02/11/2022
Wear and Tear/Jean Luc Cornille
“Biomechanical stress is specifically what the bone is responding to,
not mere wear & tear.” (Betsy Uhl, DVM, PhD)
When the British team won the Dressage gold medal I was thinking, “The gold medal is in good hands.” Effectively, the gold medal is in good hands. Recently Olympian Richard Davison expressed concerns about the fact that some high-level dressage tests are causing too much wear and tear on the horses’ physique. It is refreshing that at the higher level, a rider is concerned about the physical demands that modern performances induce on the horses’ limbs and vertebral structures.
This is a great turn away from Rollkur proponents that were, and still abuse horses for a medal or even a ribbon. Edsger Dijkstra wrote, "Why has elegance found so little following?" For a while, elegance was not invited in the show ring, not even in the training ring, not even in the corridor of a show barn. Webster dictionary defines elegance as “refinement”. Dressage movements are the refinement of natural moves and, as it is for ballet dancing, even if the moves are inspired by natural gestures, their refinement demands body coordination far more sophisticated than natural reflexes. Even a performance as simple as carrying a rider demands specific adaptation. “It should be borne in mind that the weight of the rider will raise two- or three-fold during locomotion and also that more energy is required by a mounted horse and this energy must be obtained by increasing the stance phase so as to recover more energy during the swing.” (J. L. Morales, DVM, PhD, 1998)
In1995, Reiner Klimke anticipated the problem underlining the discrepancy between the increasing quality of the horses and the slow evolution of training techniques. “Now we breed only Rembrandts and Gigolos, if we can- and therefore we have developed our sport. The riding has not become better.” Extraordinary horses are pushed in the show ring, but they are not athletically prepared for both the mental and physical stresses that the rapid succession of movements and the exuberance of their gaits induce on their limbs and vertebral column structures. There are two problems that have to be considered but also that can be resolved. One is preparing bone by bone, muscle by muscle, the horse’s physique for the athletic demand of the performance. This is not actually considered. Horses learn the judging criteria, how the movements are supposed to look like but they are not physically developed and adequately coordinated for the physical demand of the performance. They perform out of their talent but they don’t have the athleticism to deal with the demands. The second problem is that while breeding programs give birth to horses with astounding gaits, the training techniques are unable to proportionally enhance bone density, joints stability, muscle tone, as well as strength and elasticity of tendons and ligaments. Dressage horses need a conditioning program as obviously as three day event horses. They don’t need fast and long gallops, but they need increasing their bone density through eccentric training as well as rhythmic, regular, repetitive and moderated stresses. Their muscular system needs to be understood and approached in respect of new knowledge.
Most of the joints problems can be considered as different forms of CLICK LINK TO READ ON http://scienceofmotion.com/documents/wear_and_tear.html
