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| Discussion on Rafter Hips | |
| Author | Message |
| New Member: maryc |
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| Member: terrido |
Posted on Wednesday, Aug 20, 2008 - 2:17 pm: Hills are usually the recommendation for building hindend muscle. But it is possible to build the correct hindend and top line muscle on flat ground.Horses naturally carry their weight on the forehand, kind of pulling themselves along. What you want is to have more push power from behind. To build the backend, you have to ask them to shift more of their weight and thereby carry power to the rear. Keep in mind this will be difficult until the horse has gained enough strength of muscle (possibly muscle mass as well) to achieve correct movement and sustain it for very long. What I use is good old fashion longe work, doing walk and trot only. LOTS of walk and trot work. Begin with walk only, asking the horse to stretch forward with nose and lower from the base neck. First trying to achieve a nice relaxed way of moving. This helps to build the topline of muscle (top of neck, down the back to the hindend), by "engaging" the backend. Next step is to ask for more activity from behind. More forward motion if you will. Like go, go faster, go faster. At first the horse may break to trot even canter. This is fine, allow it for a bit then ask to come back to walk, and continue to build it again. The key is knowing when the horse is using the right muscles, and helping them to do so. If you do not know what you are looking at and for, then find someone to work with that can help you train your eye.  When the horse no longer quickens stride as you ask for more GO with whip (asking for more activity,) he will be moving well engaged and more correct. At this stage the rear leg joints will bend more but the stride cadence (rhythm) remains constant. This is where the right muscles will begin to take shape and build strength. (Activity=bending of joints, how much they bend) This should first be achieved at walk and then at trot. At trot the horse will break to canter when it is too difficult to maintain the trot movement while fully engaged. ;] Patience here. Understand that as he breaks into a canter it's getting difficult for him, which means you are on the right path! Again allow it for a bit and then ask him to come back to trot and start over again. Until the horse has gained strength enough to sustain the correct movement (engaged from backend thru topline), longe sessions should be very kept short, just a few minutes to each direction. Punctuate the work with really intense requests to engage but for very short bursts only, allowing the horse to just stop and walk relaxed on their own in between. Just like us, muscles that are out of shape need to be brought back very slowly so we don't hurt too much. If we get sore we don't want to exercise again soon, the horse is no different. Once you have achieved good engagement at both walk and trot then you use loads of transitions between the two. The transition work will also help build strength of muscle. Increase the work session times, keep the work even but add in a super intense bit(s) of extremely short duration(s) both directions every session. Again like us, we exercise and then do an intense bit for a short while, and back to normal exercise. Do the same with your horse. Once the horse has enough strength you can add in walk-canter transitions. But for building muscle and building strength and push/carry power in the backend, nothing beats good old walk and trot! Can you do this under saddle? Well tbh, if you have been riding the horse for more than 6 months trying to help him build muscle and strength and still no significant change has been built in the backend, most likely there'd be more benefit from good (correct) longe work. But yes if you know what you are doing you can do the same work under saddle. If there isn't any muscle mass or strength in the hindend, personally I wouldn't ask the horse to carry weight to try to build it. Frankly that would just add another level of difficulty for the poor horse. And if the horse is one prone to keeping nose way up in the air, then working correctly under saddle will be that much more difficult. Chance are good at the stage the horse's back cannot take the weight and the nose up constantly is how he is trying to tell you. ;] Just my opinions here, ok? Anyway many people will say 'tons of transitions' will build muscle in the backend. Yes, that's true, but you can build it better I think by asking the horse to carry himself correctly. Surprisingly many horses just don't really understand they can do this, so they just don't. ;) |
| Member: amara |
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| Member: ajudson1 |
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| Member: terrido |
