Have you ever struggled to tune in a weak radio station? Static fills the speakers as you strain to hear the station while tweaking the dial. Of course today's radios jump electronically to the station with the strongest signal when you push the next button. In electronics what determines a "strong" signal is the signal to noise ratio. Signal is also called intelligence. Noise is what we want to reject or filter out.
When we work with out client they are going through a very similar process of trying to determine what in our input/touch is intelligent and should be listened to and what is extraneous noise and should be rejected. Each time the client makes a decision about this their ability to adapt or change is reduced a little--I subscribe to the theory that we have only so much adaptive capacity and that it is not measured in time but in decisions like described here. If we are inputting a lot of extraneous noise into the client's body, through touching them with no purpose to the touch--petting--than they will use their adaptive capacity on filtering out that touch and not gain as much benefit. If on the other hand, no pun, we are sure about what we are trying to achieve with our touch than our signal to noise ratio will be high and the client will benefit more, if only in that we did the filtering for them.
The next time you are working with a client ask yourself before you touch them if you are sure of what you are trying to achieve with our intervention.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Collection Part 2
I finally got the video "If Horses Could Speak" which I ordered in December! The video goes along with the Dr. Heuschmann's book "Tug of War: Classical vs Modern Dressage". If you are a therapist reading this blog save the $60 and buy the book first. The video is more like a documentary of what Dr. Heuschmann believes to be "classic". It is a beautiful piece of work from a film perspective, and wonderful to watch. It won't however teach you anything that you can use in your therapy sessions. I buy these kinds of things to use in my course, so they pay for themselves in the long run. Even as a rider you won't learn any new or old ways to train your horse.
Dr. Rolf stated that if you wanted to come to a new conclusion about something you needed to start with a new premise.(Actually this isn't her statement, she was repeating it.) Dr. Heuschmann encourages us to come to an old premise in training our horses--which I totally agree with--while using old premises about anatomy and biomechanics--which I disagree with.
The old premise that Dr. Heuschmann keeps to is that locomotion is caused by muscular contraction, that muscles are separate entities within the body and that fascia is found in specific "spots". He holds to an old style anatomy view of a trained veterinarian. I seriously doubt if Dr. Heuschmann uses any type of alternative therapy with his horses. He most certainly doesn't discuss the skeleton, nerves or fascia, other than as mentioned above, in this video or his book. (I haven't finished the book yet.)
I have a lot of respect for what he is doing and would love to talk with him. I plan to go to a clinic if and when he comes to the US. Or, perhaps, I should try and go to Germany and work with his horses, they could certainly benefit from it.
The lastest on the collection front. There are 3 main theories which I will call: the topline, the bottomline and the shoulder freedom theories.
The topline is a theory that is proposed by the "old" school represented by Dr. Heuschmann and Paul Belosak and such. This theory holds to the pyramid of training which has collection as the last part of training of the riding horse. It holds the supple back as sacrosanct--I totally agree--and assumes that the horse's front is lifted up (dorsally) and back (caudally) by the muscles of the rear and topline. This was seen to be so in experiments carried out at the McPhail research center with Paul Belasik riding a horse in piaffe, which is an extreme dressage movement.
The bottomline theory is proposed and championed by Dr. Bennett. She proposes that collection occurs throught the contraction of the "ring of muscles" on the bottomline of the horse, with little or no activity in the topline. This hasn't been tested in a research setting.
The shoulder theory has two parts to it: the shoulder only theory and the shoulders as the instigator theory--this is my theory so it gets the tricked out name. In this the shoulder only theory, proposed by Dr. Clayton the soft tissue of the thoracic sling propels the front end dorsally and caudally shifting the center of mass towards the rear. In my theory it is the thoracic sling that "allows" collection--moving the COM dorsally and caudally--through the freedom of two forelimbs coming more vertically,and the contraction of the topline and bottomline--sans psoas. Maybe this should be called the unifying theory of how a quadruped can start to move like a biped.
Any comments?
