08/27/2026
Did you know? Landings can be postural?
Farriers are taught to pay close attention to how a horse lands.
Medial first? Lateral first? Toe first? Heel first? Level?
And this is important. Gross hoof imbalance can alter distal limb alignment, influence the orientation of the hoof as it meets the ground and create a pathological environment. Correcting that imbalance can absolutely improve landing.
But there is an important distinction that is often missed! The farrier does not have complete control over the landing.
Why?
Because landing occurs at the end of swing phase. During swing, the position of the hoof is being determined by the entire limb above it.
Muscle activation controls joint flexion and extension. The orientation of the carpus or tarsus, fetlock and distal joints influences the final position of the hoof. Tendon tension provides proprioceptive information to the nervous system. Conformation affects limb trajectory. Posture changes joint relationships. Fatigue and neuromuscular tone can alter limb placement. Myofascial physiology can create constrictions.
So the hoof that eventually meets the floor is the endpoint of a whole-body movement strategy.
I had a great example of this while working on a horse in Norway.
Before shoeing, the horse had a lateral landing. I assessed the hoof and corrected what I considered to be the underlying three-dimensional hoof imbalance.
Then we watched the horse again. The landing got worse. It was now landing very obviously on the lateral toe quarter.
At first glance, you might reasonably conclude that the shoeing was wrong. And if your primary measure of mediolateral balance is a level landing, the logical response would be to take the shoe back off and remove more lateral toe until the horse landed flatter.
But I was confident in the balance I had established. So rather than continuing to manipulate the hoof to chase the visual landing, we looked further up the system.
A fascial manipulation practitioner who was working with me assessed the horse and identified significant restrictions through the chest. She treated those restrictions.
We changed nothing on the foot. We watched the horse again. It landed level.
That is a hugely important clinical lesson. The hoof had not changed. The shoe had not changed. The trim had not changed. The horse above the hoof had changed.
This is entirely consistent with the framework developed in my upcoming book. Changes in posture, muscle tone or fascial stiffness within the scapulothoracic sling can influence swing phase, limb placement and therefore landing behaviour. Farriery can influence posture and landing, but it operates within constraints imposed by the rest of the neuromuscular and myofascial system.
This is why we need to understand the difference between landing and loading.
Landing is primarily a kinematic event. It describes the orientation of the hoof at initial ground contact. Loading is a kinetic event. Once the hoof contacts the ground, force rises, the centre of pressure migrates, joint moments develop and the structures of the digit begin resolving ground reaction force.
And importantly!
Landing does not reliably predict loading.
Research discussed in the book has shown that the orientation of initial contact does not reliably correspond to centre-of-pressure distribution later in stance. A horse can land laterally and subsequently load centrally. A visually level landing can still develop asymmetric loading as force increases.
This matters because the hoof does not remodel according to what it did for the first instant of contact.
Morphology reflects the forces applied, sustained and accumulated through stance.
And this forces must be resolved by the rest of the body.
Impulse and repeated midstance loading contribute to the time-dependent deformation and adaptation that ultimately shape the hoof capsule and create a bi-directional relationship between hoof morphology and posture.
So imagine what could have happened in the Norway case.
If I had looked only at the lateral landing and continued removing lateral hoof until it looked level, I might have altered a hoof that was already mechanically balanced in an attempt to compensate for a problem originating elsewhere in the system.
I could have created hoof imbalance to compensate for postural asymmetry.
That is the danger of chasing landings.
This does not mean we ignore landing. Farriers absolutely influence it, and grossly abnormal landing can be valuable information.
It means we need to recognise its variables and, importantly, recognise the limits of trimming and shoeing.
Once hoof imbalance has been appropriately addressed, persistent landing asymmetry should make us ask another question!
Is the hoof still causing the landing, or is the landing now telling us something about the horse? Or is it simply normal for that individual?
The relationship works in both directions.
Hoof balance → limb orientation → proprioception → muscle and fascial tone → posture.
But also
Posture → muscle and fascial tone → limb orientation and swing phase → landing → stance mechanics → impulse → hoof morphology.
It is a closed loop.
And that means good modern farriery sometimes requires knowing when not to take any more hoof away.
This distinction between landing and loading, how posture influences the hoof, how the hoof influences posture, and where the limits of farriery sit within that system is exactly the kind of discussion we will be getting into during the TED USA Tour clinics.
Because sometimes the most important thing a landing tells the farrier is that the answer isn’t in the foot.