Posted on Wednesday, Aug 20, 2008 - 4:35 pm: Well thank you Melissa! And for you both, Mary and Angie, there is exercising and there is EXercising! haha One is just to burn off energy (mindless circles) and one is more physical therapy (correct work on longe). Course this goes hand in hand with under saddle too. ;)Angie, to your question, "eeewwwwwww" (shudder) Sorry I don't use "gadgets". No side reins, no 'pessoa' harness thingy, nope, simply a longing cavesson and a line. Line connected to center ring of cavesson so I can ask horse to change direction without having to stop and modify connection. Use of surcingle, side reins etc. comes much later in a horse's development, if at all. Course if you are training for carriage, using long lines, or long reins, then a surcingle would be a must. If you learn to work the horse correctly you will find no need for any gadgets. Often use of gadgets will not make the time to goal shorter because the horse may never truly reach the goal. By using some of these 'helpers' you can help the horse bypass correct use of his body, imho. Now I will be first to admit learning to make the horse work correctly is not an easy task! But once you know how to do it (technique) and know what you are looking for in the horse's body, movement, carriage etc. (training your eye) there should be no need of anything to assist. I was very lucky, I have an incredible trainer, and luckily had purchased a very green mare to learn on. One that has a high set neck and naturally carried her head way UP. (Friesian) She did not know how to engage her backend at all. So I count myself extremely lucky because my trainer taught me how to see what I needed to see in her movement and body posture so I could help her use herself more correctly. Yes it took quite a while! haha I also know that there probably aren't many around that are able to teach this. And so you have many that 'cheat' more or less by using gadgets to help the horse move in a certain "frame". *sigh* OK, I will share a couple tips of wisdom. Greatly held 'secrets'... 1) the poll is directly connected to the hocks. 2) forward energy can produce lots of activity in the hocks So what does these mean? Simply put the faster you make the horse go within the gait the more active he is in his hocks (more joint bending and movement). As the hocks become much more active, the horse will relax in the poll... which means he will lower his neck from the base and poke his nose out in front of himself - stretching. Yes at first he will break gait. This means at walk, as he walks faster, he will start to trot. If at trot he will canter. The trick is to keep him within the desired gait at that threshold just below the next higher one. Eventually and with normal training techniques to ask him to lower his head, he will do so and stretch out. Ha I could write a book just on this!! Maybe I should. You can use normal praise and body language to ask him to lower his head. This will just work together and work a bit faster for him then. With his head lower his muscles are engaging correctly, asking for more activity, more oooomph if you will, will just help him keep that head down, and maybe even lower it more. Eventually what happens is he "goes on the bit" or "on contact" of course with just a longe cavesson there is no bit! The overall look and carriage is of a dressage horse "on the bit" or on the aids, or in contact, etc whatever you wish to call it. This is a horse that is properly "engaged" using topline and power of hindend to propel himself forward. Working correctly. The key word is WORKING, as all the right muscles are now working. For Bella we used the end of the longe whip tip position to ask her to lower her head. Carried raised but behind us, as she would just begin to lower her head or dip it at all, the whip tip went to ground instantly with loads of praise. She soon learned that when the whip tip was up she should lower her head! Anyway whatever your choose, the objective is to get that head down and the horse moving forward, that's the only way the correct muscles will engage and be used. |
| Member: ajudson1 |
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| Member: amara |
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| Member: terrido |
Posted on Friday, Aug 22, 2008 - 8:05 pm: Mary, thought you might like to see a couple photos of longing my girl.First when we began to teach her to put that head down and work, this is spring 2006 shortly after I got her, my husband learning how to longe: 
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| Member: terrido |
Posted on Friday, Aug 22, 2008 - 8:09 pm: And this from just a few weeks ago, not a very good photo really, sorry about that: Can you see the difference in the shape of her hindquarters? And can you see how much more even in her stride she is now than she was? And she was pretty well balanced and even a couple years ago, it's just gotten better is all, a bit more refined. |
| Member: maggienm |
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| Member: terrido |