Dr. Rolf stated that if you wanted to come to a new conclusion about something you needed to start with a new premise.(Actually this isn't her statement, she was repeating it.) Dr. Heuschmann encourages us to come to an old premise in training our horses--which I totally agree with--while using old premises about anatomy and biomechanics--which I disagree with.
The old premise that Dr. Heuschmann keeps to is that locomotion is caused by muscular contraction, that muscles are separate entities within the body and that fascia is found in specific "spots". He holds to an old style anatomy view of a trained veterinarian. I seriously doubt if Dr. Heuschmann uses any type of alternative therapy with his horses. He most certainly doesn't discuss the skeleton, nerves or fascia, other than as mentioned above, in this video or his book. (I haven't finished the book yet.)
I have a lot of respect for what he is doing and would love to talk with him. I plan to go to a clinic if and when he comes to the US. Or, perhaps, I should try and go to Germany and work with his horses, they could certainly benefit from it.
The lastest on the collection front. There are 3 main theories which I will call: the topline, the bottomline and the shoulder freedom theories.
The topline is a theory that is proposed by the "old" school represented by Dr. Heuschmann and Paul Belosak and such. This theory holds to the pyramid of training which has collection as the last part of training of the riding horse. It holds the supple back as sacrosanct--I totally agree--and assumes that the horse's front is lifted up (dorsally) and back (caudally) by the muscles of the rear and topline. This was seen to be so in experiments carried out at the McPhail research center with Paul Belasik riding a horse in piaffe, which is an extreme dressage movement.
The bottomline theory is proposed and championed by Dr. Bennett. She proposes that collection occurs throught the contraction of the "ring of muscles" on the bottomline of the horse, with little or no activity in the topline. This hasn't been tested in a research setting.
The shoulder theory has two parts to it: the shoulder only theory and the shoulders as the instigator theory--this is my theory so it gets the tricked out name. In this the shoulder only theory, proposed by Dr. Clayton the soft tissue of the thoracic sling propels the front end dorsally and caudally shifting the center of mass towards the rear. In my theory it is the thoracic sling that "allows" collection--moving the COM dorsally and caudally--through the freedom of two forelimbs coming more vertically,and the contraction of the topline and bottomline--sans psoas. Maybe this should be called the unifying theory of how a quadruped can start to move like a biped.
Any comments?
Saturday, January 10, 2009
The great collection debate
I put a copy--draft--of a chapter from my next book on the website wwww.animalsi.com. The chapter is on "collection" of the horse. Collection is a term/concept that is really misunderstood--one author called it "mythunderstood--and as such it is difficult for someone to know what to believe it is.
There are those people who go back to the classics and read them to gain a better understanding of it. Throughout my riding career, in taking lessons, I've been told that I/we need to "collect" the horse. Often this was accompanied by an indication that the horse should "round" its back to indicate it was collected. It didn't seem to matter that the horse may be round behind while tight along the top line as in some champion cutting horses I watched on TV last week.
In my research on what collection means anatomically, I've come across three main, what I'm calling, themes: 1. the topline, 2. the bottom line and 3. the shoulder freedom theme. I've always been a proponent of the shoulder freedom theme and designed my work around this. This theme has been backed up by research by Dr. Hillary Clayton as has the first theme. What I've come to conclude is that collection occurs through the interaction of these three themes.
I'll write more on the website, so I can add some illustrations and animations. If you get a chance to visit and read the chapter, let me know what you think.
There are those people who go back to the classics and read them to gain a better understanding of it. Throughout my riding career, in taking lessons, I've been told that I/we need to "collect" the horse. Often this was accompanied by an indication that the horse should "round" its back to indicate it was collected. It didn't seem to matter that the horse may be round behind while tight along the top line as in some champion cutting horses I watched on TV last week.
In my research on what collection means anatomically, I've come across three main, what I'm calling, themes: 1. the topline, 2. the bottom line and 3. the shoulder freedom theme. I've always been a proponent of the shoulder freedom theme and designed my work around this. This theme has been backed up by research by Dr. Hillary Clayton as has the first theme. What I've come to conclude is that collection occurs through the interaction of these three themes.
I'll write more on the website, so I can add some illustrations and animations. If you get a chance to visit and read the chapter, let me know what you think.
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