Align Your Horsemanship with Lucy Wilson Spillane

14/06/2023

21/04/2023

"Get his hindlegs underneath him"

A really unhelpful phrase, with potentially damaging connotations for your horse.

You see, your horse's ability to step through from behind isn't just mediated with the hindleg.

A great deal of their hindlimb range of motion is determined by the range of motion available in their back.

As your horse steps forwards with a hind, their lumbar region (the area behind the saddle but in front of the pelvis) should flex.

As the hindleg retracts out behind your horse, their lumbar region should extend.

The degree of flexion and extension is determined by the movement -

Bigger trot = bigger variation in flexion/extension
Smaller trot = smaller variation in flexion/extension

If your horse can't access their lumbar region, they will likely be over utilising their hocks and stifles = increased potential for pathology.

By chasing the horse's hindlegs underneath them and not paying attention to what their back is doing, you will be increasing the possibility of pathological biomechanics.

Tracking up is not a metric for success where the back is concerned - just because they're tracking up doesn't mean they're using themselves well.

And this is where obedience doesn't equal biomechanic function - your horse's compliance for the exercise doesn't mean they're doing it in a healthy way.

So as riders, we need to get good at assessing movement for health.

This includes meeting your horse where they're at and understanding that musculoskeletal adaptation isn't instantaneous.

19/04/2023

❤️

20/03/2023

"Many trainers-- unaware of neural fatigue-- advocate constant aids. Examples crop up in all riding disciplines.

Dressage trainers often teach riders to hold steady on the outside rein at all times, as a support to the horse. Hunter/jumper trainers frequently ask that riders maintain strong lower leg pressure, to keep the horse forward and rider secure. (Etc)

All of these are static cues; they are applied, maintained, and unchanged. They defy the reality of neural fatigue, causing us to ride against a horse's brain rather than with it. Very quickly, receptor cells in the horse's mouth or sides tire.

They can't continue to send "pressure" signals to the horse's brain.

That's why constant aids become meaningless-- its not the horse refusing to respond, it's that he'd have to override his own brain cells to do so."

-- Horse Brain Human Brain (Dr. Janet Jones)

13/03/2023

Memory is a fascinating thing. This morning, I took a shower with some “English rose” scented body scrub I hadn’t used before. In an instant, as soon as I smelled it, I was transported back to my early teens and the swimming pool I went to almost every day after school. The way to the showers there was lined with wild rose bushes and they had that exact same smell. I remembered that the stone path was always hot from the sun and that I mostly ran along to avoid burning my bare feet.

Horses have a much better sense of smell than humans. In fact, the horse’s sense of smell is probably its best developed sense and it might be even better than that of dogs. In the horse’s brain, a large area is dedicated to the sense of smell and its olfactory pathways run along almost the whole side of the brain (Janet Jones: Horse Brain - Human Brain, page 79). Horses also have an incredible memory.

So when your horse gets scared of something, or someone, and you don’t see what could be the problem, or when they refuse to go somewhere, it might be that they smell something you can’t smell, and it could also be that a memory pops up which they connect to that smell. Just like when you smell the perfume your ex used to wear and you immediately get transported back to your last fight or a bad breakup. Or they could smell something which is connected to a nice memory, such as the smell of a tree they like standing under during summer or the earthy scent of the ground where they liked to roll at a previous stable. And maybe their thoughts just linger on that memory for a moment, just like me lingering on my fond memory of happy childhood days this morning.

06/02/2023

04/02/2023

I'm striving to be part of a future for horses where the poor performance diagnostics don't stop at a head-nodding, hip-hiking, nerve block assessment.

Where posture isn't disregarded as conformation.

A reality where postural assessment is drawn in to the reasoning behind why a symptom may occur;

Despite there being no evidence of pathology.

For it to become the norm to observe the mechanical deficit and understand which soft tissues are integrated within that movement,

How they're misfiring,

And then develop a plan to sympathetically address that posture in a logical way.

Rather than disregard it as a benign deficit the horse has.

Rather than tell owners to just push through their intuition and ignore those feelings that something is wrong with their horse.

But also to cultivate movement that supports the horse's emotional wellbeing too.

Instead of treating the horse like a puppet to be controlled.

Because whilst movement is medicine, if the mind isn't there with the body, if there's no freedom, joy and expression,

It's just going through the motions.

-





Lovely Lenny, owned by LS Horsemanship ❤️