Defying gravity--Was Up Hill or Down

[CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com]

Subj:    Defying Gravity (was: Up Hill or Down)
Date:   1/11/00 7:40:45 AM Pacific Standard Time
From:   katswig@earthlink.net (k s swigart)
Reply-to:   KSwigart87@alumni.gsb.columbia.edu
To: CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com

Heidi, 

You will have to post this to Ridecamp for me; the "guest
post a message" seems to be broken.

kat
----------------------

Let's get over the idea that horse's can't defy gravity. 
They
do it all the time, both going up hill (big time they have
to 
defy gravity to do this, that's what going "up" means),
going 
down hill (gravity is actually "helping" them down the hill, 
which is why it is so much less work for them to go down
hill), 
and standing still.

Yes, standing still, horses defy gravity.  A HUGE portion of 
their body mass is suspended above the ground (i.e. their
head
and neck, and their torso).

The entire suspensory apparatus of the horse (that's why
it's 
called the suspensory apparatus) is designed to enable the
horse
to defy gravity.

Birds and airplanes defy gravity when they fly, bridges :)
defy 
gravity when huge portions of their structures stay
suspended over 
great chasms, apples defy gravity when they stay attached to
trees 
as they develop into mature fruit, people defy gravity when
they get 
up in the morning.  Defying gravity is so commonplace that
for most 
people it is totally unremarkable.  It is so unremarkable
that there 
appear to be people who think it can't be done; despite the
fact that 
they do it constantly every day.

One need not break the laws of physics to defy gravity, one
need
only apply greater force in the opposite direction.  That is 
why horses can go up hill, jump over large obstacles, etc. 
They
have muscles (capable of applying force vectors in
opposition to
gravity). Gravity is just one of MANY forces that act on
objects...
and a good thing too; because if it weren't for the
opposition provided
by gravity, horses would have a hard time running or jumping
or going 
either up or down hill (gravity is a BIG help to horses
going down hill...
it does most of the work for them).

For a nice, "layman's" understanding of how these force
vectors
ork in a horse, I refer anybody to James Rooney's book, _The
Lame Horse:
Its causes, symptoms, and treatments" where he does a fairly
simplistic and graphic job of describing the mechanics of 
how the musculoskeletal system both holds up, and propels
forward
the horse (in defiance of both the laws of gravity and the
second
(I think--but not sure) law of thermodynamics...you know,
the one
about how objects in motion stay in motion while objects at
rest
stay at rest).  And he does this while studiously "avoiding
all
mathematics."

He has another book _The Biomechanics of Lameness in Horses_
which
goes into all the gruesome calculus details of all the
forces
acting on a horse which I have yet to get my hands on.  So
if
anybody knows where to find it....

...let me know.

_I_ find all that math very interesting :), but since the
horse
seems to figure out how to stand up and move without doing
all that
math, presumably it is not necessary.

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s.  For the pictures Tom, I refer you to a) the
July/August 1997
issue of Trail Blazer magazine (you wrote an article for it
too)
I refer you to my article (with accompanying photographs)
"Down
hill Equiatation"  Photo 2 shows my 16.1 hh TB mare standing
on
an ~35 degree slope with her back "perfectly" level...she is 
virtually sitting on her hocks.  Photo 6 shows the same
horse
walking down the same slope, back is still almost level.
Photo 1 shows the same horse trotting down an approximately 
45 degree slope (yes that is virtually a cliff).  Back isn't
quite level, but it is more level than the slope...but a
45 degree slope isn't what we are talking about here. 

Note that this is NOT one of my good "downhill horses" and
it
took MANY years to get her to even this stage of training. 
She 
is not particularly suited to it, because she has something
of a 
"downhill" build, like most classic bred racehorses, and
given the 
slightest provocation she will fall onto her forehand.  I
used her 
for this photo shoot because I didn't have Windy at the
time, and 
Saber was laid up.  The advantage of using her for this is
she also 
gave me lots of "how not to do it photos"...some of which
are also 
included in the article."

