55 Corrective Exercises for Horses. Jec Aristotle Ballou
Donna Stidolph. You are one of a kind.
Thank you to everyone who showed up and made the marathon photo shoot a reality: Kelsey Doyle, Jane Brown, Liz Folb, Angela Rebol, Bill Blume, Sara Stern. I would also like to acknowledge the people who make my daily training program a pleasure and a success: Carlos Nunez, Carolyn Oshinsky, Juliette Rys.
This book was born from my own wish that a resource like this already existed. Thanks to Trafalgar Square Books for believing in the need for this book and for helping me develop it. Also, a nod to my mentors, horses, and students who motivate me to keep adding to my toolbox of skills. I continue to be inspired by the convergence of classical dressage principles with the findings of exercise physiology research, and I admire all the others who are also trying to fit this puzzle together. Let’s press onward together.
To my partner Siobhan I give enormous gratitude for accepting the ever-consuming focus that my life with horses occupies.
Introduction
Have you found yourself asking what kinds of conditioning exercises might be right for your horse?
Or which ones would improve the quality and coordination of his gaits, making him a more fun and willing riding partner?
Perhaps you are trying to resolve one of the following challenges related to his posture or performance:
Rebuilding after an injury or extended time off.
Countering an unspecified weakness that prevents him from doing what you ask.
Improving stiff, uncoordinated, or short-strided gaits.
Softening a rigid or hollow topline.
Lightening heaviness on the forehand.
Correcting a hindquarter anomaly like locking stifles, an unstable pelvis, or a strong preference to travel one direction versus the other.
Or maybe you would just like to better determine whether:
His resistance to work is due to physical limitation or behavioral issues.
He is physically capable to do what you’re asking.
There is a specific source of his weakness or reason for his lack of progress.
There is a cause for his need of frequent chiropractic adjustments or the way he often feels “not quite right.”
There are ways you can make his gaits easier and more fun to ride.
This book offers easily digestible and applicable guidance to resolve all these issues—and more.
Every horse needs to be an athlete first, and only then can he comfortably and willingly work with you toward your riding and performance goals. Along the way he often needs to overcome postural habits or weaknesses, muscular imbalances, incorrect gait patterns, and other restrictions that alter his fluidity of movement. The exercises in the pages that follow give you the answers and tools to bolster his athleticism so that he can be the best possible riding partner.
After starting in chapter 1 where you will gain a better sense of what kinds of corrective exercises will most benefit your own horse, feel free to peruse the chapters that follow in any sequence. Many readers will gain the most from browsing through the book and playing with various exercises. The exercises do not need to be performed in a particular order unless it is indicated in the text. The benefit of each exercise is clearly marked, so you can easily find the ones that are the best fit for your horse. You can then pick and choose your favorite exercises to form routines of your own design.
For those who want a more structured takeaway from all this information, I offer sample routines and schedules in special sections between the main chapters. These examples may help you apply the knowledge you have gained.
Here is what you can expect:
Chapter 1: Corrective Exercises to Create New Patterns
This chapter introduces you to corrective exercises and helps you determine what types of exercises your horse needs and why. The exercises in this chapter are a good place to begin as they offer benefits for any horse. The chapter is followed by a special section of routines to resolve common challenges and dysfunction.
Chapter 2: Tuning Up Postural Muscles
In chapter 2 you will learn strategies for what I call “pre-hab,” in other words, keeping your horse fit, comfortable, and sound. The routines after this chapter are specific to diagnosing dysfunctional movement.
Chapter 3: Simple Bodywork to Break Bad Habits
At some point during a horse’s career, he will likely find himself in a schedule of bodywork for maintenance or therapy and/or during a period of downtime. This chapter shows you how to approach bodywork therapies, and most importantly, follow them up with the appropriate corrective exercises. Plus, you will learn how to progress your horse’s physical condition even during periods of downtime.
After this chapter I provide routines for following up bodywork with exercise.
Chapter 4: Getting the Most from Groundwork
Learn how to make the most of times when you need, or prefer, to work with your horse from the ground rather than from the saddle. This is followed by routines for horses that are following restricted schedules due to rehab requirements.
Chapter 5: Exercises and Tips to Follow Every Day
Here you will find my non-negotiable and fail-proof rules for keeping any riding horse happy and performing well.
Following this chapter, I have offered recommended exercise routines for specific kinds of horses: gaited, senior, and youngsters.
CHAPTER 1 Corrective Exercises to Create New Patterns
Why We Need Corrective Exercises
Skilled riding is often all it takes to improve a horse’s athleticism, performance, and overall well-being. But just as often, even good dressage-based 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.
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. They require outside manipulation as well as correct signals from the body to clear out. 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