Did you know that horses are naturally crooked? Naturally 'one sided'? And naturally have one hind limb stronger than the other? 

This translates into ridden work / lunge work / other types of exercise, as...

• One rein stiffer than the other
• Your horse finding movements easier in one direction than the other
• Possibly even holding their head and neck to the outside of the circle
• Only bending through the ribcage in one direction
• Uneven rein contact
• More neck bend in one direction, less in...

Groundwork / in-hand work with horses seems to be a lost art! But it's so beneficial for training flexibility, symmetry and correct posture in our horses. 

In a nutshell, you are training your horse school movements including lateral work, from the ground. And anyone can do this! 

Horses are naturally one-sided (crooked), so consistently working on their symmetry to increase equal use of the body and limbs is important for long term soundness. If your horse is crooked and you don't...

Discussions around training aids for horses seem to cause a lot of disagreement!! I think it's a really personal thing whether you decide to use them, but I can give you some ideas on why they can be helpful! 

As an Equine Physiotherapist and Spinal Manipulation Therapist, I work with lots of horses with back pain, poor posture, injuries, and horses in post surgery rehabilitation, so I'm working in the 'correction' phase with horses a lot of the time.

What I see really regularly is...

CROOKEDNESS IN HORSES

Horses are naturally crooked. What do I mean by this?! They are one sided by default. Like we are - one hand is dominant, it’s the same in the horse.

Does your horse bend on one rein better than the other? Are his lateral movements better on one rein than the other? These are examples of the horse being crooked. 

There is a theory behind natural crookedness, that it comes from the grazing pattern as a foal, where they can’t reach the ground as their legs...

 WINTER EXERCISE 

The winter months really do throw up some difficulties with keeping our horses in exercise...rain, wind, snow, ice, frozen ground..and maybe all at the same time!

It's important to keep our horses moving as best we can, to stimulate their digestive system (see last weeks posts!), increase blood flow around the body, and maintain muscle tone and core strength. As well as deal with boredom if stabled!

Lunging can be a great way to exercise our horses, and especially in the winter months when the weather here in the UK is ‘tricky’ to say the least, lunging can be quick and effective for fitness, core strength, flexibility and maintaining muscle tone.

There are some instances where we can’t lunge our horses, but for those who can and would like more information, read on!

Tip 1: Keep your circle as large as possible

You can do this by walking a circle yourself, so that you...

Why should we be doing daily core strengthening work with our horses? Because we sit on the lowest, weakest part of their back, so this is the bit that needs to be strengthened for riding!

LET ME SHARE WITH YOU THE BENEFITS OF CORE ENGAGEMENT FOR YOUR HORSE!

Tip 1: Your horse will start working over his back

We have all heard this term, getting your horse to work over his back, and we probably know what that is or looks like, but WHY is it important and HOW do we do it? And what does it...

I talking a lot about posture and core engagement for our horses as it's so important and beneficial, so going a step further, I wanted to talk about how core engagement affects different activities for our horses!

Each activity with our horses requires them to have different skills, whether we are doing dressage, jumping, cross country, endurance, groundwork.

But all of these activities or sports require good core strength for different reasons! 

Dressage riders

Question for...

Through my time rehabilitating horses with injuries, one of the things I have noticed is that a lot of the horses have looked weak in their musculature, or uneven in the musculature at the point of injury/starting rehab, so I can start to see how the injuries may have happened.

Horses have not evolved for us to ride them, and they are actually a pretty poor design for riding!

They are big animals so I think it’s easy to think they are strong. However, size doesn’t alway mean...