A Tale of Two Spines

Around a year ago. I got Gustav Steinbrecht's "The Gymnasium of the Horse" (first published in 1884), one of the truly classic dressage books. I've read the first 93 pages several times, and I found myself coming back to certain passages over and over again, for they introduce and explain a concept that I had not fully understood from my earlier dressage readings.

Steinbrecht starts his description of a correct seat by saying how "the rider sits the horse correctly only if his center of gravity, or rather the line of the center of gravity of his body, coincides with that of the horse. Only then does he become one with it. Since, however, the center of gravity of the horse can be displaced in various ways, depending on its changing position and carriage, the rider's position must change accordingly every time." (page 2). This was a familiar concept for me, it is the basis of Forward Seat riding, always keeping the rider's center of gravity over the horse's center of gravity. What I did not truly understand was exactly how dressage riders accomplished this.

Then, a few pages later, Steinbrecht thoroughly explains HOW the dressage rider achieves this. "The main rule for this balanced seat, which is based on the correct displacement of the center of gravity, is that the rider's straight spine must be always perpendiculat to that of the horse; that is, it must form two right angles with it. According to this principle, we see the race rider lean far forward with his upper body so as to increase the speed of his mount whereas if his body were leaning back or even in an upright position, he would not be able to follow the movements of the horse. We also see the well trained military horse under its upright rider perform the most intricate turns and movements, always in regular gaits with a lightness, willingness and endurance....In this position of the horse its center of gravity falls approximately in the middle betweem the forehand and hindquarters, and its spine is horizontal. Finally we see the dressage horse with its hind legs put well under, its haunches bent, and its croup lowered performing its graceful, yet powerful movements on and above the ground. The rider guides it with a slightly reclining upper body...In these movements the horse's center of gravity is vertically above its handquarters, and its spine is sloped downward from front to back. By observing the above-mentioned principle regarding the coincidence or, more correctly, precise vertical congruence of the centers of gravity of man and horse, the rider can make it infinitely easier for the horse to carry his weight..." (page 4).

I was still somewhat puzzled because I've seen lots of erect seats in the saddle that in no way unite the centers of gravity of the rider and the horse. Finally, in a footnote explaining a passage on page 52, I got the information that made everything clear. In the footnote by Hans von Heydebreck (the editor of the 4th edition) it says "...the upper joints of the hind legs must bend while supporting the weight, thus lowering the hindquarters and putting the spine, WHICH BY NATURE FORMS A LINE THAT DESCENDS FROM THE REAR TO THE FRONT, into a more horizontal orientation." (emphasis added, footnote on page 58).

I recently re-read these passages, went to my horse anatomy books and finally realized that mentally I had misplaced the horse's spine, assuming that the top of the horse's back faithfully followed the line of the vertebrae. I could not have been more wrong. Where the neck vertebrae join the thoratic vertebrae is at the level of roughly halfway down from the top of the withers to the point of the shoulder, and then the vertebrae themselves slope UPWARD from this point toward the top of the croup. What I thought of as the spine is not the spine but the vertebrael processes that project upward from the vertebrae, some of which, in the withers, are as long as 10 inches (the fourth and fifth thoractic vertebrae) and which shorten after the withers and gradually decrease in size back to the tail. The horse HAS TO elevate its forehand, lower its croup and bend the upper joints of the hind leg to get the vertebrael column horizontal. I now saw that Steinbrecht must have been talking about the BOTTOM of the horse's spinal column (ventral) when he was talking about the rider's spine forming a right angle with the spine of the horse.

Then Steinbrecht writes "...the horse which is now in balance (ie. spine horizontal) puts its rider into the vertical position and holds him there." (page 57). This has happened to me a few times riding, on one horse I felt like a hand was pushing my body back and I could not get my body to lean forward, the horse would not allow it. This explains Steinbrecht's continued expositions against the stiff "normal" seats in which the rider's spine is forced to be vertical to the spinal processes of the horse's back and not, unless the horse is in collection, vertical to the bottom of the horse's spinal column. I am familiar with this, several riding teachers tried to get my back vertical to the back of the horse, and I never felt in balance with or united with the horse. Now I understand why, because that made my seat dis-united from the movement of the horse and made sure that my center of gravity and the horse's center of gravity were not in a vertical line, and as I was way behind the horse's center of gravity and we did not move together. But outside of these lessons, many times, the HORSE put me back into this vertical alignment with the bottom of the horse's spine and I easily sat erect, at a right angle to the bottom of the horse's spine, and when this happened I was united with the movement of my horse.

If you HAVE to force yourself to be erect, you spine is not at a right angle with the horse's vertebrae. The HORSE will effortlessly put the rider in the proper position when its spine is horizontal, the rider does not have to do anything to accomplish this.

Now I finally understand one of the central tenets of dressage riding, the reason why the horse has to raise its forehand and lower its rear end to do the dressage movements properly and how this is reflected in the rider's position.

Have a great ride!

The books I used to write this:

"The Gymnasium of the Horse" by Gustav Steinbrecht, Copywrite 1995, Xenephon Press, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, ISBN: 0-933316-05-4

"How Your Horse Moves" by Gillian Higgins with Stephanie Martin, Copywrite 2009, David & Charles Limited, Cincinnati, Ohio, ISBN 13: 978-0-7153-2992-4

Comment

You need to be a member of Barnmice Equestrian Social Community to add comments!

Join Barnmice Equestrian Social Community

Comment by EvaZ on December 8, 2010 at 10:05am: The only time, the hind legs can land directly under the CG is when the horse stands up. In that instance, the horse is supporting itself with two legs only and becomes highly unstable.

Current research disputed any notion, that the horse uses only hind legs for propulsion. The front legs have a significant role in generating forward energy, and if we talk about a balance, that proportion should not change during normal gaits. Lots of wrong hypotheses have been circulated by these early attempts to explain horse locomotion, and they are endlessly repeated today. One misconception being, that the horse during the collection paces puts more weight on its hindlegs. This to be a truth, the horse must break out of its clean sequence, and/or must stop a forward motion.

Comment by Jackie Cochran on December 7, 2010 at 8:20pm: Vladimir Littauer was very careful in differentiating between two types of engagement of the hind legs.

The dressage term at that time ONLY referred to the flexion of the hip, stifle, and hock joints, plus a possible fractional flexion of the pelvic bone itself by internal muscles, which served to shorten the distance from the top of the croup to the ground. The hind hooves more up and down, landing under the center-of-gravity of the horse which has moved further back. Littauer calls this vertical engagement.

The other meaning of the engagement of the hind leg mainly concerned horses going at speed. at all three gaits and at the take-off and landing (after the forefeet land) for the jump. The hind leg comes more forward, under the center-of- gravity of the horse which is further to the front of the horse. Littauer calls this horizontal engagement. The horse uses it to extend its gaits, expecially TBs running out and Standardbred trotters at racing speed.

One of the multitude of things I do not understand about modern competition dressage is why they are using the horizontal engagement of the hind leg rather than the more vertical engagement. Just because the horses are now bred to have high action both front and back at the trot does not mean that when their hind legs go up this means that their hind joints are flexed vertically. Of course if the dressage horses are too much on the forehand then the hind leg HAS to come further forward to land under its center-of-gravity at that time.

I once saw a video clip of a Portuguese woman riding a Luisitano. The camera angle was sort of awkward, filming the hind quarters around 20 degrees to the side, but the neck of the horse looked like a fountain, AND THE HORSE WOULD LAND ON A DIAGONAL, FLEX ITS HIND JOINTS, AND THEN SPRANG (WITH SUSPENSION) TO THE OTHER DIAGONAL. This went on for around 6 to 8 "strides" in place and then the video of it ended. I have never seen anything like it again, but that horse fully complied with Podhajsky's description of a perfect piaffe.

Comment by EvaZ on December 7, 2010 at 7:20pm: I agree. The word "collected" had meant a shorter ballistic curve, with somewhat higher magnitude, than in "uncollected". The word collected was reserved for shorter stepping, accompanied by reactivity. But I would be very careful in saying, that the horse is placing the hind legs more under the belly, and thus lowers the croup and lift the front of its spine. That is not happening. If it was happening, the horse would not be able to produce normal gait sequence during forward motion. An extreme example is TWH - big lick.
The only time this lowering of the croup is happening is during certain type of piaffe. However, great controversy exists over the proper way the piaffe should look like. I'd say - if the horse is moving forward while he is doing dog-sitting paiffe, it is a sign of loosing balance (the horse must step forward to support its CG). If not, good for them!
If the horse is doing piaffe with a straigh spine, and it is not loosing rhytm and balance, and the legs are not paddling, I'd say - good for them too! Both movements can be judged as healthy, depending on other signs of physical distress. Forget dog-sitting position, it can be very unbalanced at times too.

