News from Science Of Motion

Science allows us to look at natural processes with a different eye and to understand how things work, (Marc Kaufman)

Tonight I came back from my training session feeling simultaneously good and tired. I held my neck outside of my stall, but I was not really looking outside. I was looking inside myself thinking about my body. Manchester asked, hard work? I told him not really; we stayed at the walk the entire training session. Manchester immediately asked; something wrong? Usually he does that when he wants you to work very specific muscles groups. I confessed that yesterday, as I was rolling energetically in the sand I overdid and I did not feel very comfortable for the rest of the day. That evening I was glad that he did not ask too much. We started at the trot and he noticed that when he was changing the diagonal of his rising trot, I protected myself for a few strides. I don't think that I was lame but I was cautious. He walked, let me rest and asked for a few longitudinal and lateral flexions. He then stopped thinking you hurt yourself again. His mind was on a quote that he feels does fit me very well. "Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again." (Franklin P. Jones)

Manchester added, as if he could read my mind, and today you did the whole training session at the walk. And tonight you feel like your whole body has been worked intensively. I wondered how he knew all that but then he told me. When I first started my reeducation, I stayed two months at the walk. I had been submitted to numerous therapies but once set in motion I did what we are all doing instinctively, I protected my problem. I sheltered my left stifle extending my left hind limb without using my knee extensors. I have done that since day one and this is why not one of the previous approaches ever reached my problem. My protective reflex mechanism did not fool him. He knows that we can execute exactly the same movement using different muscle groups. In fact, talking about my left stifle I can feel that he was thinking about a study that he had read earlier on. He had a sentence in his mind. If I remember right, it was something like, "A visually identical hind limb extension in late stance may be accomplished by only hip extensor muscles, only knee extensor muscles or any combination of these." (Liduin S. Meershoek and Anton J. van den Bogert. Mechanical Analysis of Locomotion.) I guess, late stance means the end of the support phase since it is the moment where we are using these muscles. He played with my balance, slightly changed my body posture. He focused on the longitudinal flexion of my spine and I realized then that I was using my knee extensors. I stop immediately thinking, this is going to hurt, but it did not hurt, so I tried again. Little by little, my muscles became stronger and when he asked for the trot I was not too worried about it. He did not really ask me any specific movement. He does not think that repeating a movement can educate our body. He is right about that. For years I executed many movements without ever using my knee extensors muscles on the left side. My riders were focusing on neck posture and other details and meanwhile, I was executing the move protecting my problem.

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Lecture

Date: Friday, May 6th

Time: 7:00 pm

Place: New Bolton Center Woerner Amphitheater

Fee: Only $10 for DVCTA members; $15 for non-members

Clinic

Dates: Saturday & Sunday, May 7th & 8th

Place: Happily Ever After Farm, 272 Brandywine Drive, West Chester, PA 19382

Fee: $175 for 1-hour private lesson

Auditors: $10 per day for DVCTA members, $15 for non DVCTA members.

Dinner

Date: Saturday May 7th

Place: TBD Join Jean Luc for dinner. Space limited to 5 people.

Fee: $12 + your dinner

Registration: contact JoAnne JoAnne@PlumShadeFarm.com 610.486.0708

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