent. I think a lot of the research interest has gone into, quite rightly, the horse and the welfare of the horse and the comfort of the horse and the health of the horse and the performance of the horse. But we have forgotten that we really ought to make ourselves as easy a load for the horse to carry. Is that not natural for the horse? I was in a great meeting of some real, proper, serious scientists and they were talking about the question of what is the ideal weight for the horse to carry and lots of people came out with 20%, 15%, 10% and actually Dr David Marlin jumped in and said no, actually it is zero.

Lorna : 4:11

The ideal weight for a horse to carry is zero. You are quite right there. I guess we need to try and make ourselves as easy a load for the horse to carry. But also, of those 80% of riders that are female, a huge proportion of them do no other physical activity other than horse riding. If there are barriers through comfort, pain and embarrassment, all of that to them doing that riding, then you are risking them doing no physical activity, which we know has added health implications later on in life. So really we wanted to investigate what barriers to participation are out there in equestrianism, specifically surrounding the breast and breast health, and also from the point of view that actually there is an audience that is under represented in the research. We do not know what is happening in riders. We do not even really know what muscles you need to be a good rider. We do not know what skill set makes you a better rider than another rider and I guess rider performance. We are just at the beginning of that compared to other sports.

Liv: 5:28

Yes to the iceberg, is not it Definitely? Can you tell me what led you to actually get involved in breast research?

Lorna : 5:39

A cup of tea. Actually, I was having a meeting at Portsmouth with some other researchers about anxiety in riders actually, and I got talking to another researcher who had not that long finished their PhD and I was just chatting over a cup of tea and I said what was your PhD in? And she said it was in breast health and runners. That was really interesting and we started talking about the fact that when I used to compete at advanced dress, I used to use vet wrap and somehow I felt that using pink vet wrap made that justified. I do not know why, but we talked about it and thought, actually, we do not know anything about this. And she was really interested and that was Dr Jenny Burbage from the University of Portsmouth and she is not horsey at all, but she is the breast expert.

Lorna : 6:26

So that was a really nice link and what we did was we put out a survey, basically because, okay, we think it is a problem in the horse world, but we do not know for sure, so we put out a dreaded survey. I am sure after COVID, everybody is annoyed to be doing surveys, but we did this in 2015 and we actually found within a month and a bit, we had 1300 respondents. That is pretty good In itself. That suggests that it is an issue, because people often only do surveys that touch them in some way, that are important to them. So the fact that we had quite a lot of people clamouring to do the survey suggests that there was an issue, and we found a lot of really interesting barriers to participation surrounding the breast, from excessive movement, pain, embarrassment and we found that it was one of the highest barriers to participation amongst riders and, in some cases, coming above the cost.

Liv: 7:32

Wow.

Lorna : 7:34

That is a lot, isn't it? So we thought, right, that means there is an area out here that we need to investigate. But we did not have any funding to do anything. So we ended up with, when I was at Sparshalt, some of my master's students doing the data collection over a period of about four years and they ended up with a larger sample, actually basically just trying to establish what the movement of the breast was when.

Lorna : 8:04

On horsies, the slight limitation here is we have only done this on racewood event simulators because we need the participants to ride with no support and that means they have nothing on court, and the British Ors Society doesn't like us riding on the horse please forgive me for real horsies, so we are going to have no chance of doing that, and also there are issues with making sure it is in private and all of that kind of thing. So we have done all of our work so far on equine simulators and that is theoretically a bit of a limitation, but we have seen some really interesting impacts on the rider's position, dependent on appropriate breast support. Now, whether that then impacts how well they ride on a real horse, we are not sure of that yet, but we have seen some definite changes in rider position, with the riders becoming much closer to the vertical and having a much smaller range of movement around the vertical when they have better breast support. So more appropriate or higher breast support, which would suggest that there is some impact going on now.

Liv: 9:18

Interesting. And that is interesting because highly skilled riders stay closer to the vertical, don't?

Lorna : 9:24

they.

Liv: 9:25

Yes.

Lorna : 9:26

I couldn't believe it. When those results came out, I was like you know, when you sit there analysing your data, I was like that can't be right. That is exactly what I expected to find. I must have done it wrong, and I re-analyzed the data multiple times because you think that is just too good. That is exactly what I expected, but that is what we saw. Range of motion around the vertical was much smaller, significantly smaller, with that increased breast support, and the biggest difference was in riders with larger breasts.

Liv: 9:59

Okay, so you had the same rider and you took them with no bra and then you compared it to having a highly supported bra.

Lorna : 10:08

Well, we actually compared it. We had no support. We had everyday support, which tends to be, and Marks and Spencer's underwired, non-padded bra, which is what a lot of the research uses. That's no disrespect to Marks and Spencer's, and other bras are available, that's just the one that tends to be used. And then we also had a specific riding bra as well, which is marketed and made by a company called Berley in Australia, I think they're based, and we chose that one because it's the only bra that we could find that is specifically marketed and designed for horse riders. So the highest level of support was that riding bra and then the lowest level of support was no bra at all.

Liv: 10:56

Okay, and did you do a running bra at all, because there are a lot of people riding bra.

Lorna : 11:00

Some of our data, so not for all of those studies, because that's actually four then increases the length of time for your data collection. But we do have one of those sets of data collection where we also included a shock absorber, ultimate run bra One of our bras as well. I'm just writing up some research on that now where we actually took those, because in that study we compared those riders riding in those four bra breast support conditions on the Equine simulator but also running on a treadmill. Okay, so we're trying to establish if there's a difference between the movement and pain levels that you see in running compared to actually riding. So those results have just been analyzed at the moment and hopefully will be published soon. And our next step is to repeat that in 3D data capture rather than just 2D. So we've, up until this point, looked at what we call relative vertical breast displacement. So that's comparing the movement of the nipple to the movement that you see on the torso. So you've got a marker on the sternum, a marker on the nipples and you're, because we know if we're on a horse or we're running, our boobs are going to move, but it's how much they move compared to your torso that generates what we call exercise in just breast pain. Okay, we just that movement. We can reduce the pain as well, or the associated pain with with that movement. And so, yes, we've done some work with running bras.

