The Back Health REVOLUTION w/ Saddlefitting US & Dr. Kate Workman

Unpopular opinon: riding your horse is not always the answer to improving their physical well being. In fact, prioritizing your horse's muscular health and fitness is MORE important than your riding goals when it comes to your horse's overall health and longterm soundness - and sometimes that means taking a break from ridden work to focus on rebuilding muscles with, you guessed it, groundwork. Ok, we know this sounds boring but hear us out...

This week we're unpacking the foundational advantages of equine fitness with friend of the pod, Amanda Anderson of Saddle Fitting US and veterinarian Dr. Kate Workman of Denali Equine. 

Without a healthy back and musculature, the rest of the equation (saddlefit, proper riding, a balanced rider, etc) crumbles. Join us as Doctor Kate shares her journey from being a sports medicine practitioner to her current specialization in diagnosing and treating chronic body lameness. We'll get into why proactive intervention and prevention is so important when it comes to solving lameness issues, and well worth the time and effort as opposed to band-aid solutions. 

From identifying signs of lameness and body soreness to understanding how saddle fit plays a role in overall soundness, learn why a healthy back is the foundation for a happy, thriving equine athlete, and why even the most perfectly fitting saddle won't solve underlying issues.

Dr. Kate Workman started Denali Equine with the goal of helping equine athletes reach their full potential. She wanted a facility to cultivate a team approach where every case is surrounded by all the specialized professionals they need to be diagnosed, healed then maintained in their athletic career. Upon graduating from Virginia-Maryland Regional college of veterinary medicine she took an internship with a sports medicine exclusive practice. There she got the amazing opportunity to work with some of the nation’s top quarter horses. This experience helped her hone an eye for movement patterns.

After opening Denali, she knew we needed to do better at early injury diagnosis to prevent the chronic lameness and career ending injuries many horses were sustaining. There were a few cases, including one of her own horses that she didn’t feel like we had solved the whole puzzle.  With the help of collaboration with Dr. Audrey DeClue quickly learned that there needed to be a shift from focusing primarily on limb lameness to body soundness as a whole. That ‘conventional’ equine sports medicine was not giving enough answers for too many horses. This shift has allowed her to focus on conditions that go undiagnosed/untreated, focus on the small details of body injuries and compensation patterns which allows for the prevention of chronic limb conditions. Her goal is to always listen to, work with and recruit the owners and all equine professionals on a team approach to solve the unsolvable.

You can learn more about her practice at denaliequine.com

For more graphics, video explanations, and behind-the-scenes bites, give us a follow @NoBucksGivenPodcast on Instagram.

This episode was executive-produced by Maija Liisa Luttinger and Allie Watson Bayne. Special thanks to our editor and sound mixer, David Dalton of Driftwork Sound.

This podcast is brought to you by Freely Forward Bodywork. Our mission at Freely Forward Bodywork is to make equine bodywork accessible to any horse, no matter where you are in the world. If you are interested in learning more about my online catalog of courses designed to help you bond with your horse through the art of massage, give me a follow on Instagram @freelyforwardbodywork or click this link to check them out yourself! https://freelyforwardbodywork.mykajabi.com/

USE CODE NOBUCKS10 to get 10% off any of our online courses! This week we're featuring our entry-  level course, BACK IN BALANCE which you can learn more about here: