I was interested for a long time in stretches, and practises a few of them already, but since Amiro is very stiff I thought I should learn more about stretching. Another reason was that I did not know well enough about the horse muscles to invent new stretches myself so not much variation to do.
I've ordered the small book "stretch exercises for your horse" from Karin Blignaut recently. It is a nice book with a clear introduction to the horse muscles and it tells exactly why you do which stretch. So I quite like it. Miriam asked me to start a topic on it, so here it is
Why stretching:
Quote from the introduction of the book:
Quote:
The stretching of muscles has been an integral part of the training of the human athlete for many years. At each gymnastic or athlethic performance we see athletes and gymnasts doing their warming up together with their stretching exercises as a preventive measure against injury. Recent studies has shown that active stretching should be done both before exercise to help tone the muscles and ensure a good range of movement, and after exercise to lengthen the muscle to the same state they were in before commencing the exercise. A swedish study showed that strength training without stretching at the conclusion of the exercise led to the range of movement being restricted for 2-3 days. When the muscles were stretched after strength trainingm the movement range remained normal. Yet we see little stretching in the warm-up of the equine atglete, be it racing, jumping or dressage (or AND!!!)
What kind of stretching:
All stretches are roughly divided into three catagories. Active stretches, passive stretches and automatic reactions. I personally don't like the automatic reactions described in this book, so I only use the two other kinds of stretching.
Active stretches - encouraging your horse to stretch his own body. eg when riding, but I've already seen that you can do all exercises also on the cordeo in groundwork.
passive stretches - taking limbs of your horse and move them yourself while your horse just gives himself to the stretch but does not move actively.
starting:
Make sure, before the stretches, that your horse yields to pressure. When your horse does not yield to the pressure you don't stretch any passive stretches. When you lift the leg of your horse for example to stretch the cervical section of trapezius, latissimus dorsi, serratus ventralis cervicis, deltoideus and triceps (yes, I needed my book to look up those names
) and your horse does not yield to your pressure (taking the leg, stretching it forward with soft pressure) than these muscles contract in stead of stretch, so you get the opposite result of what you want.
Main idea:
It is important to use soft, gentle and slow movements. Active stretching is normal for the horse, but passive stretching is quite unnatural and a horse must find his balance if one is suddenly taking and moving his legs or his neck for him. Never push further than your horse shows you in passive stretching. Overstretching of the muscles can be dangeroes!
You stretch to get contracted tense muscles long and supple again. So it is important to both strenthen the muscles as stretching them. A long and supple muscle without strength is damaging for the horse. A tense and short muscle without flexibily as well, so it is important to use both strengthing and stretching exercises.
What I saw in Amiro:
Of course, when I finished the book I wanted to try some easy stretches on Amiro.
First we did a little warming up by meaning of a wild play with some running. After that we practised passive stretches. While I was moving Amiro's body parts he got very relaxed and was looking curious what I was doing. It worked a bit like a massage I think, Amiro let go of all tension and seemed to enjoy the stretches. After these stretches we did some active stretches like shoulder in. It was better than before, Amiro was balancing himself better and, even thhe bend to the right which he finds quite difficult, was OK now!
Today I tried again some passive stretches and I got prove that Amiro liked them. He gave his feet willingly to me (almost throw them in my hand if I asked him to) and was getting again very relaxed and soft when I was finished. So... I like them!
About the book:
Luckily everybody in here has brains, so not much to say here. Many things in the book are not so good. They use a bit and force their horse if the horse does not work along willingly. Also the whole book has as a goal to improve competition performance. But... It is for ame a great source of inspiration. A clear discription of the muscles is very handy and useful to read, now I can work with the exercises in the book but also have some more understanding of the horse body which helps me to find more exercises to do. It is not a book to copy things from without thinking about it, but very useful for most people I think! And, for traditional thinking, I think the author has a very horse friendly look.
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