What your horses posture is telling you

I talk a lot about horses posture, because it's important to understand, be able to assess, and be able to make positive change towards. And our horses posture can actually tell us quite a lot about what might be going on in their body. So assessing your horses posture regularly is a useful skillset to develop, whether you work with horses or you are a 1 horse owner. 

I like to compare human posture and horse posture to make it more easy to understand! 

In humans, poor posture is a slumping forward posture..'desk' posture, shoulders rolled forward, head and neck rolled forward, weak core, slumping spine, poor spinal alignment. All of this ends up over time resulting in back and neck pain as the joints and ligaments are continually pulled out of alignment. 

In horses, it's pretty much the same...weak slumping posture looks like a sagging abdominal line, and therefore a weak back, hindlimbs/forelimbs either too far under the body or too far out from the body, pelvis tilted too far forwards or backwards, hollow back, high head and neck carriage, or neck too low. 

What I see as good posture is a nice 'table top' type frame, so a leg at each corner (great visual for horses!), a strong and lifted abdominal line and back, limbs vertical to the ground, and the neck neither too high or low. 

Your horses posture can be showing you where they are uncomfortable. Horses are good at just 'getting on with things' so they can make postural adaptations to low grade pain for example, by tensing the back or shifting their weight due to discomfort somewhere in the body. 

So this is where we need to be a bit of a detective with our horses... stand back and look at how your horse is moving, and stand back and look at how they stand.

We go into a lot of detail around assessing our horses posture and crookedness patterns in my members group, so that we can be really clear about what needs to improve, and then we also have a measuring stick for progress, so to speak! 

Once you open your eyes to poor posture in horses, you won't be able to unsee it, and you will see it everywhere you go, it's like a blessing and a curse. But it's important that more horse owners are able to assess their own horses body, to help prevent the downward slope towards injury. 

HOW TO ASSESS YOUR HORSES POSTURE

• Tie your horse up, stand them as square as you can get them, and step back a few steps away from them 
• Just spend a minute or two looking at their body shape - this might be all you need to do! 
• Look at their back, abdominal line, how the limbs are positioned under the body, how the neck looks in comparison to the body, is it too high / too low? 
• Is your horse leaning forwards over the forelimbs?
• Are the hindlimbs vertical to the ground or too far under the body / too far out behind the body? 
• Does your horse look comfortable? 

Have a look at the photos, showing Azuro in poor posture and then good posture in standstill and in movement. You can use these photos to compare to your own horse...how do they compare? 

Get into the habit of stepping back from your horse and having a good look at their posture, and monitor change. 

If you need help with this just get in touch through the Contact page here on the site, scroll down the page to get to the box where you can email me. 

And if you're ready to get stuck in with improving your horse, my online Strength & Straightness training programme is easy to follow and implement, low cost to join, and you will get access to the full training system and my friendly members group! Interested? Click here for more details...Strength & Straightness programme