Post by horseguy on Dec 9, 2016 20:14:11 GMT
I rode a horse this week that the owner described as having a "bulging" shoulder. The horse didn't track well at all and right shoulder would kind of bulge out in the front. I have ridden this kind of horse before but I never used the words used to describe this one. That got me thinking about shoulders and problems with shoulders.
The most obvious and common problem with shoulders, in my experience, is when a horse drops their inside shoulder in a turn. To me this is a lazy way to make a turn. Instead of bending their spine, the horse drops their inside shoulder creating a falling into the turn motion that can pass for a turn, but not really. But this is not a shoulder problem. It's a hind end problem in which the hind is not engaged in the horse's movement to any meaningful degree. It is instead a lazy on the forehand pulling from the front, not a correct pushing from the hind.
I got thinking more about the shoulder bulging, which I have felt before in horses but I always felt it was a different variation on the basic hind end problem of engagement like with the lazy dropping of the shoulder problem, but different. What I feel is happening in this oddly incorrect energy is a sort of misdirection of energy from the horse's hind that feels asymmetrical in nature. In a nicely moving horse that uses their hind correctly in any gait, the hind is the push that initiates the forward movement. The pushes from the hind create the forward movement energy of the stride, and the stride pushes if correct are aligned in a lateral, left and right, balance or equilibrium. The result is a straight tracking horse. However, if one push is stronger than the pother, perhaps quicker too, the energy coming from the hind is not equal, balanced or symmetrical. I believe it is from this condition that the "bulge" originates.
I messed around with this horse for a while and experimented with direct work on the forehand alignment to see if that would have an effect on this thing called bulging in the shoulder. I widened my reins and kept the head and neck straight on the line of movement. Still, the horse gave me the experience of her energy going out from her body through her right shoulder when it should have been going straight ahead. I felt addressing this issue where it manifesteditself, in the shoulder, was pointless. I then began to work to address it by using acceleration, a steady and quick walk, trot, canter with a small jump between the trot and the canter to maximize this untrained horse's hind push/engagement. This got the horse's energy flowing forward on the straight preferred tracking line.
I am sharing this because very often where a problem or issue shows up in a horse is not necessarily the place to work on the problem. If we go deeper into the lowest common denominator of the horse's energy in movement, we usually arrive at the hind end. Almost every issue a horse demonstrates regarding movement can be addresses best by improving the initiating energy in the hind. I'd like to ask Ray Hunt if this is another aspect of square zero (the square before square one). What I know is it works. A rider could spend months trying to contain this horse's shoulder and preventing it from bulging, as they call it, and not get much in the way of results. But if we work instead where the energy originates, back in the hind, then we can establish a laterally balanced energy path that will cause the horse to ride forward without the inauthentic shoulder bulging.
The most obvious and common problem with shoulders, in my experience, is when a horse drops their inside shoulder in a turn. To me this is a lazy way to make a turn. Instead of bending their spine, the horse drops their inside shoulder creating a falling into the turn motion that can pass for a turn, but not really. But this is not a shoulder problem. It's a hind end problem in which the hind is not engaged in the horse's movement to any meaningful degree. It is instead a lazy on the forehand pulling from the front, not a correct pushing from the hind.
I got thinking more about the shoulder bulging, which I have felt before in horses but I always felt it was a different variation on the basic hind end problem of engagement like with the lazy dropping of the shoulder problem, but different. What I feel is happening in this oddly incorrect energy is a sort of misdirection of energy from the horse's hind that feels asymmetrical in nature. In a nicely moving horse that uses their hind correctly in any gait, the hind is the push that initiates the forward movement. The pushes from the hind create the forward movement energy of the stride, and the stride pushes if correct are aligned in a lateral, left and right, balance or equilibrium. The result is a straight tracking horse. However, if one push is stronger than the pother, perhaps quicker too, the energy coming from the hind is not equal, balanced or symmetrical. I believe it is from this condition that the "bulge" originates.
I messed around with this horse for a while and experimented with direct work on the forehand alignment to see if that would have an effect on this thing called bulging in the shoulder. I widened my reins and kept the head and neck straight on the line of movement. Still, the horse gave me the experience of her energy going out from her body through her right shoulder when it should have been going straight ahead. I felt addressing this issue where it manifesteditself, in the shoulder, was pointless. I then began to work to address it by using acceleration, a steady and quick walk, trot, canter with a small jump between the trot and the canter to maximize this untrained horse's hind push/engagement. This got the horse's energy flowing forward on the straight preferred tracking line.
I am sharing this because very often where a problem or issue shows up in a horse is not necessarily the place to work on the problem. If we go deeper into the lowest common denominator of the horse's energy in movement, we usually arrive at the hind end. Almost every issue a horse demonstrates regarding movement can be addresses best by improving the initiating energy in the hind. I'd like to ask Ray Hunt if this is another aspect of square zero (the square before square one). What I know is it works. A rider could spend months trying to contain this horse's shoulder and preventing it from bulging, as they call it, and not get much in the way of results. But if we work instead where the energy originates, back in the hind, then we can establish a laterally balanced energy path that will cause the horse to ride forward without the inauthentic shoulder bulging.
