At the heart of every saddle is the tree, and like everything else about a Wow saddle, Wow’s patented saddle tree is radically different. Bringing 21^st century improvements to a piece of equipment that hasn’t seen much innovation since its invention in Medieval England.

In the 18^th century, foxhunting necessitated a lighter, more forward cut to the saddle, resulting in what is recognizable as a modern English saddle. 300 years later, and most English riders are still sitting on what is essentially the same thing as foxhunters from 18th century England.

Wow’s patented Y saddle tree is made in-house out of a special ‘Y’ shaped carbon fiber frame. Imagine a traditional saddle tree, and flip it around. Instead of the fork of the Y sitting around the horse’s scapulae, the rider sits on the fork of the Y and the base of the Y forms the pommel and holds the headplate. 

Placing the Y bar in this orientation eliminates the painful pressure points created by your typical english saddle. These tree points sit behind the scapulae and in most cases, end up digging into the back of the horse's shoulders, stopping full use of their front legs by blocking the scapulae from swinging to their fullest extent, and not twisting with the horse's body as he swings his forelegs. The end result is a shortened stride, a drapey jump, and damage to the horse's shoulder cartilage.

On top of the tree points digging into the scapulae, the stirrup bars are typically attached on or near the saddle points, adding two small points where the rider's weight is focused on their horse's scapulae. When jumping, the rider's weight is amplified ten fold upon landing - that means a 100lb rider exerts 1,000lbs of pressure onto two small, quarter-sized points on the horse's scapulae! It's not difficult to appreciate why so many horses begin souring to the fences when considering these points (no pun intended)!

------

To solve these problems, Wow asked themselves, "What does the horse want from the saddle tree?" The answer is: a means to distribute the rider's weight evenly and symmetrically across the 7th through 18th ribs. This means there should be no longitudinal flexion in the tree front to back, or this consistent and even distribution of weight between the weight-bearing ribs would not be possible. If a saddle tree was longitudinally flexible, as in the image on the left (copyright courtesy DuPont Flex Tree) even more pressure will be focused on small points depending on what the horse is doing - especially if we consider the effects of billet placement, which typically fail to pull evenly down across the entire length of the saddle, front to back (refer to the image just above to see a traditional 3-billet attachment to a saddle tree). Even simply girthing the horse up will immediately focus pressure downwards into the middle of the tree, bending and warping the saddle before a rider has even mounted up and added even more weight into the center or rear of the seat. You do not want longitudinal flexion in a saddle tree.

However, as a horse moves, its shoulders need to find more space as the scapulae rotate back and down under where traditional saddle points sit as the horse's forelimb swings back and forth. For show jumpers, this shoulder rotation is even more dramatic, necessitating even greater freedom of use in their shoulders.

The solution is to let the head of the tree swing from side to side as the alternate shoulders rotate back under the tree. (And if you are thinking that when jumping, the horse needs to be able to rotate both shoulders simultaneously, we'll discuss Wow's solution to this in a later post!).

In other words, a horse would want a saddle that is longitudinally rigid and laterally flexible in the head. This is exactly what the WOW™ tree with “Lateral Flexion™” does. The shape of the tree and its carbon fibre construction gives the tree its strength and longitudinal stiffness. 

The complete flexibility of the saddle head also allows the huge range of headplates Wow offers - and in a far broader range of angles than any other changeable headplates on the market. Not only do they cover a greater range of openings, they also come in three different shapes - V, U, and UU - to accommodate different body shapes and shoulder widths.

It is Wow's ‘Y’ bar that gives the tree its strength and longitudinal stiffness. The fact that the strength is centered allows all the seats to have incredibly narrow twists – the narrowest twist on the market – which makes for superb leg contact, comfort and stability for the rider.

There are also three longitudinal curvatures of these “Y” bars to suit different profiles of a horse’s back; a flatter Y bar for flat backed horses, a semi-curved Y bar for slightly curved backs, and a curved Y bar for normal to sway-backed horses. In the image here, these three curvatures are shown on the Wow saddle gauge. While the differences are subtle, they are still vital to proper saddle fit. Note that these curvatures only vary between the mid-seat to the front. The rider sits in the same place regardless of the curvature of the tree. The curvature of the tree determines how high the headplate is held. The flatter the curvature of the tree, the more open the arch of the headplate. The curvature of the tree will determine the shape of the headplate needed to balance the saddle front to back.

For example, a horse that needs a:

DXWG (Dressage front gusset, Extra-Wide Gullet) with a 2” rear gusset on a curved tree and V0 Headplate

Would need a:

DXWG (Dressage front gusset, Extra-Wide Gullet) with a 2” rear gusset on a semi-curved tree and U0 Headplate