08/25/2026
When the Trainer Becomes the Horse
One of the unexpected lessons my knee injury has given me is a much deeper understanding of something I’ve spent the past 5 years studying and helping my students to see and understand : compensation.
My training is heavily focused on postural health, proper movement, and helping horses develop strength and balance in a way that supports their bodies rather than asking them to simply work around a problem.
How to recognize compensation patterns in horses—how a restriction, injury, weakness, or lack of range of motion in one area can change the way the entire body moves is something I'm passionate about learning more about and helping others understand as well.
Now, I’m experiencing some of that for myself.
Since my knee injury, I have significantly less range of motion than I had before. My body has had to figure out how to move around a joint that doesn't function quite the way it used to. And I can feel the effects in places that weren't actually injured.
My back gets sore. My hips get tight and sore. My gait and posture have changed. Movements that used to happen without a second thought now require my body to find a different way to accomplish them.
And it has made me think a lot about my heart horse, my Lacey girl.
Lacey experienced a fractured accessory carpal bone in her left front knee, along with significant ligament and soft tissue damage. Watching her navigate that injury, and the changes it created in her movement, gave me an understanding of compensation from the outside.
Now, experiencing my own injury has given me a very different perspective.
I can feel what it's like when your body can't move the way it normally does and has to find another way.
That doesn't mean my injury is the same as Lacey's, or that I know exactly what she felt. But it has given me a deeper appreciation for what horses experience when they are trying to protect an injured or restricted area.
Sometimes the soreness we notice isn't coming from the original problem.
Sometimes it's the result of everything else having to pick up the slack.
A horse may change their posture, alter their stride, brace through their back, shift weight, or move differently through their neck and pelvis—not because those areas are necessarily the source of the problem, but because their body is trying to compensate for something somewhere else.
The visible problem isn't always the whole problem.
This experience has reinforced something I've believed for a long time: we have to look at the whole horse.
Not just the head position.
Not just the stride.
Not just the sore spot.
Not just what we see.
We have to pay attention to how everything connects and how the horse is using their body as a whole.
My injury has been frustrating, humbling, and at times incredibly difficult. But it has also given me a perspective I couldn't have gained from books, education, or watching horses.
I've invested time learning from my teachers, studying and dedicated my career in helping horses to move through their bodies better and helping their owners have a deeper understanding of correct movement.
Now my own body has become my teacher too.
And I know the horses in my life and my students are going to benefit from what I'm learning. ❤️🐴
