The Mobile Spine
A mobile spine is not always a good spine. We talk about the horse having a soft mobile spine, sometimes we see riders who demonstrate a loose back, the horse is over tracking by a mile and the spine is moving…excessively, often more in one plane, such as more dorsoventral (up down) motion or axial rotation (side to side). This is not what we want, there is too much movement, which leads to instability, which will lead to injury. Often when a spine has too much movement there will also be a deficit in the gait, such as a 3 beat trot or an uneven walk sequence because the spine is not able to appropriately respond to the forces travelling through the limbs.
The spine has a limited capacity for movement, this is because it needs to maintain a level of rigidity to fight gravity, as the heavy organs hang from it. It also needs to be able to transmit forces across if efficiently so the horse can move with ease.
Let’s think of the spine like the suspension in the car. If we have a very stiff suspension we can feel every jarring bump in the road and we have to brace to take impact, if we have a very loose suspension we may get flung out of our seat if we come across some uneven terrain and feel out of control, and if we have “just right” suspension then the ride will be smooth and the car will respond appropriately to any changes in the road surface.
The trick is to find the happy medium between a ‘loose’ and ‘stiff’ spine….a stable spine! How do you tell…..well I’d love to give you a simple answer like ‘it just looks right’ but I know that’s not helpful. It will depend on your horse, how long or short their back is, their stride length, their neck length, but I can tell you when you get it right you will know it and you will feel it, it just takes having the right set of eyes to guide you there.
The more you feel like you are moving together as one object, with no brace, no excessive movement the closer you are to a stable spine. However you still need to be able to know what stiff and excessive movement feels like, which is not always obvious to some people! But if you see a horse and their spine looks like or feels like a trampoline, bets are, it’s unstable, less is always more.
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