TIPS to improve your horses posture

What is good vs poor posture?

Firstly we need to know what good or poor posture actually looks like.
This is definitely something to ‘get your eye in’ with, the difference between good posture and poor posture, of the horse in front of you.
And once you start to see it and recognise it, you will see it everywhere.

Poor posture can lead really quickly and easily to back pain and 'kissing spine', so it's important that we can identify it with our horses, so that we can then work on improving it. If we don't even know that our horse has poor posture, our horses can been in long term discomfort or pain. 

Take a look at the images of Azuro: in the first image his back is dropped, his head and neck are held high, and his limbs are held under his body.
In the second image he is displaying good posture - a ‘leg at each corner’, standing square with limbs vertical to the ground, strong lifted core and back, neck at good angle compared to body (held not too high, not too low), neck lengthened, and a strong topline.

There are many shades of grey in between these 2 points, but these images should help you to see the big difference, and compare to your own horse. 

The 3rd image shows good posture in movement, which is another important aspect of exercising your horse...training them to move well, efficiently, and in good posture.

Movement is key!

This is one of the biggest tips in relation to improving your horses posture - exercise and turnout make the biggest difference!
Horses that have maximum amount of movement available to them have the biggest opportunity to build muscle! This helps with core strength and therefore posture.
Horses on box rest, as an example, tend to lose their muscle, core strength and their good posture by standing still. It’s no surprise that a lot of horses are never 'quite right' after box rest and go on to be diagnosed with kissing spine..they lost all of their core strength during box rest.

Variable feeding positions!

In the wild horses eat from a variety of heights, from the ground, from bushes and from trees. This variety gives the horse lots of different movements through the head, neck and body.
Compared with domesticated horses / stabled environment, where the horse might be standing in one position for a long period of time, eating from a haynet at one height, with barely any movement.
We can emulate the most natural living environment of the horse (how they are evolved to live!) through different eating heights!

Core strengthening exercises!

My number 1 tip for the majority of horses, is to add specific core strengthening exercises to your horses routine! These exercises directly affect your horses posture!
See last weeks blog for Tips on ‘carrot stretch’ exercises and how to get the best out of them with your horse! (Carrot Stretch Tips Blog: CLICK HERE FOR 'Carrot Stretch Tips'! ) 

Core mobilisation, core activation exercises, backing up, teaching your horse to lower the neck on cue, specific in hand exercises to help with flexibility and core engagement - these are some of the active ways that I work on posture with my horse on a day to day basis. I like to weave in tiny exercises and improvements into day to day life to make it all easier to achieve! 

FREE TALK SERIES NEXT WEEK!! Next week I am running my Posture, Core Strength & Crookedness talks, where I will be discussing the reasons why your horse struggles with certain aspects of exercise, why posture and the natural crookedness pattern are crucial to understand about our horses, how to assess your own horses, AND how we can improve our horses posture, core strength, crookedness and movement patterns!! Do come along and join in, I have a private training group for these talks, which is friendly and a safe space to learn. 

REGISTER HERE: Click HERE for Posture & Crookedness Training

I hope to meet you in the training group next week, and if you have any questions in the meantime, do get in touch, you can contact me through the CONTACT page here on the site!