Lorna : 12:36

But running bras are kind of difficult because they offer great support but they might not be ideal for riders because the movement may well be different, but also we use them differently. You know, if you're a runner unless you're one of these nutters that does ultra marathons, you know you're you're going to put your running bra on, you're going to go for a run, let's say, maximum an hour, you're going to come back, you're going to have a shower, you're going to take that bra off and then you're going to go on with the rest of your day. But riders often, especially if you're a professional rider or a groom or whatever, or you're riding throughout the day, you might need to have that bra on all day. And a lot of those running bras, that's not what they're designed for.

Lorna : 13:18

They're not, you know, they're a bit restrictive. They're compressive or they're not. You know not. At no point would they have thought about designing it for us, as riders, to have on for for a working time. Yeah, and also they tend to be really bright colors, with leopard skin and pink, and look really funky for the gym. Yeah, work underneath your competition shirt, you know, on a summer's day when you're definitely up.

Lorna : 13:43

So there could be lots of different challenges for designing a bra that actually would work for riders throughout the day or in in the kind of aesthetics that they need them to be in, like in that competition environment.

Liv: 14:02

And actually how long they last for as well, because you're only meant to have a sports bra for a certain period of time, aren't you never have a birthday? You should never have a birthday. No no less than one year old your sports bar should be so. If a running bar is designed to only be worn for a couple of hours, say if you're the mother bar every day or day, then you could be shortening the life of it.

Lorna : 14:27

Absolutely and make, and you know they're not cheap, are they? So a good sports bra is, we're looking at 50 pounds plus often, aren't you? And? And? And that's actually you know, for none of us are millionaires working with horses always, so that's actually quite a large outlay for people. And also, if you're wearing it all day, you may well be washing it more frequently, and then, if you've only got one, you might be tempted to then tumble dry, which you should never do. Yeah, of course Shouldn't be tumble drying, but if you need to wear that the next day for work, then you're going to be much more tempted to tumble dry on you and and that's theoretically a problem on its lifespan as well.

Liv: 15:05

Yeah, for sure, a lot to think about isn't there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely so can you just tell us about? Let's start with, what is a breast made up of?

Lorna : 15:15

So the breast is made up of basically a mixture of adipose tissue so fat, and glandular tissue, and each woman has a different ratio of that. So some may have more glandular tissue than adipose and some may have more adipose tissue than glandular tissue. And the intrinsic support of the breast comes from not muscles, it's not really attached to any muscles. It comes from Cooper's ligaments and skin, and both skin and ligaments when they are stretched beyond their elastic capacity, then they're never going to return to to where they were before that Deformation. So, and we've got to remember that the breast didn't evolve to be out being the hunter element of the hunter gatherer. You know that's not what it evolved to do.

Lorna : 16:06

So that extrinsic support if we want to exercise, is really important for us, although I will hasten to add here there are research groups elsewhere, specifically in France, who suggest that we shouldn't be wearing bras at all and that actually we are doing damage by wearing bras and we shouldn't be wearing any kind of support on our breasts or indeed when we're doing exercise. So there are other voices out there that are coming at this from a totally different angle. So what's the theory behind that? I think because they suggest that we somehow lessen our breast own ability to support itself, and there's issues surrounding pressure and discomfort and all sorts of different areas. But I certainly will not be riding or running without a bra on.

Lorna : 16:58

I would not feel comfortable doing that so no, not, I certainly wouldn't, and maybe that's a you know, maybe that's because we've worn bras all of our lives, who knows? But I certainly, at this stage, if I want to keep exercising and I'll keep running, then then the bra will be on.

Liv: 17:14

I definitely feel similar to you. So, considering that, did you struggle to get participants? Because obviously you need to get people without tops on, without bras on onto a horse simulator. We do.

Lorna : 17:27

It's really interesting. We do kind of struggle to get participants within the age range. So we a lot of our research we want to be focusing on women between 18 and 39, because perimenopause and postmenopause and during menopause you see a lot of changes in the breast tissue. So if we're working with reasonably small sample sizes, we really want to have to limit those variables as much as we can. But actually it tends to be the older women kind of my age who are like yeah, sure, I'll get them out for science, I don't have a problem with that. So you get a lot of volunteers who are older than you want them to be, whereas actually the slightly younger women do tend to find that little bit difficult to get them out for science. But yeah, so and it is a big ask, you know, hello, come in, I've never met you before. I'll take you off here and let me stick this on here and off we go.

Lorna : 18:26

So it is a big ask for people and, weirdly enough, because one of the other areas I do research in is in body image as well and our own body image, and it's really funny when you have people, often riders, they get on their horse. You've seen them in all different bra conditions. The last condition we always do is no bra, just so that people feel a bit more comfortable around us and they can also say, no, I can't do this anymore, or whatever. So we have a few people pull out at that point. But then they get marked up and they get on the horse and and and there they are, and nine times out of 10, they're worried. So don't look at my stomach and look, you're sitting there on a horse with no top on, with the girls out, and you're worried about me.

Lorna : 19:15

So it's kind of really interesting what our image of our own body is and the bits that we're happy with and the bits that we're not happy with. More conscious yes, really interesting. No one, no matter how slim they are. There's very few people that get on a horse without a top on with a pair of britches on that. There isn't a couple of phones there, you know that's just normal, you know. So really interesting kind of concerns that people have about the bits that they are okay with and the bits that they're not okay with. But that's another whole area of research.

Liv: 19:48

But that is something that I did want to discuss with you, because it's quite closely linked to breast sizes, body image, isn't it?

