Dressage horses tend to carry tension in their hindquarters, while eventing horses such as cross-country participants can develop stiff shoulders and stifles, all of which will respond to the right massage techniques. Help these athletes feel better with the tips in this video on equine kinesiology.
My name is Jennifer Oliver. I'm an Equine Massage Therapist and depending on the discipline of your horse, will depend on where they have a tendency to build tension. This is an always the case; but, it's generally a pretty good idea where you're going to find tension on your horse. For instance, dressage horses have a tendency to be tensed in their hind end because they have to compose themselves to do those big fancy movements while on the, while in the ring. This is Casper and he is Dutch Warm Blood and he has the tendency to little bit stuck up in his traps here which you can kind of see how they're, it's a little bit bigger and harder, not quite as supple. Now, a massage will really really work that here and really get into that muscle there and then, by the end of the session, feel a lot more pliable. And that really, what this does is a, if this is tensed, you run to a lot of horses that have this muscle that's tensed and they have a harder time bending to one side or another. If you ever, if you ever notice that your horse is stiff to the left or to the right, it's normally due to this muscle here. And it's, he's pretty good to his shoulders; sometimes, he stops up a little bit to peck, he's pretty good today. Back looks good, he's a dressage horse, so he naturally is going to just be a lot more tense in the hind end. And in a way, the hind end is a lot bit harder 'cause there's such big muscles for me to get into. So, when you get to the hind end, you can tell he's a little bit tight in there. All you're going to do is just kind of pound the muscle just a little bit, but they like. And what it does is help loosen everything up, so then, you can get in there, with different strokes and get into the really sore spot that they had in there. And you can tell when, once I got, you know, right into his lower back and gluts, he's really starting paying attention to me and that's what they do normally. When you get in through there, they'll, they really will start paying attention to when you hit a sore spot. And then you're going to see your hunter jumper horses that have more tension in their shoulders and stifles from doing all the jumping, landing on his front legs. Horses such as eventing horses that you know, do the three days; they do the jumping, the dressage and the cross country, they have a tendency to be sore everywhere because they do all three events. And, and equine massage can really make a very big difference and having these equine athletes perform at their top levels.
