What is a gait analysis?

So many times in my riding career, when I was out and about competing, I’d hear lots of the same things:

• Horse needs to be rounder;

• Deeper frame;

• More bend;

• Get them off your leg;

• Ride with more forwardness.

And while these do go a long way in helping our horses develope, it we focus purely on these as our gold standard, it means that we end up compromising our horses:

• soundness,

• quality of gait,

• longevity of riding career,

• competitive potential, and

• overall comfort when being ridden.

I have seen a number of horses developed to these “gold standards”, and ended up watching their strides shorten & become irregular, to the point of causing the horse to become unsound and causing long term lameness issues.

I have even seen horses that have had to be euthanased because their quality of life has significantly reduced due to developing them under these “gold standards”.

Just because a horse is in a rounded frame or on the bit, doesn’t mean it is working soundly!

How then, you ask, can I ensure my horse is working with and for soundness? How can I make sure I am riding my horse in a way that will help protect their riding career longevity?

That is where the gait analysis comes in.

The gait analysis can spot:

• how much our riding is interfering with the quality of the horses movement and their overall soundness;

• an indication of what lameness issues are most likely to come up in our horses future if they continue to work in the same way;

• shows us how we can change their exercise program so that we can not ony ride them for soundness but increase their expression of movement; and

• it can show us what exercises to revisit when the training plateaus, so we can revisit and then continue the progression through the training scale.

At Equestrian Movement, we actually strive to ride horses in a way that the horse itself WANTS to be ridden, and that the action of riding and movement FEELS good.

When the quality of how we ride is judged on head carriage instead of self carriage, quite often we end up seeing horses that are, at best, ridden in discomfort, and at worst, ridden in pain and in a way that they will break down and have to retired or meet an untimely end to their life.

The purpose of a gait analysis is to keep us accountable - that the riding is happening FOR the horse, not to the horse.

So if you want to take steps towards a horse that is sound, happy and working really well in self carriage, click the image below to view our virtual gait analysis package.

Your horse will thank you for it.

What is Self Carriage? (Video)

Does your horse need more forward?

Have you been told your horse needs more forward?

Do you think that means it needs more speed?

There’s a good chance your horse doesn’t actually need more speed, which is what we are inclined to think and try to do, but it actually needs more power!

When we ride our horses for more speed it pushes them out of their naturally stride, rushes them on the forehand and makes the stride short and choppy. This makes the ride less pleasant to watch but more importantly makes the horse less structurally sound.

The forwardness that we are looking for is power and the horse tracking up (prints of the hindquarters stepping into the prints for the forehand).

The power and tracking up that allows the power to travel through their body, lifts the forehand and develops impulsion. This connectedness and lift of the whole body engages the horses’ core postural muscles and improves their overall long term soundness while in the frame. It does this by:

• Shifting their weight off the forehand thereby reducing the concussion on the forehand.

• Getting them to lift their tummy muscles so they hold from their core instead of bracing their back.

• Lengthening their neck thereby reducing the compression and pain through the neck and pole.

• Increasing overall freedom of movement, elasticity and tone.

So to get more forward we actually need more slow!!!

Say what?

To build the strength and power of the hindquarters and also tune the sensitivity to legs mean go, we need to ask our horses to slow, wait and sit into their haunches and then drive forward out of it kind of like squats.

So now not only are you using an exercise that BUILDS your horses ability to give you that forward but also an exercise that TUNES your horse in to the aid.

And this is how we like to work at Equestrian Movement.

It doesn’t matter how good you are at applying an aid, if your horses can’t physically do what you’re asking it won’t respond to it until it is. So we use exercises that build our horses musculoskeletal system to ride a frame, and incorporate the aids within the exercise that will be our cues or words that we will use with our horse once they are physically ready.

This way, we are NOT desensitising or deadening our horses to the aids, but we ARE developing them for longevity of their career.

Interested in how we do this?

Check out our course Green to Self Carriage, where we break down all the aids and exercises so that they build on top of each other all the way through to your horse working in a working frame for soundness & longevity.