Exercise as therapy
The author of 55 Corrective Exercises for Horses shows how you can improve your horse’s posture and movement through targeted cross-training workouts.
Skilled riding is often all it takes to improve a horse’s athleticism, performance and overall well-being. But just as often, even good dressagebased training programs fail to fully root out the habits and patterns that prevent many horses from reaching optimal movement and correctness of their gaits. Anything from a poorly fitting saddle to inconsistent exercise schedules to an injury or stress, or past postural imbalances can create compromises. These quickly become deeper impediments to a horse’s movement mechanics that persist even with good, regular riding schedules.
The body’s way of taking care of itself during physical imbalances is to put up defenses. These defenses take the form of muscular spasms, adhesions, tightened muscles, restricted joint motions and signals to and from the central nervous system to move differently.
The author of 55 Corrective Exercises for Horses shows how you can improve your horse’s posture and movement through targeted cross-training workouts.
Curing these defenses is not as simple as giving the horse a period of rest, though that can seem like a sensible solution. Adhesions and spasms, for instance, do not go away on their own after aggravating sources have been eliminated. Clearing them out requires outside manipulation as well as correct signals from the body. Putting a horse out in the field for a few months with the hope that everything will clear up rarely fixes the underlying problems.
Therapies like chiropractic care and massage are generally successful in releasing areas of immobility so the horse is able to move optimally. They free up areas of tension and compromised mobility that the body will not release by itself. However, they only set the stage; they do not by themselves create healthy movement. For that, the horse must be taken through exercises that habituate correct new patterns. Physical motions are governed by an underlying wiring that will still store faulty signals until these signals are reprogrammed.
This is where corrective exercises come in.
PILATES OR YOGA FOR HORSES
The real value of corrective exercises far exceeds curing balance and gait dysfunction. Indeed, their necessity for supporting equine athletes at the top of their performance cannot be overstated. Without joint and postural stability, for instance, an athlete cannot develop strength and power correctly.
During regular riding and training, numerous factors make it difficult to target areas of the body that store the mechanisms for stability and symmetry the way corrective exercises do. These maneuvers access muscle fibers responsible for fine-tuned, well-coordinated movements while educating and strengthening the neuromuscular system beyond the adaptations gained from gymnastic work. For this reason, therapists sometimes refer to them as Pilates or yoga for horses. This is an accurate way to view them.
If you regularly train good patterns in the horse’s body map, he can keep performing with ease for a long, sound life. This simple practice also allows you to consider alternatives to joint injections, buckets of supplements, endless chiropractic appointments, career-ending physical limitations and a surprising number of behavioral problems.
UNDERSTANDING FASCIA
A body-wide cloth of fibrous collagen called fascia envelops muscles, nerves, veins and organs individually, and it also connects them all together to form a network. This gauze-like web of tissue determines, in large measure, how a body is able to move. When this tissue becomes disorganized, strained or dehydrated, its ability to glide across surrounding tissues is impaired. Eventually, this leads to a diminished range of motion in muscles and joints. The fascia adapts to this restricted pattern and spreads it throughout the horse’s entire system. Thus begins a cycle of restriction begetting more restriction.
Common reasons for fascia tissue losing its glide or pliability include: localized strain, a poorly fitting saddle, injury or inflammation, repetitive movements, and emotional stress. Good muscle function depends on pliability of the fascia, not just for force effort but also for sensory input. The sensory nerves that communicate information back and forth between muscles and the central nervous system reside in fascia. If and when the fascia is altered, these signals about joint position and muscle coordination falter.
A hydrated and well-trained fascia network plays an enormous role in fitness. Its significance reminds us to not think about training muscles individually, because in reality that is not possible. Through fascia, the horse’s system is interconnected. It is analogous to a T-shirt hanging from a branch. If one part of the T-shirt snags, it will pull on and disturb the alignment of threads farther away from the actual snag. The physical shape of the T-shirt will change and continue to lose form over time.
Exercises that focus too repetitively on the same range or plane of motion
If you regularly train good patterns in the horse’s body map, he can keep performing with ease for a long, sound life.
can cause the fascia to become excessively sticky and thick, limiting tissue glide. On the other hand, exercises that stimulate proprioceptive adaptations like ground poles, varied surfaces and alternating forces of effort help improve fascia (see “What Is Proprioception?” page 70). This translates to balance and stability in the body. Therapists call this optimum state a system-wide engagement of the nervous and muscular systems.
HOW GROUND POLES CAN HELP
Schooling horses over ground poles, whether in hand or from the saddle, can cure numerous gait irregularities or movement compromised by tension, crookedness and weak muscle patterns. Because they require the horse to take designated stride lengths in sequence, they install good, clear rhythms in all gaits. As the horse moves over poles, he learns to push equally from both hind legs, correcting imbalances in the effort of his hind limbs. Pole work contributes to straightness and symmetry through his core and mobilizes the spinal joints.
The postural adjustments needed for crossing poles recruits the horse’s interconnected abdominal muscle group, thoracic sling and gluteal chain. Schooling different arrangements of poles helps re-pattern existing habits within each gait, and leads to the creation of new signals from the nervous system. 6s V \ZnZrVl rulZ! walking over
raised poles improves core stability, joint flexion and intervertebral joint spacing. It assists horses recovering from sacroiliac pain, back injury or disrupted muscle use from stiffness.
Walking over poles contributes to the horse’s looseness and range of motion.
Trotting over poles plays more of a strengthening role. It develops strength in the larger back muscles that affect limb movement plus utilization of quadriceps, pelvic stability and stronger spinal stabilizing muscles. As these muscles are recruited, it can lead to a release of stored tension from the extensor muscle chain, which is a common culprit of horses that tend to be chronically hollow in their toplines.
Cantering over poles tones the thoracic sling, loosens the shoulders as the body rocks between forehand and hindquarters, and lifts the back. It can greatly improve flexion and extension of the back, which allows it to lift and carry the rider better. It is believed to
deliver the most mobilization of the lumbosacral joint, which enables the horse to engage his hind limbs.
Setting up ground poles can seem like an arduous task, which leads many riders to avoid it. But with some creativity, you can make it much easier. First of all, to promote your own consistency using poles, I recommend buying six to eight poles that are easy to move around and set up. This way you are far more likely to use them. If you try instead to use heavy or excessively long poles, you are far less likely to use them regularly. Unless you jump on a regular basis, I suggest using something else besides jump poles. You do not need anything fancy, but just something that is easy enough to use that you will do so consistently.
One of my favorite options is to use four-inch by four-inch redwood or cedar posts that are flat on one side---easily found in the landscape section of your local hardware store. I like them because they are sturdy but lightweight. They lie flat without rolling around and are easy to set up. In my travels, I have seen riders using other types of lightweight poles or creative variations. To summarize: Do not forgo ground pole work because you think you might not have the ideal supplies. Look around and use what you have handy.
About the author: Jec Aristotle Ballou has spent her life studying classical dressage. She has trained and competed through the FEI levels in dressage but has also competed in long-distance trail riding, ride & tie, breed shows and almost everything in between. A proponent of the interdisciplinary study, she serves as an adviser to the Western Dressage Association of America. In addition to her most recent book, Ballou is the author of 101 Dressage Exercises for Horse and Rider and Equine Fitness.