samantha – Page 2 – Sam Sherrington

Hip Flexors for the rider – Part 1

How tight hip flexors (ilio psoas) affect the horse and rider.

Call Sam Sherrington on 0452 472 959 if you’d like any more information on horse and rider Osteopathy.

It’s been nearly 18 months since we covered this topic (on my facebook page. Since these posts never made it to this website I’m going to review the hip flexors again, since they’re such an integral part to getting your riding position working for you and your horse, rather than against you.

Do you find you often feel crooked on your horse? Is your instructor always shouting at you to stop tipping forwards or poking your backside out? Does your horse often land on the incorrect lead or not land straight over a fence? Is one stirrup being stretched or always feel shorter? Do you often feel like you’re always tipping forwards and can’t get your leg down and around the horse to give effective aids?

(Diagram source uncertain – if anyone knows where it came from do please let me know so credit can be given where it’s due!)

One big question I’m sure you’re all wondering – Why is it that so many people have tight hip flexors and an anterior pelvic tilt?

Surely if it’s not a biomechanically sound way to operate, it wouldn’t be the ‘go to’ posture so many people find themselves in, would it?
Lets think about what things we all might do on a day to day basis that promote short, tight hip flexors.

Get up from your bed and sit down to eat breakfast.
Get straight in the car and sit for whatever period of time it takes to get to work.
Spend a decent part of your day, you guessed it, sitting. Often with your legs crossed. If you’re lucky you have a job where you get to move around a lot, but even then, because our eyes are on the front of our head and our arms reach forwards there is a strong chance you do most things in your day reaching or slightly leaning forwards.
At the end of the day, you get back in your car, head to the yard.
Jump on board your favourite four legged beast having spent not a moment thinking about warming up or stretching out your own body.
Fight with your body and if you’re lucky, have someone on the ground shout at you to Sit up! Sit up! Stop tipping forwards! Drop your right knee! Stop leaning to the right, for goodness sake!
Head home and perhaps spend a bit of time on the sofa in something approaching the foetal position, mulling over why on earth you just can’t get it together on the horse, before heading off to bed to properly assume the foetal position.
All in all, it’s a solid day of flexed hips.

Now, when you stand yourself up in between these periods of sitting and bending, your hip flexors start to complain as they’ve become quite accustomed to being shortened. So rather than happily lengthen out, they stay relatively short and instead pull your pelvis forward into a nice anterior tilt with an exaggerated lumbar lordosis. This in turn promotes short, tight lower back muscles and weak abdominal core muscles which makes your body even more likely to switch on those hip flexors to help stabilise the pelvis and lower back during unstable activities – like riding your horse 😉

So, what did you do today that would have shortened up the ol’ hip flexors?? I clipped the dog, then could barely stand upright again!

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we will look at the anatomy involved in a bit more detail and begin to consider what it is doing to you and your horse in daily work.

Pain and lameness in ridden horses

Lameness

Call Sam Sherrington on 0452 472 959 for more information on Human and Animal Osteopathy.

It is established that more than 47% of the sports horse population in normal work may be lame, without having been identified as such by their regular owner or trainer. A new study by the industrious and ever driven Sue Dyson and team has made huge headway by testing the validity of a list of easily observed behavioural features that may indicate lameness in the ridden horse. The ethogram allows owners and riders to be more attuned to the signs that their horse may be in pain and thus could help to reduce the incidence of undiagnosed lameness in performance horses. The study compared the frequency and reliability of a group of 114 behaviours and reduced the list down to 24 reliable signs that occur significantly more frequently in lame horses than non-lame horses under saddle in trot and canter, when working large, on 20m and on 10m circles.

Many of the behaviours discovered to be significantly more common or exclusively seen in the lame group of horses are commonly viewed as purely behavioural and thus often addressed by stronger tack/equipment or punitive training methods. This study therefore provides some very compulsive evidence for always giving the horse the benefit of the doubt when a new or unusual behaviour crops up during work.

In my practice I’ve long seen many of these features as signs of pain in one part of the body or another, so it is fantastic to have some solid evidence to affirm the link and to help owners become more adept at recognising that these behaviours are in fact a cause for action. As the study concluded –

If ≥ 8 of the 24 identified behaviours linked to pain are observed within a fixed period of 3-5 minutes, it may be advisable to seek out a specialist for assessment of pain (lameness) in the horse.

So, keep this list of prime signs in mind if, while working with your horses, they begin to show undesirable behavioural changes. Young or green horses may be expected to show some of these signs as they are physically and mentally establishing their work, however if the behaviour continues then it is also well worth considering as a possible sign of pain.

