Seven Hills Training

09/22/2025

Your horse’s neck does so much more than hold the head. 🐴 It’s directly tied to how the back moves, how the forelimbs swing, and even how balanced every stride feels.

Here’s why ⬇️
🔹 The cervical spine connects with powerful muscles like the brachiocephalicus, trapezius, and thoracic sling. These don’t just move the neck — they stabilize the shoulder and swing the forelimbs forward.
🔹 When the neck lowers and extends, the nuchal ligament stretches and transfers tension to the supraspinous ligament, helping lift the back. That lift creates more swing, engagement, and freedom through the topline.
🔹 But when the neck is restricted, the back can’t rise freely. The result? Hollow topline, shorter stride, and more weight dumped on the forehand.

📊 Research shows that up to 72% of horses with neck restrictions also show back pain or abnormal posture. Another study found that horses with cervical dysfunction had significantly reduced stride length and thoracolumbar flexion compared to sound horses.

Now here’s where things go wrong: when the head and neck are forced into hyperflexion (also called “rollkur”), the natural mechanics you just read about are disrupted. Studies show hyperflexion:
❌ Shortens stride length and disrupts natural balance
❌ Increases stress markers (conflict behaviors, higher heart rate, elevated cortisol)
❌ Compresses the upper airway, reducing airflow and even causing “air hunger”
❌ Places excessive strain on the nuchal ligament, cervical joints, and soft tissues, increasing the risk of bursitis, tissue damage, and long-term musculoskeletal problems.

A systematic review of 58 studies concluded that 75% found hyperflexion negatively impacts welfare — and whatever tiny “performance benefits” exist are outweighed by the risks.

👉 Takeaway: Unlocking freedom in the neck = unlocking the whole horse. Encouraging horses to lower their heads naturally builds engagement, posture, and soundness. Forcing the neck into hyperflexion doesn’t improve performance — it compromises comfort, health, and welfare. 💙

09/11/2025

08/16/2025

Have you noticed the change?

08/12/2025

Every single time 🤓

08/11/2025

Great information for our metabolic horses!

We suggest these websites and books to deepen your understand of Insulin Resistance, Cushing's, and the laminitis that often accompanies metabolic conditions.

07/25/2025

Bend vs. Flexion — and Why It Matters for Your Horse’s Neck Health

Let’s talk biomechanics for a second — especially when it comes to the base of the neck and how we ride.

Bend comes from the ribcage — it’s a whole-body curve where the spine, barrel, and hind end all follow the same arc.

Flexion, on the other hand, comes from the neck — and when it’s overused or isolated, it can actually work against proper bend and cause all kinds of issues.

Have you seen your horse struggle with:
* Difficulty bending one direction
* Lack of straightness
* “Rein lameness” or hopping
* Uneven muscle development (especially in the neck and shoulders)
* Resistance to contact or connection
* Bracing or tightness at the base of the neck?

These are signs your horse might be compensating for discomfort or dysfunction — and that the way we approach bend and balance really matters.

Over time, over-flexing the neck (especially without true ribcage bend) can put a lot of strain on the lower cervical spine. It’s not just about where the nose goes — it’s about how the whole body.

Want to help your horse?
Think less headset, more body BALANCE. Encourage soft, whole-body bend starting from the hind legs, build straightness through the core, and keep the base of the neck long, lifted, and free.

Your horse will thank you for it. ❤️

07/24/2025

07/17/2025

Dr. Workman treated 171 Lumbosacral joints in the past 12 months. Why? Because it is one of the most problematic junctions in the equine spine- both clinically and also on necropsy results.

The lumbosacral joint is the main point of flexion and extension of the pelvis. This is the spinal section responsible for pelvic flexion and hind limb engagement (NOT the sacroiliac joints or ligaments). This major site of flexion has a central spinal disc section, associated articular facets, intervertebral foramen and the intertransverse joints between L6 and S1. It is mainly flexed through the hypaxial muscles- particularly psoas major. Some studies show alterations to the anatomy between the lumbar spine and sacrum at 30-33%. This means 30% of horses have an underlying structural issue that will cause complications to their ability to flex their pelvis (engage hind end). This structural defect will likely lead to not only lower-level performance but also higher rates of degeneration (arthritis, joint erosion, foramen narrowing, nerve impingement - PAIN).