Lorna : 19:55

And the eyes and body components. You know, and as riders we we probably are we probably do carry a little bit more adipose tissue in general than, say, for example, an ultramarathon runner or a female sprinter or whatever. So that does have an impact on breast size and as a population, there are more riders that are what we would categorize as large breasted than in a running population or other sporting populations, and that will be to do with body composition as well, but also maybe about the accessibility of the sport to and also the fact that probably we don't really think of ourselves as athletes. You know, we think of the horse as an athlete, but we don't really think of ourselves as as an athlete being involved in that scenario, and that's probably one of the lovely things about horse sports, but it's probably one of the things that means that perhaps we're not doing the bets for our horses because we're not looking at our own performance in the same way that we look at the horse's performance.

Liv: 21:01

The challenge that we need to overcome, isn't it? Because you've got this balance of managing horse welfare and horse and actually trying to maintain positive body image? Yes, so us as coaches, I think we've got responsibility, because sometimes we need to work on their fitnesses. And how do you open empathetic? Yeah, actually you need better supporting bra, or we need to work on your fitness a bit. How do you maintain positive?

Lorna : 21:27

Well it's, it's. It's really difficult. I'm a member of a research group just a fairly new research group, which is called suitably mounted, and actually this it's about ensuring that people are thinking about pairing them and their horse suitably, rather than saying you're too big for that horse, you know it's. It's about actually choosing the right horse although we don't have much research to support what that is, but the right horse but also making that positive message, not a negative message, because we get right back to the fact that a lot of women who ride do no other physical activity other than ride. So if we shame them into saying you shouldn't be riding, then what are you doing Exactly? You know, and go into the yard and mucking out your horse, and riding your horse and doing all those associated physical activities is a lot more accessible to a lot of women than marching into a gym. So I think we have to be really careful on that messaging as well.

Lorna : 22:34

And you're right, it's about body positivity, it's not about shaming anybody, and we should all be proud of our body. It's taken me probably until my fifties to realize that I'm actually quite proud of what my body can do, not what it looks like. And so for my fiftieth birthday. We did a 50 kilometre ultra and you know I'm run, Gee, I'm not very fast, but I just love it and that's amazing Well, been able to celebrate what you can do rather than what it looks like. I think it often takes people a long time to get there, doesn't it?

Liv: 23:15

I totally agree with you on that. Actually, because I'm a para athlete, I have brain surgery, so I've got left-sided weakness and so since then I was always very, very intimidated at the gym and I thought, oh, I might not be able to do that. But when I reframed my mindset to going actually exercises, celebration of what my body can do, not punishment for what I've eaten, not any form of punishment so I think we need to be able to reframe people to thinking, actually celebrating your body it's what you can do. It should be positive and do what you enjoy rather than, oh, I've got to, you know.

Lorna : 23:52

Yeah, oh no, I've got to go and do this, and that's easy to say and it's a very complex issue, isn't it?

Lorna : 24:00

And the whole thing is difficult, but fundamentally, if we can do some research, that actually will enable people to be happy about talking about breast support, for example, that's just one little aspect of that that can be chipped away.

Lorna : 24:16

And also we want to have resources that people who may be a male coach with female riders, instead of having to have that difficult conversation, they could maybe signpost their riders to online resources, for example, and there is one specifically designed for adolescent females not riders in particular, but it's a website called Treasure your Chest and that's been put together with University of Portsmouth I think it's Chichester I'll just check on that because I want to give them a shout out for St Mary's University, twickinham, and for University of Chichester from the University of Sport, and that Treasure your Chest is specifically designed for adolescent girls to actually be able to get information about breast support and continuing in sport whilst their bodies are changing. So those kind of resources, I think, are really important for people to know about so that they can use them to signpost people in that direction without, like you say, maybe having to have that difficult conversation.

Liv: 25:24

Yeah, what a brilliant idea, and I'll put that in the show notes so people can access it. But, again, I think this is the thing is what are the barriers to participation and how can we alleviate that? Because if breast pain is one and breast movement is one, this is why research is so important, isn't it?

Lorna : 25:42

Yeah, and I think also that conversation where people don't feel awkward in having that conversation because it is what it is and we need to just kind of be open about that kind of conversation. If you think about what we talk about now and what is accepted as something to discuss, whereas in my childhood things like anything to do with women's health was talked about in code. But there are still areas that people aren't comfortable about talking about, or some people aren't comfortable. So having the conversation, I think opens it up to people and actually, if I'm not embarrassed about talking about it and you're not embarrassed about talking about it, then we can talk to our riders in a much more open way and hopefully make sure they're not embarrassed about it as well.

Liv: 26:38

And after you can sense when someone's embarrassed, can't you? So if you can empower yourself to feel comfortable talking about breast cancer and anything associated with that, then hopefully they'll feel comfortable. Then opening that discussion Absolutely and linked to that kind of body image is this perception for? So with affiliated? Obviously everyone's trying to get more people affiliated to join more and expand. Now there's this perception, isn't there, that smaller frames are going to perform better. So how do we overcome this where the subjective scoring, such as Drasage, if people perceive smaller people to be doing better, how do we alleviate that participation barrier, which perhaps isn't true?

Lorna : 27:25

So we did so my colleagues at Sparta and myself. So one of our master's students called Sophia Ferino. That was what she did for her undergraduate and her master's dissertation. So she did an amazing survey that we have published which was about riders own perception of their body image and then also what they thought other people thought of their body shape. So there's kind of two different areas here. Which is body image that's what we think of ourselves, which often is not reality, but it doesn't matter, that's what we think about ourselves. But there's also what we then think other people think about us.

Lorna : 28:06

And she did find in that that riders felt that there was a judge bias against larger riders. That's not what the judges thought necessarily, but that's what riders thought. So there is possibility of that barrier. However, Sophia went on and did some more research and she then went and asked judges and coaches and used some photographs in one of her studies and then also some video in another one of her studies and she's busily just writing those up now about for publication about asking about horse and rider matching and it was really interesting to look at.

