Peak Performance Equine

12/07/2024

The great horseman Rodney Jenkins has died. He competed as a Grand Prix jumper for many years and when he retired he went on to train racehorses. His brother once said of him, “He could change his style of riding to adjust to the horse, and he’d get the best out of all of them. Horses really liked him.”

I have seen him adjust his style to a specific horse in competition. In the 1980s at the Lake Placid Grand Prix, I watched him ride and I saw something odd. I could see that in his approach to each jump he was sitting hard on one seat bone and softly on the other. You couldn't miss it.

I was puzzled and asked myself why? Of course, I thought, the horse has something minor that is off with one hind leg. Jenkins was sitting deeper on one seat bone to cause his horse to push harder up into his deeper seat bone with his better hind leg. He was creating the most powerful approach possible for that horse on that day by adjusting his seat. I had never considered doing what he did before.

Now he and so many other greats are gone. Jim Wofford died last year and the loss of him to the horse world still weighs on me. Now we have lost Rodney Jenkins. I am sad.

COTH article - www.chronofhorse.com/article/rodney-jenkins-dies-at-80/

12/07/2024

He was a phenomenon. Partnerships like Rodney and Idle Dice…..beautiful.

It seems like the era of horsemanship and riding genius has passed…. or is that my imagination.
It feels like a shift - not for the better - has occurred.

At any rate, hopefully Rodney has now joined Idle Dice in the place where there is no more pain, injuries, no more “good byes”.
I bet Idle Dice would’ve been one of the first to meet him at the gates.

11/30/2024

I teach the Fort Riley Seat, called the Balanced Seat by civilians. I always start my new students in the military way that I was taught as a child. At my farm, when new students who had never ridden arrived, regardless of age, they started out in my 40 foot (12 meters) by 70 foot (21 meters) fenced arena "baby pool".

When students could walk and trot under control and safely and ride a few canter strides, they graduated to my 100 foot (30 meter) by 200 foot (60 meter) unfenced arena, seen in the bottom picture. They rode in simple, no knee rolls, saddles with snaffles and simple bridles. In the military tradition, students rode with their feet home in safety irons and with a jumping strap around their horse's neck. As soon as a student was capable, I had them out riding over terrain and striding over low natural obstacles. When they began jumping three feet (1 meter) or more, I would teach them to ride and jump with the balls of their feet in the stirrups.

Students could grab the neck strap if they felt unstable. They were not permitted to lean on their horse's neck. This allowed students to establish an independent seat, meaning independent of laying their bodies on their horse's neck or otherwise assuming any static riding position.

The top left picture is one of my young students in 2004 who had graduated from the baby pool and the arena, and was learning to ride, not jump, over low obstacles out in the open. I feel the sooner a student can ride out from the fenced arena the better because it builds confidence and broader skills.

Fast forward 20 years and we see a young student, top right, in a fenced arena using today's standard Morris inspired jumping position, even though her horse is not jumping the low jump. Look at the spread on her horse's hind legs and you can see the horse is striding over the low jump.

I think it's tragic that today's students are not taught the difference between striding over something and jumping it. Not knowing this is why, when ring riders show up at a fox hunt, they can't keep up. Throwing your body weight up onto the neck of your horse that is striding over something forces your horse to do a major rebalance. This slows the stride.

Compare the two young riders at the top going over low obstacles. Which one can go over the obstacle without disrupting their horse's balance and stride length? Which rider, if their horse stumbled and fell on the other side of the obstacle, would be safer and immediately be in control? Which rider, if they were following another horse and rider and that pair stopped or fell, could quickly avoid such a dangerous circumstance? Not the 2024 rider.

Horsemanship is and has been in decline for over 20 years and the difference between these two young riders 20 years apart make this fact clear. Trainers/instructors, if your students look like the 2024 rider, you are doing them a disservice. You might be teaching them to win ribbons by pleasing judges in a narrow discipline, but you are not preparing them for anything else in their future.

*link to post on using and teaching the jumping strap method -

www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid0BkjMY6S32W5PH2UiRV76WwmfYe4ezLMeBxNmvVjqhmsj99VBhZgmr3u7h5c4KR1ml

11/29/2024

11/24/2024

11/19/2024

11/15/2024

This is a photo taken by a vet while attending the horse who had fallen through the floor of someone's trailer. Thought it was worth sharing to serve as a good reminder to get your trailer floors checked regularly.