Additionally, I refer you to Plate VII in Noel Jackson's
book
_Effective Horsemanship_ which shows the author on a 4 y.o.
mare
collecting the horse at the trot going down a fairly steep
(25-
30 degrees) slope, again, not perfectly level, but the hind
legs
are clearly "well under" the horse (not as well under as I
would
like, because the rider has tipped his head forward, but, oh
well).

As a separate issue, you don't have to get the horse's back
completely 
level in order to transfer a substantial portion of the
weight to the 
hindquarters. In David LeBlanc's static model (yes he did
the math 
right); leveling the back on a 30 (I think) degree slope
transferred 
30% of the weight from the front legs to the hind legs.  If
a horse's 
suspensory apparatus is designed to support 60% of the
horse's weight, 
you don't have to unload it by 30% to get significant
relief.  However, 
Tom's question of "is this really a good way to ask a horse
to go down 
hill is VERY valid.  The hind quarters are not naturally
designed for 
weight support (remember, the horse naturally carries 60% of
its weight 
on the forehand)...so if you ask your horse to move this
way, you may be 
overloading the hind end.  And sports which habitually
overload the hind 
end (dressage and reining come to mind) are notorious for
ruining a 
horse's hocks (sports that don't do this are notorious for
ruining horse's 
lower front legs).  So, if you are gonna teach your horse to
move this way:
1) make sure your horse is well conformed in the hind end
(most Arabians 
aren't), 2) SLOWLY make this transfer of weight so the horse
can build up 
the musculoskeletal structure to accommodate it, and 3) pay
VERY close 
attention to "suppleness" not just strength--otherwise that
eccentric 
exercise that Tom talked about will rip your horse's back to
shreds and 
the stress of carrying the weight on the HQ will rip your
horse's hocks to 
shreds (the "slowly" is what so many of the dressage and
especially reining 
riders forget).

And yes, you can teach a horse to transfer its ENTIRE weight
to its back 
end.  The "high school jump" that Heidi referred to where
the horse shifts 
into a levade and then progresses forward by leaping off its
back end to 
land on its back end is called a courbette, and is NOT "easy
on the horse" 
and not a gait I would recommend for going down the trail
:).

Personally, I think that a nice balance between front and
back end would 
be to keep the load distributed pretty evenly from front to
back (that 
means about 50% on each).  David, you do the math to figure
out just how 
"level" the horse's back has to be in order to achieve this
on a 30% slope :).


----------------------- Headers --------------------------------
Return-Path: <katswig@earthlink.net>
Received: from  rly-st04.mail.aol.com (rly-st04.mail.aol.com [172.18.149.19]) 
by air-yd01.mail.aol.com (v67.7) with ESMTP; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 10:40:45 -0500
Received: from rly-yg04.mx.aol.com (rly-yg04.mail.aol.com [172.18.147.4])
      by rly-st04.mail.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0)
      with ESMTP id JAA26889 for <CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com>;
      Tue, 11 Jan 2000 09:26:11 -0500 (EST)
Received: from  swan.prod.itd.earthlink.net (swan.prod.itd.earthlink.net 
[207.217.120.123]) by rly-yg04.mx.aol.com (v67.7) with ESMTP; Tue, 11 Jan 
2000 09:26:11 -0500
Received: from earthlink.net (pool0263.cvx25-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net 
[209.179.217.8])
    by swan.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id GAA17614
    for <CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com>; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 06:26:07 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <387B3F7A.58724534@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 06:34:34 -0800
From: k s swigart <katswig@earthlink.net>
Reply-To: KSwigart87@alumni.gsb.columbia.edu
Organization: Foxe Basin Group
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; I)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: CMKSAGEHIL@aol.com
Subject: Defying Gravity (was: Up Hill or Down)
References: <24.24f78174.25abf907@aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.    
Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/RideCamp   
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=