Lorna : 28:46

Most judges said I think from her provisional research results that they didn't have a bias against rider size. However, when they were asked to match horses together with riders, there was definitely a preference for a slightly smaller framed rider, but it was more about the relationship between things like torso height and leg length, for example, than just necessarily size. It was body type as opposed to kind of size and more about shape really. But again, those results, they are really preliminary and need a bit more investigation because dressing is a subjective sport. So it's the whole picture that's looked at, isn't it?

Lorna : 29:45

And there has been problems in other subjectively judged, aesthetic sports, such as gymnastics and diving, and they've come about in a very different way where they actually use discard scores, so the two extremes at either end of the scoring from the multiple judges. They'll discard the highest and the lowest score and then take the scores in the middle. So there's lots of issues, not just about size of rider around subjective dressage scoring that we can talk about for another podcast all day. But we have to accept that it is an aesthetic sport and it's about people's opinion. But you would hate to think that riders don't want to put themselves in front of a judge based on something like their body shape or their body type.

Liv: 30:36

And actually it could impact performance as well, because obviously the horse can sense if you're anxious or stressed and therefore it could also impact performance, because if you're worried about what everyone's thinking about you, could this be impacting performance as well.

Lorna : 30:50

Well, something as simple as the fact that we compete in totally different clothing than we ride at home in. And we also, you know, we tend to compete, especially in dressage, in pure new wool barathea, don't we? And a pair of leather boots and a big you know, and a hat and all of that, and they're not always the world's most comfortable things. And another colleague of mine at Sparta we did some research for her, master's by research, where she actually looked at hasn't been published yet, unfortunately but looked at the difference in rider position and also how they felt when they were riding on the simulator in their everyday riding clothing and in their competition clothing. Okay, and often there were definitely changes in that. But when you ask people about how they felt in their riding, the higher up the levels they were, the more comfortable they felt in their competition kit. Now, I don't know if that's because they've learned to get used to it, so when they put it on they feel good. Or have they risen up the levels and felt more confident and been happy to go and compete more because they have that natural confidence in their competition, In their competitive gear? Who knows that? That's a question, but it is odd that we often don't wear anything that we compete in Until the competition.

Lorna : 32:18

Yeah, yeah, not even our long boots. We often always ride in short boots and gaiters, don't we? And then we put on our dressage ridiculous you know and Koenig's boots none of us can even walk in, Never mind. You know so, and actually a lot of the very top riders, if you watch them when they train at home, they do train in long boots. They have their yard long boots and they have competition. You know long boots. So that is a kind of interesting area. You wouldn't, as a runner, you wouldn't go and do a marathon in a pair of shoes that were completely different from the ones that you trained in and that you very rarely wore and weren't bedded in and weren't you know. You just wouldn't do that.

Liv: 33:07

No, you'd be called ridiculous, wouldn't you? You'd be trying to do a run in something that you really worn a few times. Yeah yeah, Interesting things to think about. Now I do want to go back to boobs. Yes, Now. So I read in your research that 40% of women experience pain when riding. Now that that's a huge amount.

Lorna : 33:29

It is. It is, but I mean bear in mind that these were the people that answered our survey, so there is a possibility that those that did experience pain were more attracted to the survey. So therefore, that might have skewed the results a little bit, and if you'd never experienced pain when you were breast pain when you were riding, you might have just ignored the survey, and so there might well be a bit of a skewed there, and we know that that's one of the downsides of surveys. But yes, that's a huge amount and I think we found the only 20. One percent of riders exclusively ride in a sports bra from the front.

Liv: 34:09

So why is it that people are just putting up with pain or they're not trying to wear sports?

Lorna : 34:14

bra. Well, we could get all philosophical about that and I could just suggest that it's because we're women and the fact. I mean, how ridiculous is it that we go out on a night out and a pair of shoes that you can't walk in, that cause you so much pain? You need to put a little pair of ballet pumps in your bag so that you can actually walk home, you know. So we throw it creatures. We are kind of a bit strange from that point of view. But I also think that I'm not sure that women think that riding is necessarily a sport as such.

Lorna : 34:47

So if you, if you have never run, if you have never played serious competitive netball or hockey or whatever, never been to a gym, you might never have actually come across a sports bra, because they're not for sale in your tax shop. You know they're not. There's not a rack hanging up there next to the hats and the body protectors, you know. So you might never have come across a sports bra. And then you go online because somebody suggests maybe you get a sports brand. There's such a plethora to choose from and very often what people will do is they will buy a sports bra that's an own brand from a large retailer, because that's the one that they're going to have access to, and then it won't be one that's been researched as much as a specific sports bra manufacturer. They'll find that that not so great sports bra doesn't make a difference and so therefore, they'll stop wearing a sports bra. So you know.

Lorna : 35:42

So it's a little bit about that. Education, I think, and also accessibility and making people think that, or allowing people that information on on how to choose a sports brand and some of our research. 100% of women that come along, not only are they not riding in a sports bra, their, their, their bra size is all wrong, you know, they're, they're 100%. In one of the studies we did, the women turned up and their, their bra size was just totally off. What they were wearing and what they thought was their bra size wasn't anywhere near their bra size and and that's quite common in a lot of the breast health research and no matter how good then your sports bra is, if it doesn't fit you, it's not doing that gonna work so is there a difference between going to a supermarket grabbing a sports bra off a shelf?

Liv: 36:31

is there a difference in support there and so we have.

Lorna : 36:34

I haven't done any research into that, but you just have to look at the expertise, and so some are very good.

