Why Slow Walk Work is vital for rehabilitation

Many horses shut down awareness to parts of their body. This can happen for a variety of reasons, from injury to poor training or riding. Horses protect their bodies against pain by changing the way they move: reducing freedom of movement, and cutting off feeling and awareness of parts of their bodies.

When the original source of pain (poor riding or training methods, or injury) has been removed, the horse may still continue to protect themselves by bracing their muscles to minimise movement – a bit like when you break a toe, you can continue to limp for some time after the injury has healed. This can cause further problems because of tension and reduced movement, preventing the horse from moving freely with optimum posture. This can cause crookedness and pain even if the horse isn’t being ridden. Add a rider to this, and the problems become more serious.

Bringing awareness back to the body while the horse is relaxed can help the horse to realise that there is no longer pain, and if they can feel regulated and calm enough to experiment with relaxing those braced muscles and allowing the body to move, they quickly realise that their body feels better. Once they have felt this, they will continue to make positive changes to their posture and the way they move.

Slow walk work: Allowing the horse to move slowly without asking for increased activity or sustained rhythm but instead encouraging the horse to try a small change and then pause to process how this feels, enables the horse to safely and confidently release braced muscles and make the changes needed in order to make long term positive changes.