Modifying Muscle Patterns To Build A Better Athelete

Understand why and how you should activate a greater range of muscles in your horse's body.

- Jec A. Ballou

The goal of changing a horse’s postural habits to help him move better often derails in the first few minutes of a ride. Why? In the horse’s body, different muscles serve different purposes, and often dressage riders fail to activate the right muscles. Furthermore, activating the wrong muscles can cause other problems, like stiffness or limited flexion of joints, which are also counterproductive to the goals of dressage.

During training sessions, many riders activate the horse’s “gymnastic” muscles—or large, exterior muscles that are suited for locomotion. These muscles are responsible for making sure that the horse covers ground to move from one place to another, but they are not effective at communicating with the nervous system to establish new muscle patterns, or muscle memory. Overdeveloping a horse’s gymnastic strength can quickly result in stiffness and when it does, it alters a horse’s reflex system and inhibits joint flexion. As an example, a horse can have very strong back muscles but be highly compromised in how well he can move. According to veterinarian Dr. Gerd Heuschmann, tension arising from a hyper-toned back actually slows down a horse’s hind legs and creates a habit of bracing through his body rather than improving agility and balance. Likewise, gluteal muscles, when strengthened disproportionately to their neighboring smaller muscles, can restrict the hind legs from swinging freely. Many of today’s riders have misinterpreted the concept of strength, according to Heuschmann. They spend too much time trying to drill the big, flashy gaits they think they need for dressage. This repetition produces rigidity and asymmetry.