Lorna : 36:42

I'm not not saying everything is, but what I mean is it tends to be that people go and just grab a sports bra, without actually going and speaking to a sports grass bra specific shop or somebody who knows enough to recommend the right sports bra for your need and for your size. And you know, not all sports bras are the same. So small breasted people do better with a compression bra, for example, whereas for a larger breasted people they're better in an encapsulation bra. Now, your average department store person who's going to help you look at a sports bra is not going to necessarily know all of that. So even if the sports bra itself is good or as good as another one, it's maybe not going to be sold with the same level of information and knowledge either. So, and what tends to happen is people try one sports bra, one type of sports bra, and that one doesn't work for them. So then they go well, no sports bras are rubbish, and then, rather than finding the right one for them and the right size for them.

Liv: 37:48

So there are lots of different types of sports bra, aren't there? So some encapsulate and put breasts as like one mass, don't they?

Lorna : 37:55

yes, so those would be your compression bras and they basically if you're large breasts. So, for example, they they take two fairly large moving objects and turn them into one grub big, make a big object, which doesn't work brilliantly. So so they tend to be better for smaller breasted people, whereas the encapsulation ones, where they lift and separate the breasts, they tend to be better for larger breasted. But there is no one sports bra that works for everybody. It's about riders and runners have to find the one that works for them and the one that fits them and the one that reduces any discomfort they have the most and that they feel comfortable wearing.

Lorna : 38:41

Some people can find it difficult to do all the hooks up at the back, for example. Some people, like you, know an underwired, some people don't, and so it's just making sure that you find the right sports bra for for you, for your size, for your shape and for the activities that you do, and sometimes that can be a bit of an exhaustive search, but that's the same as everyday bras, isn't it? You know, finding the right everyday bra for you. That that's not to do with sports or activity. What normally happens is you find your favorite bra and it's like oh my god, I found it, it fits me a treat and it's so comfortable and I absolutely love it. And then the company's not making it or they have to say, you know, oh, I'm giving a sec. So if I find a bra I really like, I tend to buy about three or four of them and put it in the cupboard, you know yeah, and the frustration is, though, you know, when your body composition changes, your bras start changes.

Liv: 39:40

So you think you found the one, you think you both bought what you need, and then your boobs change yes, and that happens even on a monthly basis, doesn't it?

Lorna : 39:48

throughout your cycle. You might have some bras that work on one part of your monthly cycle and some that don't, and our breasts change all the time, you know, so it you tend to find that if people go and get themselves measured, they say that's it, that's the size I am, and then there's no kind of not always much flexibility in that. So we have a resource which we have shared and and beta have put it on their website, so the British Request and Trade Association. It's a horse rider's guide to bras and bra fit and there's guidance on that about how to actually fit your own bra what, what, how, how do you know how a bra fits and what you should be able to put in in a sports bra as well? So I can easily share that link with you to the absolutely.

Liv: 40:37

I'd love to put that in the show notes so people can check themselves as well yeah absolutely so. You were talking about, um, how once ligaments stretch so far they can't go back. So you say we've got a 60 or 72 year old rider that's never worn a sports bra. If the boobs have stretched is it? Is it helpful to them start wearing a sports bra now?

Lorna : 40:57

well, now there is a question because we haven't done any research with, with riders of that age, and that's a really specific issue in riding, because riding is a very long career, you know, compared to being a competitive runner, for example.

Lorna : 41:13

I mean the only um uh examples of people at real international level in a sport I suppose would be tri, because they have um triathlon have age categories, don't they? But in riding they tend to ride well on beyond um uh, when people might have retired from other sports. So there is definitely a need for um research in in older riders and certainly post menopause riders, and that probably is going to be one of our next studies. But I would say it's not going to change the breast tissue or the breath makeup, but if that rider is uncomfortable without a sports bra for support, so if they're finding the breast movement is causing them pain, then yes, if we can reduce that movement with the bra, then in theory we should be able to reduce, reduce that discomfort or pain and in theory it could help say they're still out competing in dressage or something.

Lorna : 42:10

It could help performance if they're able to maintain well we do, we do, we do know and you have to be careful with the the claims, because we know that in the population of riders we had, who were all between 18 and 39 so they weren't older riders for this particular study we do know that better or higher levels of breast support changed that rider position. What we don't know is how that then impacts their performance, how they communicate with the horse, does it get them better scores, etc. We don't know that and we also don't know if we would see the same results in an older population of riders. Should add the next study. You know, and that's the key is that all of these studies no study answers all your questions, and a really good study should leave you with more questions than you had, answers, which is kind of annoying, but but is amazing. There's lots to be done. Yeah, it does, and and I think that's the key you always have to recognise the limitations of your own findings.

Lorna : 43:14

And yes, in our population of I think it was 38 riders who were between 18 and 39, we found that better breast support did impact how you sat on a horse simulator. So therefore, there's about 25 limitations just in that one sentence, for absolutely you know it wasn't a. It wasn't a real horse, you know. And what was the spread of their breast size? There was no forward momentum because not on a real horse and you're inside as well. And there's the age of the riders, the fact that they were people who volunteered. They didn't cover every single possible size, shape and makeup of rider. You know they were all of us fairly similar and riding ability and that they could walk, drop counter comfortably and many of them competed. So you're not looking at novice riders, you're not looking at elite super riders either. So you know that's just limitations all around. However, having said all of that, we did find an impact on those riders of improved or better at breast support. More breast support definitely did impact their ride in position Interesting.

Liv: 44:26

So my next question is about your range of motion in the wrist, shoulder, elbow.

Lorna : 44:35

Yes, could you just?

Liv: 44:36

explain that a little bit.

Lorna : 44:38

No, because I would have expected in my head, if you are on a horse and you're reducing your range of motion around the vertical, so you're bringing yourself more towards the vertical, I would expect to see significantly more range of movement in your arms to then to maintain your contact with the horse. And we kind of saw that, but not how I would have expected.

Liv: 45:07

Can you explain to our listeners what you were looking for in this range of motion area?

Lorna : 45:14

So what I was looking for was actually, if you are more because my thinking is, or our thinking is that if your upper body has a restricted profile because you're trying to stop your boobs jumping around so much or you're in pain, then that upper body is really important for us as riders, because that's our direct communication with the horse's mouth, isn't?

