I'm not sure if I have the terminology correct, but it's something
I've always referred to as panty-waist.
Trish, the dressage instructor, called it a dinky-butt. Notice that
the saddle maker, in the video of the first Icelandic, admired his
rear-end and said it was like a 17h draft horse. Maybe an
exaggeration, but that is where the engine is.
Yes, the engine is always in the rear. When the horse is in ventroflexion
with the head pulled up, it sort of stops the flow of the power from the
hindquarters and the horse ends up pulling with the front end.
The show horses, and any other horse that is ridden in that style, will have
hypertrophy of the shoulder muscles, and a weak hindquarters.
We probably do not want to learn from trainers who ride the horse's face.
Here's an excerpt from Horse Breeding and Management about hypertrophy.
1. Hypertrophy due to poor overall balance or lack of self-carriage. This
is a problem of green and badly-trained horses. Muscles typically affected
are the serrati of both the neck and body and the pectorals, especially the
flat portions of the muscle that lie between the arms and that extend
directly from the arms to the sternum just in front of the girth. The
muscles will be too firm in tone and bulging.
Rigidity in the serrati and pectoral muscles is the primary cause of binding
up or restriction of movement in the shoulder.
Dressage was invented in order to produce self-carriage and loose, mobile
shoulders; its exercises, when correctly executed, have the effect of
inducing the horse to cease to carry itself on the forehand or to stretch
the muscles of the neck, back, and shoulders (d la Gueriniere, 1751).
2. Hypertrophy due to incorrect dressage. Over-developments and muscular
rigidities of the latissimus and rhomboideus muscles are especially
prevalent among horses engaged in the new, competitive form of dressage.
The cure for these problems is to stop pushing the horse onto the forehand
during extensions, stop permitting or encouraging it to hollow its back and
flick or hyper extend the forelimb, stop hanging on its mouth and go back
to insisting that back and neck be swinging and elastic and that the fore
and hind strides be of equal size during all phases of the trot (Hebermann,
1984).
3. Hypertrophy due to the application of weights to the forelimbs. There
is almost no muscular tissue in the forelimb of the horse below the carpus
or knee. The bulk of muscles that control the swing of the forelimbs is
located above the elbow.
The majority of trainers who use weights such as heavy shoes or weighted
boots on horses believe that their purpose is to product motion. In fact,
weights were originally used to change the timing of the footfalls which
they do with an effect similar to that produced by adding weights to
cogwheels or camshafts. The major side-effect of weights is to
exponentially increase the amount of lateral instability (wobble) in the
forelimb of the horse. When the weights are over 12 oz., forced
hyperextension of the shoulder joint also occurs.
Under normal circumstances, lateral instability of the limb is controlled
primarily by the pectoral muscles while movements of the scapulohumeral
joint are controlled by the infraspinatus, supraspinatus, and subscapularis
muscles.
The the horse, the arm is attached to the shoulder blade by no ligaments at
all, except by the paper-thin joint-capsule. Therefore, under the influence
of weights, all muscles spanning the shoulder joint hypertrophy, pushing the
scapulas laterally and producing a horse with an abnormally wide chest.
Heavy weights also induce hypertrophy of the brachiocephaicus and trapezius
muscles from which an abnormally rigid neck carriage results (Bennett,
1984).
Since the use of weights is entirely directed to forcing the horse to
produce artificial or fantasy gaits often resulting in joint injuries,
self-defensive muscular hypertrophy and rigidity in the horse, their use
cannot be justified.
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I believe we have all three of the above types of hypertrophy going on with
the icelandic-style trainers.
Here's a couple of old messages where we talked about these things:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/IceHorses/message/24524
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/IceHorses/message/30857
Judy
http://iceryder.net
http://clickryder.com
