What are Corrective Exercises?
Surprisingly, I often find myself prescribing students more calisthenics exercises than gymnastic exercises to improve their horses’ overall fitness. The reason for this is that, without proper activation of postural muscles, the horse’s locomotion muscles are not able to play their role fully. Calisthenics target postural muscles, not movement muscles. But let’s get clear— what are calisthenics? I define them broadly as slow-moving exercises requiring fine motor control and precision of body alignment. I call them Corrective Exercises because they resolve poor movement patterns. Many re-hab and pre-hab maneuvers fall under this definition. The well known “carrot stretches” or walking over ground poles are examples.
These exercises, the definition continues, require minimal gear or complicated moves. They build body strength while simultaneously developing gracefulness through precise execution of them.
Recruiting postural muscles prior to the workout leads to better gains
How to use Corrective Exercises
Correctives are best done at the beginning of a session or during periods when a horse has become confused or stressed or fatigued, because again they support the role the gymnastic muscles need to play. Without that support, the body’s larger muscles tend to create faulty circuitry, poor postural habits, and opposing muscular efforts from incorrect movement patterns. You can think of correctives as a compliment to your normal schooling. In fact, they allow you to go about that schooling with more efficient, successful effort.
Corrective exercises, examples of which follow below, are used in my programs to strengthen and release tension from areas that are neglected during even a fit horse’s everyday training. In this way, you can think of them playing a similar role to Pilates and yoga for well-conditioned human athletes. Their benefits include:
1. activation of under-utilized muscle chains
2. stimulation of sensory nerves and improved PROPRIOCEPTION3. recruitment of deep postural muscles to resolve imbalances and asymmetries4. increasing joint range of motionBecause of these benefits, I generally recommend students perform correctives at the start of a session prior to any deeply embedded habits from the neuro-sensory system firing up and carrying out their status quo. This is the best time to positively alter this system to gain the benefits listed above.
Indeed, sometimes the same exercise might serve as a schooling technique or as a corrective routine, and in this case the speed and intention with which the exercise is performed will differentiate its effect and outcome. Many exercises, though, like the ones in my books, stand alone fulfilling the purpose of correctives as I’ve stated it above.
Some of my most frequently prescribed calisthenics include:
Backing the horse up un-mounted with perfect form for 60 strides
walking obliquely across raised ground poles
riding serpentines and transitions between gaits in a long/low stretched frame
walking over raised poles arranged in a tight arc, or fan shape
turns on forehand with correct inside bend, hind legs crossing, and steady rhythm
As you read my articles, you’ll come across several other correctives that I encourage riders to use because they are simple and highly effective, and most likely you have come up with some of your own along the way. My goal when prescribing them is always to recruit the horse’s slow-twitch postural muscles where patterns and memories are stored. By accessing this system, we gain the ability to influence it more and more, thereby developing better equine athletes.