23/04/2025
Another super neglected yet super important area to cover: The Poll
Why does it get neglected? It either doesn’t even get considered or because the horse generally kicks off when you treat it, its not easy. But there’s a heap of muscle in the area and as therapists aren’t we meant to like, treat it when it goes sore and tight?
This technique targets several small but significant muscles and considering this is a big ol’ pressure point for a bridle/ headcollar AND muscles used for chewing (I mean that’s a repetitive strain!), its never a surprise to me that 99% of horses have some amount of tension in the area from one muscle or another.
Temporalis muscle: found each side of the forelock; does a lot of heavy lifting for chewing and also likes to hypertrophy in the case of crib biters, its all about dem gains, yeh?
Parotidauricularis & Zygomaticoauricularis: located at the base of the front of the ear and used for moving the ear (and that’s a LOT). The general Parotid area covers across the maxillary facial nerve area, so can put pressure on those nerves also. Considering how everyone went out and bought a Micklem bridle the moment they hit the shelves, I’m assuming we all collectively care about the facial nerves now?
Cervicoauricularis superficialis & Cervicoauricularis: located around the back of the ear and on top of the Atlas/ C1/ first neck bone. If your horse has ever hit its head on anything above it or has a rotational fall, these muscles will know all about it! Also, the horses head carriage when in work and their natural posture will have an impact on how tight these get. But this is where we get serious fireworks from the horse when working on these bits!
Fascia: Its everywhere! Including the ear! And fascia can spasm, it will often rat out when a horse has been ear twitched as well, because it really doesn’t take kindly to that sort of thing!
So, yeh. That’s less than 20 square inches of the horses body that bears great significance!