Ears back
Mouth repeatedly opening and closing
Tongue exposed or tongue repeatedly moving in and out of the mouth
Working on 3 tracks in a straight line.
Increased frequency or changes in frequency of steps within a gait, especially if when going from large to small diameter circles.
Incorrect canter (Changing behind/in front)
Unwillingness to move forwards and resistances.
Spontanously breaking from one gait to another
Stumbling and toe dragging

The full list of 24 signs is below for those really keen to keep on top of this aspect of horse management.

First port of call for all overt lameness cases is your vet, and once veterinary sources of pain are eliminated Sam Sherrington – Equine Osteopath if in the Hills and Hawkesbury regions of NSW, Australia or another Osteopath or Chiropractor (or Veterinarian trained in biomechanical treatment of horses) who has university level training to assess and treat musculoskeletal causes of lameness and pain.

Dyson, S., Berger, J., Ellis, A.D., Mullard, J., 2018. Development of an ethogram for a pain scoring system in ridden horses and its application to determine the presence of musculoskeletal pain. J. Vet. Behav. 23, 47-57. http://www.journalvetbehavior.com/article/S1558-7878(17)30172-7/fulltext

The Essential Jaw

Following on from our contemplations on the principles of Osteopathy, it seems natural to begin to consider some of the specific problems and syndromes that are commonly encountered in the performance horse. While focusing largely on the performance horse, the mechanical stresses in sporting dogs are often similar and principles of evaluation and treatment remain the same and may therefore be extrapolated in many cases.

I frequently have the privilege of helping horses who are showing signs of dysfunction in the TMJ – the Temporomandibular Joint. This is a fancy name for one of the most important joints in the performance horses body; the Jaw.

Symptoms that might suggest your horse is suffering from TMJ dysfunction might include localised pain or tenderness, leaning on the bit, resistance to one direction, poll flexion or one-sidedness, dropping a lot of feed or passing whole grains in his manure, ear or poll shyness, head-shaking, unexplained mild to moderate lameness especially “bridle lameness”, or generally being out of character.
Common management factors such as reduced grazing time and increased grain consumption, feeding from a raised feed trough, routine dental work, the use of various kinds of bits and nosebands can initiate or exacerbate dysfunction in this region. Injuries to the poll, pulling back or hitting the head in the stable or horse box are also common events leading to TMJ dysfunction. Conversely, dysfunction in associated regions can result in compensatory TMJ dysfunction as the horse attempts to work around discomfort in these areas.
The TMJ is an amazing joint, functionally it is involved in the simple act of chewing, the horses sense of balance, as well as being structurally linked to the rest of the body, from the upper neck to potentially as far as the pelvis. Because the function of the lower jaw requires so much movement for day to day survival, structurally it has come to be a complex joint allowing side to side movement, lengthways towards and away from the front teeth (retraction and protraction) as well as opening and closing. The structure of the joint itself is enhanced by strong connective tissue, musculature and nerve supply which supports the joint and enables the movement required. This tissue directly links the jaw to the base of the skull, the upper and lower neck and the structures through the upper respiratory and digestive system. Through the base of the skull run important cranial nerves which are responsible for many higher level functions in the head and the respiratory and digestive systems. The musculature from the upper neck functionally links the TMJ to the shoulder through both gross motor muscles and small deep postural muscles. The connective tissue of the TMJ also has slips to the connective tissue surrounding the spinal cord which ultimately ends at the level of the sacrum in the pelvis, functionally linking the jaw and the pelvis. Due to all these anatomical and functional links, the balance between the two sides of the jaw is integral to the correct functioning of all these systems. As such, when there is a loss of free range of movement and balance in the TMJ, the horse can suffer significant amounts of discomfort and ultimately loss of performance.
Osteopathically, the jaw is a satisfying structure to work with. Bringing balance to the TMJ typically triggers a cascade of improvements in many systems. Certainly, as with any other structure in the body, it is not a cure-all, however its effect locally as well as in functionally associated regions is powerful. Following release of the jaw horses will often yawn or shake their head, their expression often changes to a more relaxed and ‘happy’ demeanor. It is not infrequent to see a total relaxation of the whole horse due to the intimate links between the connective tissue of the jaw and the base of the skull and its cranial nerves. Upon walking the horse out, an increased freedom and length of gait is generally noted, due to the relationship of the jaw to the shoulder as well as the pelvic region through the spinal cord connective tissues.
If your horse is showing any of these signs it is well worth having him assessed for possible TMJ and surrounding dysfunction. As discussed, treatment can result in some huge improvements in performance and attitude. If you have experienced the days you wake up sore or with a headache and yet still have to go out and do your days work, you know how grumpy this can make you. Give your horse the benefit of being free of this kind of discomfort and you might find yourself and your horse coming ahead in leaps and bounds.