𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐉𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲 Part 5

After discovering Pura her back was sore I had a new mission. Training her back muscles to become stronger. Little did I know how hard this was. I sat myself down behind my computer and started googling 'how to train the back muscles of the horse'. As it turned out there was no clear information on how to do this. How is this possible?

A lot of vague exercises like doing transitions, polework or lunging with sidereins but nowhere to be found how you train which muscle. Google this for humans and you'd get a whole range of exercises for different muscle groups. How did this not excist for horses??

In the end I ended up on the webpage of a Dutch classical dressage trainer and this was the first thing after hours of research that made sense. Her website had multiple pictures and a whole explanation about how the topline needs to be stretched so the spine can be pushed up and the back muscles can engage. Once the spine is pushed up the horse can step under further with the hindlegs and then eventually transit weight to the hind legs. This is what I want!

I was a reiner so I had no problem with the head of my horse being down and actually this training sounded very beneficial for my Quarter Horse Nikki to become better as well.

So I booked an appointment for this trainer to come over and in the mean time started trying some things myself. With Pura it was hard, but with Nikki I noticed quite some change quickly. I started implementing the exercises like yielding and shoulderfore into the training. I did less sliding stops and spins, but more dressage work in the daily training throughout the show season.

In these pictures you can see the results with 6 months difference!!

Although with Pura the results weren't really so big, it was good to notice the impact of the training on Nikki.

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐈 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐛𝐢𝐠 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐚..?

To be continued..