17/03/2025
Over the past couple of weeks I have spoken with many owners who talk about horses injuring the same limb time and time again, not necessarily the same injury but injuries sustained to the same limb. This could be tendon and ligament injuries or joint inflammation/pain. I hear them say the injuries are not related, that its just the horses weak limb/area etc etc. Its the horses conformation thats caused it. Or, its to be expected because the horse does X job.
Then there are the injuries that only get so far through a rehab plan and cannot get past a certain point.
In my opinion, we need to start looking at these injuries from a different angle.
1. Why does that horse keep injuring the same limb or have reoccurring pain in joints?.
I would say that there is clearly some over loading of that limb and that will come from way higher up than the limb itself. The injury itself is the end result of a long line of biomechanical adaptations the body has made which has resulted in the limb bearing more weight than it should. There is only so much time a structure can be over loaded
before there is structural failure. This is simple engineering. Simple physics.
So, to prevent further damage we need to source the root of the biomechanical adaptations and start there. AT THE SOURCE.
By doing so we can prevent further damages as we aim to 'level up' the weight distributed so that it is within parameters that the structures can cope with. We therefore prevent further structural failure. This is totally possible with an 'outside the box' approach.
I have done it and I know a small group of others who have taken this approach with great success.
2. We need to rewrite the 'rehab programme' to one that actually helps the horse to heal.
If we have a poor posture that unevenly distributes the weight so that structural parameters are being exceeded, causing structural failure, why do we think exercising the horse for X length of time and increasing that length of time will be useful for 'rehab' in these cases?.
Think of it this way...
You have a poor postural stance that causes you knee pain when you exercise.
You rest, the pain and any tissue traumas heal/subside.
You feel better. So, you begin to exercise.
The pain and tissue traumas come back.
Why?
Because you did nothing to change your posture which was the root cause of the knees being over loaded beyond their loading parameters, causing tissue damage and pain.
If however, you learnt how to make postural changes that would off load the knees and then today you took 10 strides in that new postural balance and 15 tomorrow, 20 the next day and so on you would in a couple of weeks have retrained your brain to movement in a new state of postural balance.
As you build up the steps of good posture and it becomes the norm for your body you can increase the amount of steps you take and increase the 'work' you do, whatever that is for you. It could be jogging a few strides, dancing, returning to a sport you do or running a marathon.
If however, you stayed in your old postural pattern that over loads your knees and increased your exercise by a time scale only it wont be too long before you are back to your knees being inflamed and hurting. Once again being loaded beyond their structural parameters. You have changed nothing except the time scale.
So why do we increase the time scale of walking/riding/lungeing/horse walker for the horse on 'rehab' while it is still going to execute the taken steps with a poor balance which continues to overload the injured area?. 🤷♀️
🤓 Everything taught at my clinics, in lessons and to owners undergoing the rehabilitation of their horses with me aims to get the rider understanding the horse better from an anatomical and biomechanical approach and to learn how to improve the horses balance and posture for soundness.
If we aim for this approach maybe we can ditch the conventional incremental time 'rehab' plans. Sound horses do not need rehabbing.
I really love helping people to keep their horses sound.
DM for more details.
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