That is why we treat so many lumbosacral joints and far fewer sacroiliac joints. Clinical exam and detailed ultrasounds can help us determine if this region is problematic in your horses.

06/20/2025

*** LENGTH OF SCHOOLING SESSIONS ***

Following my post from this morning, about Johnnie only working for 15 minutes, as he worked so well, I thought I’d give my opinion on how long horses should be worked for. This is my opinion. It is based on both my experience and understanding as a rider and horsewoman, and my knowledge as an equine vet with 12 years’ experience.

My horses are never, ever, schooled for longer than 30 minutes. This is more than enough time to achieve something, and if you haven’t achieved your goal after 30 minutes, it’s unlikely that you will by plugging on for longer. This 30 minutes includes my warm up, and a couple of short walk breaks.

I haven’t really had lessons for many years, but when I trained with Jennie Loriston-Clarke, and then more recently with Olly Barrs, their lesson times are 40 minutes. This includes warming up and warming down. Frequently, they wouldn’t go on past 30 minutes. Horses learn by repetition, not by grilling them for an hour at a time.

Horses also break easily. They damage ligaments and tendons. Yes, this is often unlucky and frequently caused by a sudden twist in the field. But it’s also frequently caused by too much schooling, especially if the surface is deep, or uneven. Proximal suspensory ligaments are not designed to take the weight of a horse in collected work for hours. Once a PSL is damaged, you are often looking at a lengthy rehab, or surgery to cut the nerve that supplies it (neurectomy). That is not to say that every horse with PSD has been overworked, before I offend anyone!

Horses break more easily when they are tired. A tired horse is more likely to trip, possibly resulting in ligament or tendon damage. Muscle needs some degree of fatigue to condition it, but not to the point of exhaustion.

A horse’s brain also breaks easily. Fatigue can also be mental. Granted, some horses’ brains don’t take much to break, but if a horse becomes stressed or can’t work out what you are asking him that day, then take a 24 hour break, and go for a hack, or just lunge the next day. Or give him a day off.

Most horses will be fit enough for their job, without being ridden 6 days a week. The main issue with lower level competition horses, is that many are fat. Exercise is a great way to get horses to lose weight, true, but not without reducing the amount of grass or hard feed they are receiving. Schooling a fat horse for an hour, will cause joint, tendon, and ligament problems in the long term. Find hills to slowly jog them up, or even walk them up, if you are wanting to exercise more to help with fitness and/or weight loss. Don’t school them more. Trotting endlessly around a flat arena isn’t really going to help with fitness.

If you are going to school, then add plenty of variety. Make sure the horse is working from behind, and not dragging himself along on his forehand. If you don’t enjoy schooling, you will be more inclined to switch off and trot endless 20m circles. So go for a hack first, and then just do ten minutes of intense schooling when you get home. That will keep both human and horse brains fresh!

This is an enormous topic, and it would take me days to cover it all, so this is really a brief summary. Keep schooling sessions short and productive, and if the session is going wrong, take a break!

Photo is of my wonderful Harold, on his lap of honour for winning the Advanced Medium Regionals, to qualify for the National Dressage Championships, a good few years ago now!

Feel free to share.

05/23/2025

05/16/2025

Atrophy in top lines and performance horses.

Soundness in veterinary science is judged by the horses ability to balance evenly across all four legs, when one leg is sore it presents in a lameness. Traditional one leg lameness is easy to spot, head bobbing and a definite asymmetry in stride. This will definitely be identifiable as lameness in the trot ups for competition and should be pulled up. That being said I am often seeing assymetric movement be passed off as sound. This is soundness grey area, assymetry in my opinion is the stage before lameness, the body is protecting a weakness that is yet to develop to the lameness. Assymetry can be from a plethora of problems from soft tissue to skeletal and very few of these problems are identifiable through imaging for horses. Unless it’s in a distal limb and I would argue that is often a red herring for an issue higher up.