Liv: 45:38

it yeah.

Lorna : 45:38

Through what our arms are doing. So I kind of we wanted to look at the arms as well, because that is key, isn't it? And that contact. As a coach, jesus, I could explain the words contact and how to get that soft. Giving lovely contact with horse's mouth, I'd be making a fortune, because you kind of know when you've got it, but you kind of don't always know what it is that creates that. And one of my thinking was that that arm movement might be impacted by your breast support, because you're then, theoretically, would you have more ability to be soft with your hands with the horse. I slightly forgot that. Perhaps I should have put rain tension meters on the the equine simulator so you can listen to just that rain tension.

Liv: 46:41

You can measure how much force you're pulling in the rains, can't you?

Lorna : 46:45

Yes, and also you can look at peaks and troughs as well. So that changeability of that. And the racewood simulators. They do have a measurement of rain tension. Unfortunately that's not validated for research. So what I should have done was clicked on some extra sensors on there and we did that with some of our riders, but not for the whole sample, because that was one of those moments where you're like, oops, I thought my, my, my, my is okay, but I should have done that. That's something for us to do in the future, I think, because we have also done some work which were only with a very small sample size so I don't think it's going to get published where we actually looked at muscle activation on in the upper and lower back in riders in different breast support conditions as well, but that showed some slightly odd results and we did that with one of the really good researcher, Keio Tirado from Japan, and she was over here in a sabbatical and it was great fun for us and other colleagues, Vicki Lewis, to geek out with good rider performance researchers and we did this. It was an amazing study where we looked at again running versus riding on the simulator EMG, on all the horses, on all the sorry on the riders.

Lorna : 48:12

We had 3D cameras everywhere. We had all of sport alts 3D cameras, we had all of heart brace 3D cameras that we'd all put in the one room and we had treadmill and we had loads of riders lined up for the whole weekend and then I think it was Storm Dennis hit, Water was coming in through the door and for a performance studio at Svartal, and then our portable treadmill went on fire. So we did some of it, but we didn't do it to the extent that we wanted to do, which is what happens in research. So we had just a very frustrating weekend. But one of the things that was most frustrating was we didn't see what we expected to see in muscle activation. In our heads we would expect to see that you, if you're not having to work hard to rebalance what your boobs are doing, we should see less muscle activation or upper body muscle activation. But actually we saw more, but with higher breast support. But in my head the reason for that might be well is that because it is allowing you to use your arms and your upper body more to respond to the movement of the horse. So the reason why the range of motion around the vertical is reduced because you've got more muscle availability to concentrate on your balance rather than what your boobs are doing. We have no answer for that. That's another study that we we definitely need to do again.

Lorna : 49:53

Unfortunately, like all of these studies, they're not commercially funded. So what we tend to do is it basically relies on students being interested in this area. For us and then I've got a couple of students at undergraduate level who are going to pick some of these studies up next year as well. But yeah, that's kind of one of the limitations is it's not a massive, great funded project Like a lot of rider research and even horse research. There isn't a big pot of funding out there for research. We tend to be doing smaller projects and kind of linking those together rather than doing a massive funded study. So build a bigger picture yeah, and one you know we're getting there, we're putting, but it is a bit like a jigsaw that you haven't got a box picture for.

Liv: 50:51

So, from what you've said there, that's a bit of a jigsaw, isn't it? Because what you've said is you had increased muscle activity with increased support and with the arm, so the shoulder, elbow rest range of motion it was reduced with high support, wasn't it? Yeah?

Lorna : 51:07

So actually, yeah, you're trying to build a picture, yeah, we're trying to build a picture with incomplete evidence, I think, and that's we will be filling in those gaps. But I guess the message is is that we don't know the answers yet, but we do know there's lots of questions to ask, and one of the questions is do you know what? We know that we can at least reduce your discomfort when you're riding by wearing a sports bra that fits you appropriately. So therefore, if you are uncomfortable when you're riding, here's the thing where's sports bra that fits you? You know, we kind of know that bit. We know that we can reduce discomfort, exercise and just breast pain, embarrassment, breast movement. We can reduce that with a well-fitted sports bra.

Lorna : 51:57

Then we're moving on to say well, actually, what does that do for you as a rider? And, to be honest with you, if it just makes you more comfortable, where's the harm in that? Because theoretically, you should be more comfortable, be able to communicate more effectively with the horse or at least enjoy your ride in a bit more. And if you're enjoying it, maybe the horse will enjoy it a bit more. So you know, it's kind of like, even if it doesn't have a real doided in the wool performance effect that you can measure, why shouldn't we be comfortable as riders as well.

Liv: 52:28

Definitely. And could breast support be even more important, potentially for young riders, say when they're 13, 14, as their breast develop?

Lorna : 52:39

Yeah, I think so. Well, we don't know about long-term damage, because at no point are we ever going to get ethical approval to say, right, let's take 100 young riders and 50 of you you're not going to wear a bra and 50 of you are, and let's see how much damage we can do in the long term. You know, we're never going to get ethical approval for that, so that will always be just a hypothesis. But I think if even just allowing riders to younger riders to just think about oh, hold on, I'm doing a sport, so maybe I should have a sports bra, for if my breast movement is embarrassing or is uncomfortable or is causing me pain, yes, I will have a sports bra, you know, and I'll go and do that. So I guess, and also allowing coaches at pony club or at the riding school or competitive coaches been able to have that conversation with riders without feeling awkward and also without it being inappropriate as well. So, and I think it's an important conversation to have and we did a training day, a CPD day for the fellows and I's BHS fellows and I's one of their conventions or CPD days and that was really interesting talking to them about actually having that conversation.