Posted on Sunday, Aug 24, 2008 - 6:10 pm: Lori, and here in lies the issue with trying to explain in words. LOL This is not an easy task at all to try to explain.Basically bottom line is yes. As in training anything it's the "release" or praise that is the reward. Starting with lowering the head: in our case while longing, the 'release from the whip pressure' would be the reward as the horse lowers its head. We did use other methods to help her learn to relax and lower the head, the whip was just one 'cue' we taught her. "Driving" whip pressure (meaning whip position is used to drive her more forward) applied if her head was up, the instant she dipped that head down at all the whip tip went to ground. Course your eye and timing have to be on. Still today I do this, if she puts her head up I drive more with whip until she starts to lower, I put whip tip to ground and she will really lower her head. As to the beginning, yes drive forward so they move about as fast as they can in that gait, in our case initially a walk. This makes them more active in the rear legs, this in turn will help them release thru the poll... If the horse is really tense, has always gone around hollow and doesn't understand how to release that tension and lower the head then you have to teach the horse. ;] OK, smarty so how does one do that?? haha Well there are various means, but what my trainer uses mostly is bending. Bending them thru the neck in a specific way (which would take too much to try to explain here the full technique) to help them release tension and start to relax into the movement of walking forward. Again lowering the head. What I look for in a walk once the horse has started to relax and become more active in the joints is that nice open, loose throatlatch area. As the hocks become more active, the horse will soften thru the poll, the result you tend to see is an opening thru the throat, and the bottom of the throatlatch turns almost to jello. It gets really jiggly especially in trot. haha But loose enough you can see it moving freely even at walk. As you ask the horse for more and more forward without jumping into a trot, eventually the movement helps them release tension, they start to relax. At this point as they relax and soften thru the poll, the nose gets pushed a it in front of vertical, the neck and head will lower, and at this stage the horse is moving with a nice even rhythm open stride. If you ask for more forward by driving with whip you get instead more up and down action from the rear legs, NOT a faster pace. This is when the magic starts to happen, they release, they are active, they are engaged, they are fully "on the aids". As to how long? That's subjective of course, cannot say so many minutes, It's a feel thing. Though you should not stop once begun until something positive is achieved. And yes absolutely the age and knowledge of the horse come into play here. I agree with a youngster or one that hasn't been taught much, any try is rewarded. How much you push depends on the horse. Again it's feel. Yes probably should begin a new thread on longe technique I guess. Teach whoa on line? That begins on ground without a line, then it transfers. Least that's how I did it. If they aren't ready to "listen" ask for more of what they offer until they forget about what you are asking and then ask again. ;] That's the premise my trainer uses. Allow the horse to make a mistake, then use that to help them learn. Turn it into an exercise. On longe or under saddle if they do the opposite of what you ask, ask them to do what they offer MORE, keep asking until they completely forget about you asking for anything, once they're relaxed again, then ask again. You just keep doing this until you get what you are asking for and then of course all pressure ceases. So on longe you ask for halt, they keep walking, ask for more walk. Then just wait allowing the horse to walk. Key is to then release your body posture and get all relaxed, and not thinking about halt, but thinking about walk on. When you see the horse completely at ease again, then ask for halt maybe with a bit more HALT behind it. haha Get the idea? Same under saddle if I want the horse to turn to the left and it pushes thru the right shoulder on me, I simply allow that and ask it to go faster in that direction for a few strides, then ask for the turn again, etc. I will continue this way until I know the horse fully understands what I am asking, and then I will start to ride correction exercises. Otherwise I simply allow their mistake and say, ok, fine, just give me more please. haha You guys should just come and take lessons with my trainer. I was looking at my second photo of Bella longing, and decided it's really not a good choice to show lowering of the neck and head, is it? haha Well for her and being completely UP (on alert) this isn't a bad beginning. Her poll actually is the highest point here, even though it looks like a neck vertebrae is, she has a pretty thick crest. ;] It does show nice movement though overall which was what I was looking at; she is dead even in stride, carrying herself well, pushing and nicely engaged from behind. Her weight is shifted a bit to the rear, and she is showing what is called positive DAP (diagonal aligned placement?? or something like that). Relaxed thru poll, throat and jaw. Nicely 'on the bit' or 'on the aids' here. (for a low level dressage horse, which she technically still is.) |
| Member: maggienm |
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