17/08/2024
Prehabilitation.
“Muscles do much more than create the forces needed to extend and flex joints, which is what has been traditionally taught in anatomy courses. Muscles are also critical for the buffering of the mechanical forces on the joints. They do this by absorbing very large amounts of energy and are thus critical to preventing overloading and to the stabilization of joints. This function is so important that the energy produced by normal walking would tear all the ligaments in the knee if it were not absorbed by muscular activity! Think about the implication of this. It means that joint stress and injuries can be predicted based on assessment of muscle function. This allows prevention strategies to be developed before there is serious damage to the joint aka: prehabilitation, which is widely used in training human athletes. It also means that a muscle may be overdeveloped and/or hypercontracted because of a weakness or loss of function in another muscle, in which case, simply trying to release a contracted muscle without considering whether it is compensating for dysfunction in another muscle group could further imbalance and stress the affected joints. (For discussion see Brandt KD et al. Ann Rheum Dis. 2006 Oct;65(10):1261-4).” (Elizabeth Uhl DVM, PhD, Dip, ACVP)
Developing and coordinating the horse’s physique for the athletic demand of the performance is prehabilitation. Ironically, I rehabilitated horses using the movements that crippled the horses in the first place. The difference is that instead of submitting the horse to the movement, I develop and coordinate the horse’s physique for the athletic demands of the gymnastic exercise. There is no need to say that the shoulder in or half pass that I use for rehabilitation differs widely from the move rewarded in the show ring. The pictures show the same horse executing a half pass with an inverted rotation, left picture, and a half pass executed with a correct rotation, right picture. It is my horse Bѐbѐ Blond. When he started the half pass in inverted rotation during a dressage test, I decided to do nothing, as correcting the problem would attract the judge’s eye. I got the same score executing half pass in inverted and proper rotation.
There is a difference between a shoulder in preventing injury and the shoulder in causing injury. The repetition of a movement causing injury is the belief that repeating the movement educates the horse’s physique. This theory believes that natural reflexes are adapted to athletic performances. If the horse has a preferential rotation, the horse executes the shoulder in protecting the rotation. The bend will be on one side, coupled with inverted rotation. This is true for every movement. Whatever the muscle imbalance or other issue, the horse’s umwelt leads the horse to protect the muscle imbalance or other issues.
A muscle never works alone; a percentage of the force produced by one muscle is transmitted to adjacent muscles by fascial connection. Fascia lines and close kinematics chains connect the whole physique. Releasing one muscle or fitting the saddle to a local muscle imbalance causes a compensation of practically the whole physique that might be worse than the original issue. I don’t use the saddle when I receive a horse with a back muscle imbalance, and the owner tells me that the saddle has been fitted to the muscle imbalance. The problem is never one or a small group of muscles. The problem involves dysfunction of the whole thoracolumbar spine. To identify the dysfunction, I need to feel the real problem, not a version distorted by the saddle adjustment. Muscles don’t develop responding to the pressure of an added shim or flocking. Muscles develop through adequate motion, including intensity and frequency. It is never simple, as muscles and fascia don’t develop at the same speed and respond to the same effort. Muscles do well with repetitive patterns, while fascia demands a larger diversity of forces and movements. This is one of the reasons why daily adjustments are necessary.
Metric thinking talks about complexity and difficulty because metric thinking wants to fit the horse to familiar patterns. Tensegrity thinking instead understands that a change of tension anywhere within the system is instantly signaled to everywhere else in the body, mechanically and chemically. There is a total body response. Dr Donald E. Ingbe revealed that molecules, cells, tissues, organs, and entire bodies use ‘tensegrity’ architecture to stabilize their shape mechanically and seamlessly integrate structure and function at all size scales.
The new understanding of body function is scary if we think muscles move bones. Instead, it is easy to apply if we use the integrity of our whole physique and understand that the horse willingly participates in his education. Instead of submitting the horse to body parts theories, we partner with the horse, guiding the horse’s mental processing toward efficient coordination of the horse’s physique.
Jean Luc
