Seabiscuit Part 2

I've written in the past that I am concerned about how erroneous information gets propagated as fact. To hopefully not propagate erroneous information I want to write a little more about the SeaBiscuit article.
In my analysis one reason why Seabiscuit was so effective was his ability to coil his lumbars and therefore have his rear feet on the ground for a long time, transferring energy to the job of moving the body (center of mass or COM. Seabiscuit could do this, lumbar coil, because his shoulders were free enough to allow the thorax to rise between them. This is obvious when watching him walk, the initiation of the movement happens with the upward movement of the sternum. The free shoulders allows Seabiscuit's neck to rise at the base and round at the top. This is what we want.
Contrast this with Phar Lap, who also had a phenomenal lumbar curving movement but not free shoulders. To allow for the tissue length needed to coil Phar Lap, since he couldn't raise his thorax, brought his head up and bulged the base of the neck out--ventrally--causing a ewe neck.
The error that I am concerned about spreading is one that postulates that the important function in lumbar coiling is the rounding of the back, its not! The rounding is a secondary effect, and important one, but not the initiator. What allows and causes the rounding is the thorax rising between free shoulders. This is often called "lightning the forehand" or "collection" or moving the weight to the rear...which all happens as a result of shoulder freedom.
The next time you look at a horse moving at a canter or gallop--this is where the lumbar coiling is obvious--look for the rising of the thorax between the shoulders that precedes the coiling. If there isn't much coiling than there isn't much shoulder freedom.

Seabiscuit

I rented a documentary on Seabiscuit that was a compilation of "lost" newsreel footage about him.
What was really impressive is how small he was relative to the horses that he raced against, 15hh, how much lumbar coiling he was able to achieve and how fluid his body was. The lumbar coiling is the transfer mechanism for energy to the ground to allow the Center of Mass to be propelled forward. Through the coiling the spring mechanism of the lumbar aponeurosis is engaged as is the lattismus dorsi muscle/fascia. The greater the coil the more time the rear feet are on the ground and therefore the greater the energy exchange that occurs.
Increased lumbar coiling is one of the things that I look for in a horse that I am working with as a sign that the work is progressing well.
Another small horse with phenomenal lumbar coiling is the Australian racing legend Phar Lap.
If you go to youtube and watch the match race, here's the link, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcnawQ7DFaE pay attention to how the two horses move their rear at the walk, around 51 seconds into the video. You can see that Seabiscuit is much more "reachy" with his rear legs a sign of a topline that can lengthen. You can also see, for people who've trained with me, the "wave" of energy from the GRF moving along the spine and out the head.
Phar Lap on the other hand was not as subtle along the top line and got his length through turning his neck upside down, or ewe neck, which positioned the poll closer to the rear feet.
enjoy

How Important is Gravity?

I've been writing about what I'm calling the movements of evolution.
This started when I noticed that my dog Jake has a "fish" walk, not a trot just a walk. This journey was also sparked by my reading Serge Gracovetsky's book, "The Spinal Engine" that premises that bipedal locomotion starts in the spine and not the legs.
I took Jake swimming the other day--actually he swims a lot but I noticed something the other day--and noticed that his swim gait is a walk, not a trot, and that while he was swimming or walking in water--not on--his pelvis movement was that of a mammal and not a fish! Can we postulate that water removes the effects of gravity? If so than we can also postulate that whatever causes him to walk like a fish is dependent on gravity.
More thought is needed.
I'm working on animations of the different pelvis movements and will post them to the website when they're done.

Evolution of Movement

I'm going to start this discussion--is that a correct thing to say in a blog?--with the evolution of movement, from fish to mammal, with some talk about bipeds but mostly about quadrupeds. Then I'll talk a little about my thoughts on how movement deviations, or those things we see in our animal clients that aren't right, and what they may mean from a therapeutic intervention perspective.
Let's start.
Evolution has a interesting characteristic--it doesn't like to replace things that are working with new features, unlike computer programs! What this means is that potentially all of evolutions movements, or perhaps better put, all of the movements that were experienced in evolution are still present in the body, not removed but built on.
I'm suggesting that there are 4 movements that are in a mammalian body:
1. The notochordal movement of the cranio-sacral rythm. This is the opening/closing movement that we see in a flower or a notochord!(that makes sense) This movement isn't always considered in a list of evolutionary movements.
2. The lateral movement of the fish. The fish moves laterally, or side to side. The evolutionary separation from the jelly fish is the introduction of a spine, which allows for a counter or antagonistic relationship of the muscles. The fish's muscles are found laterally. The fish has limited movement control because the muscle orientation only allows for one force vector.
3. The amphibian and reptile. Here we see the first limbs, fish with legs and a neck, which makes it easier to get the head to the food. The limbs are not under the body but to the outsides. Movement is still primarily laterally controlled.
4. Mammalian. Here the legs are under the body and the movement is more in the sagital plane rather than lateral. The lateral musculature has moved into the dorsum and ventral aspects of the of the body. Think about this. In the mammal we don't encounter much muscle in the lateral aspects of the body, this is where the ribs are.
When we look at a biped or a quadruped we can see these later 3 movements if we watch the pelvis. Some individuals will walk with a rear the wraps around the spine, I call this the Marilyn Monroe walk. This correlates with the fish.
Next is the hips that move up and down which is in the next phase of evolution, or the reptile/amphibian.
Lastly is the mammalian which moves in the sagital plane of dorsal/ventral, anterior/posterior.
This is all good but what causes the body to assume a pattern that is lower in the evolution scheme of things?
More later.

A Little Help

Hello All;

I need a little help. People have taken the survey and want to know more about movement. I'm happy to write about it but need to know at what level? I could start with the evolution of movement, this is my current passion. Or I could start with the simple, how to you look at movement?
What would you like?
I'll post on evolution tonight since that's what I'm keen about right now.
thanks

What makes a myth stick?

I taught a course in July where I presented a theory about how horses develop a cyclic on/off tissue pattern. The graphic I used was of a horse with the "on" portions one color and the "off" portions another. This looked like bands and I used the word band to describe them... the "on" band, etc. Later as we were working with horses the question came up about the "bands" and this seemed to be a new term that was being used. I put a stop to it, I hope, but it could have been the start of a new myth that horses have "bands of tissue", perhaps even different colors!
In my profession, Rolfing, there are a lot of myths that have propegated over the years. When I talk with someone and one of them comes up I label them a myth. My definition of a myth is something that hasn't been independently verified to exist. It doesn't mean that they don't exist just that they don't have more than one source.
It seems that with animals we "alternative" therapists promote a lot of myths. Of course one could argue that the conventional therapists are also guilty of this, like the myths that they understand everything about the drugs they use.
Another source of myths is the new breed of horse owner, that is not satisfied with their horses being horses but need them to be something mythical. They're not satisfied with the manure, the wood chewing, the rolls in the mud or the impatient neigh as you walk out to feed in the morning. They need to have something akin to a Unicorn that is magical beyond their mundane view of the world. But, I'll challenge, the mundane is actually where the magic is, the "ordinary" magic of the sound of wind in the grass, of geese flying overhead, coyotes howling in the night after eating the neighbor's dog. We don't need to look outside of the phenomenal world to find magic because it already is. And, it doesn't need to be mythical if we just pay attentions to it.