Lorna : 54:03

And you know I'm no expert in that kind of area of how to have those difficult conversations, but the fact that you're giving people scientific evidence somehow often makes it easier for them to have a difficult conversation, because it's not just opinion based. Therefore, you take that personal aspect out of it and it can become more yeah, it can become more more easy to talk about, but also more easy to be talked at about it, you know. So it's easier to receive scientific rather than personal information. It removes yourself from it. It does, it does, and you know, we know for sure.

Lorna : 54:42

Now, based on the research done by the research group and breast health at Portsmouth, we, the British Army, for example, all their female recruits are now fitted and issued with sports bras during training. Oh, wow, all the female athletes from Britain in the Tokyo Olympics had this bras fitted to them and given, just in the case, the chance that it could increase their performance by that marginal gain, you know. So that kind of and I think the hockey team, the English hockey team, now have their own bespoke sports bras that are made for them and supplied. So I think that certainly the researchers at Portsmouth are making differences to how the wider community look at sports bras as well.

Liv: 55:34

It's certainly important research to be done, isn't it? So if we have students listening, we can encourage them to make up the research and move forward with it. Absolutely, come and be part of Team Boob, yeah. Or if you're happy to take your top off for the name of research, yes, exactly, get involved.

Lorna : 55:49

Yeah.

Liv: 55:50

So I do have some questions from the audience. Yes, how often do I need to replace my sports bra? I?

Lorna : 55:58

should never have a birthday. We said that before. Definitely, and I think you can kind of tell when it's getting a bit stretchy and a bit yucky. And when you buy a bra you should always fit it to the loosest setting and that be comfortable, so that when it does stretch a little bit you can tighten that up on the band so that you're it's not moving basically all around the place. And also don't tumble dry it and be careful how you wash your bra Fab.

Liv: 56:31

how can coaches approach a conversation with the client that needs support without negatively affecting the relationship?

Lorna : 56:38

Now that is a big question and I guess that's the question for someone more versed in human behaviour change than me, and that is a difficult conversation to have. I guess make sure that it's an appropriate setting, you're not embarrassing the individual by talking about it in public, but then maybe you're with more than just you and the client, so that there is also not that a chance for it to just be one-on-one conversation. So I guess, be careful, but also use some of the resources that are out there and we've done it before with students in that we share that information with the whole group Rather than singling out one individual person.

Liv: 57:25

So it's a clinic or pony club or something you can do as a group to highlight the information Absolutely. That's a great idea. How do you know what sort of bra is best for riding?

Lorna : 57:39

We don't, sorry, sorry everybody. So there is one, like I said, that is marketed as a specific riding bra, but it's not all that easy to get hold of. I guess just a good supportive sports bra for now is the best that I can recommend. We don't know yet if we should be saying, yes, you need a specific riding bra, or if a good sports bra is fine. So we don't know the answer to that question yet.

Liv: 58:11

So do boobs move quite differently riding compared to running.

Lorna : 58:16

So from a vertical breast displacement, so relative vertical breast displacement point of view, we see pretty much a similar vertical movement in sitting truck compared to running on a treadmill. Okay, there is a difference in the running bra, in the amount of pain in those two activities reported. So we don't know what the explanation is for that. So that's kind of our next step. So it could just be that the people that we used in that particular piece of research maybe were better riders than they were runners. Maybe that would explain it, or you know, I don't know. So that's something for us to investigate in more detail.

Liv: 58:58

Brilliant. Are boob bands any good? I don't know if you'll know the answer to this.

Lorna : 59:03

I don't know because we haven't actually done any testing on them, and people do keep suggesting that we do them, so that might be something for the future. I don't know, is the answer to that one Okay, or at least I don't know from a scientific point of view.

Liv: 59:20

And then the last question was asking if wearing a normal bra and a sports bra is a good idea.

Lorna : 59:26

So I don't. Well, I would like to hope that everybody could find a bra that would control their breath movement enough just by finding one bra, but unfortunately that bra may well cost you as much as both of those bras you were talking about.

Liv: 59:44

Yeah.

Lorna : 59:44

You know, I think I think, one bra there are sports bras out there that will work for pretty much anybody, but finding that bra can be the really challenging thing. So I would say, whatever makes you comfortable when you're riding and is not doing any damage to you, to your position or to you know, it's not uncomfortable enough. And in fact, some people one of the things they said was the only time their boobs didn't bounce when they rode was when they wore a body protector. So they just rode all the time in a body protector. It's common, isn't it? Yeah, but then that's another issue, because body protectors are not made for girls and often people wear if they have big boobs, they wear a body protector that is too large for them, which then to fit the boobs in, which then means that maybe the body protector is not doing its job properly in other areas. So that's another whole area of the help that needs to be done.

Liv: 1:00:40

So is this breast research as important for people with small boobs? I've got some riders that say, oh, it doesn't apply to me because I've got small boobs.

Lorna : 1:00:48

So yes, I would say possibly we don't see as much of a change in position for those with smaller breasts and but in the running research we have found that exercise and just breast pain in running can impact small breasted people as well. So I guess I would say if you, if it's not a problem for you, don't be running out to get a sports bra, if it's not an issue for you and you're not uncomfortable. However, I would also say don't say, well, I can't have a problem with this because my boobs are too small. It's about your own personal experience. And also, you know, fundamentally, if people don't suffer any breast pain and then suddenly start suffering breast pain, then get to the doctors with that, because there could be another explanation for that breast pain and that new kind of element of exercise and just breast pain. That could have a more sinister background to it. So definitely, if you've got new breast pain, go and get that checked out.

Liv: 1:01:52

Definitely, yeah that's a good suggestion. So it's more to do with subjective pain and if there's any changes, yeah, sure, okay. So we always finish the show with five quick fire questions for you. So where are you? Where are you now and where are you going with your research?

Lorna : 1:02:09

Where was I so where?