Where it starts to get very tricky is body lameness, one pathway for body lameness is atrophy of muscles but why does it happen? Two main reasons, either the muscles aren’t utilised or the muscles have lost intervation by the nerves. If you’ve never googled “sweeny shoulder”, a common injury in Thoroughbreds I suggest you do that to see how nerves affect muscles. The delicate nerves and vascular systems in the horses body are all
Interconnected, I don’t like to focus on one area because the horse is ONE body. But for efficiency I’ll focus on a few, the trapezius(cervical and thoracic) waste away when horses are ridden on the forehand and behind the vertical. The trapezius is also affected by saddle fit and can impede the shoulders movement, the scapular cartilage is often damaged in horses with poor saddle fit.
Logissimus dorsi, affected by riding behind the vertical and hand dominated posture that impedes lateral spinal movement, easily atrophied if worked in tension.
Multifidus is an over looked muscle group in the back, it has a massive impact on DSP spacing due to the way it attaches and can pull DSPs towards each other(kissing spines) this muscle group can be protective or destructive depending on how you condition them. There are many more important muscle groups I will go in to detail in my book.

The main thing to remember about muscles is they are extremely compliant to their loading, meaning they either develop or atrophy. Just look at the huge range of development in humans, a ballerina and a body builder are both athletes but have developed their bodies in radically different ways.

Competitive eventing horses are judged on two things, their soundness in the trot ups and their ability to complete the three stage course, Dressage, cross country and showjumping. Horses who display atrophy in their top lines, will do dressage behind the vertical, be heavy in the riders hands and movements on the forehand. You don’t need a great topline for this Level of dressage, you can carry your horses front end and still score well enough. Horses with atrophy will display big lofty scope on the cross country to clear fences utilising both speed and hind end power. You don’t need a great top line for cross country. Where atrophy will bite you though is in the showjumping, because you do need healthy top lines to be able to either shorten or lengthen a stride to a show jump. You do need the horse to be up and off the forehand to lift the front end because unlike cross country you can not run at a show jump flat and fast. Show jumping is the leveller in eventing at high level because the fences aren’t solid and clever horses get sloppy knowing they can drop rails with hanging shoulders and lazy hind legs. For a good show jumper you need a horse who can collect well, not just be held together by the rider. This is the stage where healthy toplines matter, whether riders know it or not…..a young horse may get away with it but horses over 10 years old wont have elastic youth on their side.

The horses topline tells me everything about how that horse works, when muscles are atrophied they arent working…..it’s that simple.

Year after year we see these horses in the trot ups and the internet goes wild. Soundness and what can be proven are two very different standards. Vetrinary science is built on a peer reviewed, rigorous and reductive method but I feel the problems are more nuanced than science can explain currently. I see horses in dissection constantly that I’m amazed haven’t just laid down and died. Horses that shouldn’t let humans ride them from massive internal issues. Every single one of those horses displayed behavioural issues that were passed off as quirky, naughty or being difficult. I would argue that competitive horses have the mental grit to do the job even with sub par bodies, they are the David goggins of horses! The argument is that david was self aware enough to understand the impact on his body long term and we expect this servitude from the horse without them understanding the impact.

The argument for top line atrophy and performance is “they wouldn’t be able to do it if their bodies were ruined” unfortunately the evidence I see in dissection is the complete opposite. Horses will endure incredible hardships because they are wired as prey animals with the most incredible survival instincts and competive horses have extreme mental
Fortitude. I dont have any judgements or answers, what you do with your horses is your business but I believe in education and understanding for the things we are yet to learn.

The body keeps the score

04/06/2025

Not perfect, but functional -

As we learn more about the ramifications of physical issues, pain in horses and all things balance, we often go too far

There are times where a horse is too painful to ride, or where a physical condition makes them incompatible with working or even life

But, probably far more frequently are scenarios where horses are killed with kindness - an attempt to not push a horse leaves them crippled through inaction

Every person I know would have yucky x rays or diagnostics that sound bad for a pre-purchase. And yet, if we stop moving, if we give in to despair and consider ourselves crippled, we deteriorate quickly.

What we need to learn to do is understand the limitations, work toward improvements, and be fair in expectations.

Movement is the best medicine - and when we feel sorry for our horses, back off, or label them as a diagnosis or an X ray or a condition, we limit and often even ruin their chances at a healthy life.

Every case is of course different. I’ve said tearful goodbyes to some good horses I did everything I knew how to-

But more often than not, I’ve had great success with movement as medicine, and a little thinking outside the box