Strengthen your horse’s back in their deep comfort zone
One of the early things that I understood from Bobby was that “a horse who is in their comfort zone is in self carriage”. When they are in self carriage, their back is lifted (it feels almost like getting ready for a buck but the energy is completely different) their stride is soft and rhythmic. Their body is completely in harmony.
And self carriage is seriously smooth and pleasant to ride!
The power of them to carry us on their back is completely changed for the better when they are in their comfort zone. As their back is lifted it bows (i.e. the centre of the back is higher, like a bow and arrow) and the strength of that bowing to carry us, is what they need to carry our weight on their back comfortably.
Stop reading for a moment and picture that bowing of the back. Pick up a stick or something flexible, hold it at either end and bend it so that the curve is furthest away from the ground. Now picture how when we sit on the top of that ‘bow’, or that bend, it is a much more comfortable way for our horse to carry us.
If our horse is not in their comfort zone, they carry us more like a saggy mattress strung between two poles – to varying degrees. I’m smiling a bit at that image. But imagine it… Imagine that sagginess and mentally put a weight on it see how it is impossible to hold the sag still – it just has to sag more. In this case, no matter how good your saddle fits, or how good a rider you are, your horse’s back will be straining. It has to be painful to some degree and for some horses it is really painful to carry us like that.
When they carry us like a saggy mattress, it is causing some sort of physical damage. Shoulder problems around the wither and sacro-iliac joint damage are common in horses. Both these “injuries” heal in self carriage.
I put on a lot of weight when I stopped smoking, a serious amount of weight, to the point that I stopped riding because I was concerned about putting that much weight on Bobby’s back. He told me “I can carry any weight with joy.” In joy, he is in his deep comfort zone… In his deep comfort zone, his back is lifted and bowed into strength to carry me … and he tells me that he can carry any weight like that.
Zen Connection with Horses with its audio lesson that you take out into the paddock or barn with your horse, is one pathway to help your horse find their deep comfort zone and the self carriage in movement that comes from that. You can download that book as an e-book and be reading it in five minutes or buy the printed version, click here.
Once our horse has found his deep comfort zone with us, do we just jump on and run out for a nice long trail ride?
Well, the short answer is… no, not if you really want your horse to be comfortable with you. He or she would be really happy to carry you with their back bowed and lifted, for the first five minutes maybe or even less if their back has been really sore in the past. Then the muscles would start to strain a little and your horse would start to feel a bit uncomfortable. And the longer you sat there, the more it would strain – until it would be pain that they were experiencing, not just discomfort.
With this program that I’m going to suggest to you, it takes a few short and joyful weeks for most horses to develop the muscles in their back, to carry you with strength and power in this new position. It just takes a relatively small bit of time for the muscles to build up and get the strength that you are looking for to carry you joyfully.
So how?
First understand how muscles develop and get stronger. When our horse’s muscles are used a bit beyond their ability, it causes micro damage to the fibres. This is a good thing. Their bodies respond to that micro damage, by repairing that damage and strengthening the muscle for the same effort next time. That’s how you get strong and well built muscles.
With exceptions for extremely healthy animals and people, it takes three days for that repair work to be finished (longer in ill health situations). If you put the same strain on that muscle again tomorrow – before the repair work is finished, then the body is trying to cope with more micro-damage before the first lot has finished healing.
Thus, if you were to do the same work day after day, micro damaging the muscle each day, then the muscle cannot not build strength effectively and you are wasting your time if strong muscle is what you are trying to build.
And, if you ride for too long, it also goes beyond the good “micro-damage”, to more extensive damage that is painful and needs more time to heal.
When you are taking your horse from the joyfulness that you’ve discovered on the ground in the first simple eight lessons in Zen Connection with Horses, to joyfulness, strength and power with you in the saddle, then you want to be taking this muscle stuff into consideration.
This is a very big deal. Read the last five paragraphs again…
When you have brought all the things that you like to do with your horse into their deep comfort zone – from the first approach in the morning, to leading him up to the stable or barn, playing in the round yard, lunging if that’s what you do, ground games if that’s what you do, liberty work if that’s what you do, saddling up, mounting up and walking off – then your horse will have already developed some new, stronger back muscles from the self carriage that he or she is in when you do those things.
But it is also possible to develop your horse’s back muscle and strength while riding – if you go about it in the right way. When I brought Matt into work as an incredibly physically damaged 18 year old with no back muscle at all, he developed ½ an inch of back muscle in three weeks, by riding for very short periods with an elevated back, in his comfort zone, every third day.
I recommend that when you start riding, you ride your horse under five minutes a day. If you’re very heavy like me – then maybe keep those first “sits” on your horse even shorter.
Listen to your horse, they will tell you what they need, when you are tuned in to this wonderful opportunity to help them grow strong and powerful backs to carry you easily. Listen to them with the connection that you developed consciously and deliberately with the Zen Connection work.
Each time you ride, you can progress to a little longer with an elevated back, and a little longer and a little longer.
And if they drop their back again because they can’t hold it as long as you have asked for, then think “Damn, I need to change that next time.” Listen to your horse and try to get off next time before they have to sag their back because the muscles are too tired to hold you up any more.
And how long you ride will be dictated by how long your horse is comfortable with you riding. And with really well developed back muscles it can be longer than you might think and it happens faster than you would think too.
Enjoy helping your four-legged friend into strong, powerful and joyful use of their muscles to carry you both together. Imagine how that self carriage, all the time, is going to add magnificence to whatever version of being with horses that you do…
Jenny Pearce