Lorna : 1:02:10

I was was that nobody knew anything about rider boobs. So that's where we were. Where am I? Now we know exactly how much we don't know about riding a breast movement, which is which is annoying. But at least we know a teeny tiny bit now and actually we've got some stuff that we can have conversations about. Where are we going? 3d I've got. We've got to actually be able to compare in three dimensions the movement, the breast in riding versus running. We'll know the answer to that question. Good, should I be recommending to everybody out there just go get yourself a good running bride, it's fine that that'll do. Or should we be going to manufacturers saying actually there is a difference in breast movement between running and riding? So here's a latent market for you and it's worth the research and and the the product development for for you to bring that to the market brilliant.

Liv: 1:03:09

Yeah, good answer. What do you wish you knew before you started research? Well, all research, or just any research um, I wish, I wish, I okay.

Lorna : 1:03:20

So I think a lot of people and students out there think that published researchers are kind of super clever gods away in the, the distance somewhere. But the note and and they're just normal people who are dead interested in stuff and they want to know the answers, but they rely on people coming and taking part in that. So so I wish I had known how normal researchers were and, yeah, how excited they are about their research. But also I wish I could work out a way of how to get participants excited about the research and get them to give up their time to come in and and take part in research, and that goes for all research out there. It's one of the problems we have with rider performance research is getting busy riders to come and give up some of their time to take part in the research, but we're not going to know any of the answers unless they do.

Liv: 1:04:15

Yeah, you need volunteers and people to be infused to come and join. Yeah, absolutely how. How is your relationship with imposter syndrome?

Lorna : 1:04:25

me, I, so I work with some really amazing people, um and I let that rub off on me, but yes, I'm them.

Lorna : 1:04:34

I never think I'm them, uh, as clever as all the other people around me that doesn't matter because I'm more interested, and that's that's something that somebody taught me a lot of years ago is you don't have to be clever, you don't have to be the brain of britain, you don't have to know the answers to everything, you just have to be interested, and that is um. That's a quote from professor brian cox, okay, and he basically says if you're interested, you won't find out about stuff, and I think that's the key be interested have a passion that, yeah, that you can follow, yeah.

Liv: 1:05:07

How do you think we can make research more accessible and understandable for everyone?

Lorna : 1:05:12

oh, now that is a big old question. And so science is going down the route of open access publications and that basically, so historically, a lot of these publications have been behind firewall or behind, you know, pay per view. So we put ours as researchers. We don't pay to publish, but the journal charges people to read the papers, whereas now we're going down the line of a lot of these um uh, journals are becoming what we call open access and people think that's great because they've got access to all this amazing research, which is brilliant. But that means researchers have to pay to publish. So publish an open access journal is going to cost me over 1800 pounds, all right, and and so that. And then also the more um, the more um papers that are accepted into the journal, then the more money the journal makes.

Lorna : 1:06:11

So you could suggest that is the peer review process as rigorous, because they want those anyway. That's another question. But that's no good, because most, most papers scientific papers, because most people I mean I'm the author of them and I don't think I read more than the abstract and and methodology and a couple of conclusions, you know. So I don't know that open access of all that science is necessarily anti. I think it's about better communication of the science and it's also about not talking down to practitioners. It's about enthusing them about the research and finding out what practitioners want researchers to to research as well, because especially even if it is open access.

Liv: 1:06:54

I know if I put it in front of my mum she'd go. What on earth does this mean?

Lorna : 1:06:57

yeah, exactly, I mean most people don't know what a p-value is, so why am I writing more of that? It's there, but I think there are some really good magazines out there which do some amazing stuff of taking the research and and basically laying out those bag of snakes and and and stray, and one of those is a magazine called horses and people which is available online. In Australia there's also horse talk, new Zealand and then the horse as well, so which is a kind of web-based journal as well, and the people who write for them are particularly good at communicating that the science, and I think that's something to to make sure that riders and practitioners follow. Brilliant, thank you for that suggestion.

Liv: 1:07:43

If there's one thing that you could teach the horse world, what would it be?

Lorna : 1:07:48

be nice to your horsies because it's a luxury. We we don't need to ride horsies anymore. There was a time where our survival is the human race depended on, on our use of horses, whereas now it's a privilege, and so we need to. You know, we have to accept that we exploit horses. Of course we're doing this. Nothing necessarily wrong with that. We need to make sure we do that in a state of optimal welfare, and just because we've always done it this way doesn't mean that that's going to work for that particular horse. So I think, be open-minded, be nice to your horsies, but also be nice to each other. You know the horse world as so can be really judgmental and it can be really difficult to express your concerns about horse welfare without actually being mean to people and actually not thinking about their welfare either. So I'm very much into the one welfare concept is that we can actually increase horse welfare, increase human welfare and well-being, and then hopefully our sports will survive yeah, actually just be kind to each other, just be nice be.

Lorna : 1:08:57

What is it Bill and Ted say be excellent to each other, be excellent you like that.

Liv: 1:09:02

So if you can sum up today's message in one summary, what is your last message to our audience?

Lorna : 1:09:09

and treasure your chest. Treasure your chest. I like that. So. So make sure you know you owe it to yourself to have bras that fit, that are well designed and you do not have to ride in pain.

Liv: 1:09:23

Wonderful. I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. It's been enlightening and I hope our audience has too. So if they have any questions, can they direct them to you? Yeah, absolutely, they can drop me an email always happy for an email.

Lorna : 1:09:36

Are you on socials? Yes, I am. I'm on Twitter, so I'll send you all those details so you can put them in the notes.

Liv: 1:09:42

So I'm Twitter and and definitely I'll share my email as well so if you've got questions, look at my show notes and you can direct Lorna directly. So, yeah, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your research and keep doing the wonderful job that you're doing. So thank you so much. Thank you very much, cheers, bye. What a woman loved that conversation with Lorna so insightful, and I really hope that you've taken loads away from it as well. So protect your chest, really look after it, because you're gonna get one. In the meantime, follow me on social media at Radar Strength Coach for all your strength and conditioning needs and don't hesitate to contact me if you need some help in that area. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a great day.