11/15/2024

I want to nerd out a little today about the gallop as a follow up to my earlier post about the controversy that surrounds the gallop. How many beats in a gallop stride? Does a beat have to be a footfall? Can we feel all the beats of the gallop? Do we feel the beats differently than biomechanical analysis demonstrates? And if a rider's feel of the beats differs from the objective biomechanical evidence of the beats, which is the correct definition of the gallop beats?

The images below clearly show two equestrian athletes using the suspension in the gallop to better accomplish a task, accurately shooting an arrow and hitting a polo ball. Both horses have all fur feet off the ground. Strict scientific evidence would say these riders are not using a beat of the gallop to increase accuracy, but do the riders experience the suspension as a beat in the rhythm of the gait? They must because they train for it even though technically it doesn't exist as a beat.

Here is a list the various takes on the rhythm of the beats in the gallop:
(1) Edweard Muybridge's photographic study - 1, 2a 2b, 3 (4 beats)
(2) Feel experience - 1, 2, 3, suspension pause (4 beats)
(3) 1, 2a 2b, 3, suspension pause (5 beats)

The (3) explanation, I feel, is the weakest. The (1) explanation is fact, but can it be felt? The (2) explanation is experience based and the "fact " of it is in the pictures where the pause beat is being consciously used.

For me the difference here is a Schrödinger's Cat kind of situation (details below), meaning the explanation is both (1) and (2) are real at the same time with the difference being perception. The (2) advocates like me say that at 35mph a rider cannot feel the 2a 2b second beat as two distinct beats. The separation of the 2 second beat footfalls is a blur, and thus the experience of (2) rhythm is 1, blur, 3, suspension pause or 4 beats.

The nerdy end of the road question is, "Is riding a horse a science project or an athletic experience?" For me it's always been the latter because if I cannot use science when I am riding, for me it's irrelevant. My bottom line is that reality is what you can use to accomplish a task with a horse. In the pictures, we see two riders using the pause to make a more accurate shot.

Final note, if you have not galloped extensively, it would be most appropriate to put questions about the gallop in the comments, not imagined ideas of it.

Today so many riders never leave the arena and for them the gallop is an unknown gait. I think it is a shame to ride only 3/4 of the gaits. Each has its unique subtitles that can only be experienced after a great deal of practice. My advice is to learn the gallop when you are young. It's less scary than when you are older.

*Schrödinger's Cat is a famous thought experiment that demonstrates the idea in quantum physics that tiny particles can be in two states at once until they're observed. It asks you to imagine a cat in a box with a mechanism that might kill it. Until you look inside, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time.

*prior post on the nature of the gallop -www.facebook.com/BobWoodHorsesForLife/posts/pfbid02u1BpU1icbQE3ytJnP7ovYzpL8dpE2DUWTp1jzxvxNhuDdtiwFQGgrrnCBueLZn1Zl

11/13/2024

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11/13/2024

Horsemanship has its finer points. One is the gallop controversy. Opinions and perspectives on this, the fastest gait, vary based on the question of whether the gallop has 3 or 4 beats, with the 4th being a beat of suspension between the 3rd and 1st footfalls.

When I look at this image of a galloping horse, I see the left foreleg having completed the 3rd beat leg movement in the stride and the horse being in the 4th suspension beat. I see the right hind foot ready to strike the ground for the next 1 beat. I also see coordinated preparation for the diagonal of the left hind and right fore leg diagonal 2nd beat.

There are those who insist that footfalls are the beats of every gait and that a suspension beat is not a footfall and therefore not a beat in the stride. My question is, if there is a pause in the rhythm of the 1-2-3 beats of the gallop between the 3rd and 1st beats, can we ignore the footfall void in the rhythm of the gallop that makes it different from the 3 beat canter?

As someone who galloped in polo matches for twenty five years, I can explain that striking the ball in each of the various beats of the gallop is different. For example, for a long penalty shot with the ball laying still on the ground, the top pros want to strike the ball on the 1 beat because it adds power for greater distance. And during the absolute stillness of the 4th beat of suspension is an opportunity to achieve greater accuracy. These are subtle differences but meaningful at a certain level.

I came up with the idea for this post while thinking about feel and footfalls. Most riders have little interest or experience with the subtleties of the gallop, but it is worth considering in the context of how we can feel equine movement. Every gait has its unique characteristics, and raising awareness of these subtleties is another step toward higher level horsemanship.