Comment by Jackie Cochran on December 7, 2010 at 4:04pm: I think that Steinbrecht's point was that the horse moved the rider back to vertical when the horse had already achieved collection, with shorter gaits, thus having a lower ballistic curve. He did not seem to push a vertical seat outside of collection.
The posting trot is a great blessing for both the horse and its riders, saving both spines at once!

Comment by EvaZ on December 7, 2010 at 3:48pm: Ballistic curves. We all move along them. In the piaffe, the ballistic curve is close to none. We can sit upright comfortably. Collected, shorts gaits - again, the ballistic curve is short, should be of low impact, we can sit upright, comfortably. Any gait after that is going to be interesting. The higher and longer magnitude of the ballistic curve the horse follows, the harder it is going to be for us to sit upright. The horse absorbs the impact by flexing its joints, lot of it happens at the level of fetlock (scientifically measured). The rider also follows the same ballistic curve, but how does the rider absorbs the impact? The rider must also flex something. In the forward seat, semi-sitting position, the rider can flex from its ankels, knees, sacro-illiac joint,... In the full upright seat - difficult. The torso (spine) has limited flexing capacity in the vertical plane. It boils down to flexing of the pelvis and the upper torso against each other. Auch!
So, how do dressage people solve this physical crisis? By modifying the ballistic curve the horse is making. There are 2 ways of doing it:
1. by genetics
Choose a breed or select a horse, that makes shallow ballistic curve, and all elevations are done by flapping legs only. The legs flex abnormally, the tendons have plenty of absorption springy actions in them. Spine must not move much in the vertical direction.
2. Training
Modify the gait to produce or enhance the effect mentioned above by the forced deformation of the horse's body. In the case of the horse - the neck. Unlike the genetic effect, forced deformation produces faulty gait, such as broken sequence and tilted bodies in the opposite direction of the movement.

One spine must pay the price for the fashion. People decided, it will be the horse's, not theirs :-(

Comment by EvaZ on December 6, 2010 at 7:40pm: Hi Jackie, thank you for this very useful topic.

The problem with an older literature in general, is that the authors observed certain behavior and than they looked for an explanation. While their observation was correct, the explanation was weird. Sometimes. They just did not have the tools and the theoretical education. The observation was correct in the sense, that the horses preformed better, and there were less conflicts between the rider and the horse, if they rode more athletically, more balanced. However, to assume, that the CG moves far away from its natural origin during slow locomotion is simply wrong. A horse must gallop, jump, or do other fast activity to significantly move its CG by adding energy to its mass and deform its body - momentarily. These significant body mass hurdles do not regard dressage. Dressage is way too slow to make shift in the CG. However, the rider can, by its own weight and position, influence a lot on horse's back, not just its CG.

As to the note the spine is sloped. One cannot think of the spine as a line of vertebrate's bodies. The processes are part of the support too. The intertwining ligaments make the spine a somewhat rigid structure, and the muscles are attaching to each and every one of those segments, including the processes. The whole structure is a support, not just vertebral bodies.

We are certainly more mobile, more adjusting, more influencing, is we are sitting on the horse and go along the movements, not fighting them, as it often happens in dressage. A rigid seat is just like that - it fights the locomotion of the horse, and the rider restricts the animal in the front, that in return starts to move unnaturally (like displacing the gait, tilting its body). That is the correct observation. As to the scientific explanation, I think it is more complicated than just looking at the curvature of the spine.

As to the flexed joins. It all depends on the shape of the ballistic curve the body is following. Direction of the force is all that matters. Obviously, the racing horse is going to add more force delivered in a flatter curve than a horse that hops on the spot. One aims FAR, the other UP. The joins will flex accordingly. The rider's goal should be to enable free movements, and the best way to do that is: to interfere as little as possible. And how do we know, the rider interferes? The horse is breaking its pure gait, its body tilted in the opposite direction of the movement, its legs flapping in the air producing little body movements. The horse works inefficiently. Large muscles, hard work, increased risk of injuries, increased stress and stress-associated behavior including reduced immunity. Those are the prices of unbalanced movement and rider's inability to be "with the horse".