Jocks and Stride Efficiency (Edited)

Faust:
"Too rashly bid, too swiftly done.
What wanders here of shadows sprung?"

Posted last in too big a hurry. Delete. The edit:

What is stride efficiency?
Can the rider do anything to improve stride efficiency?

Stride efficiency" would involve optimal stride. Moving horse's large heavy body through space at max possible speed utilizing minimum possible energy.

Here's the catch however. To have "optimal" stride do u also have to have "less than optimal" stride? Does the horse ever really travel at less than its optimal stride? When Tom Ivers promoted "rounding on the bit" to get a stride on a horse dressage style, did Ivers in fact know of what he spoke? Come back to that.

I viewed my horse yest. morning full in a full speed pasture romp with an eye to stride efficiency, methodology of the 4 legged heavy creature motoring up to full speed. Make this disclaimer--I've viewed striding curiously over a number of years but have never made a study. Thus what follows is a little ad hoc and speculative. Open to discussion.

Stride styles change with speed. At the slower speeds rear lead leg function seems to be to lift the horse's back end of the ground with a slight push forward. At speed these same mechanics involve powerful forward propulsion that creates a momentum or inertia so there's less emphasis on the upward thrust and more on the forward. Front legs--as speed increases at some point there's a change in style from ground flicking to variations of ground pounding. Only the most expert bounders are able do anything resembling ground flicking at speed. The transition from flicking seems to start at around the :14 sec/f rate for most horses.

The interesting thing here is the action of the rear lead leg at speed. While at the slower speeds there's a visible style to rear leg action--you can identify superior striding horses at slower speeds--I had one named Windy Lea that had that nice classic easily noticeable and beautiful galloping stride--. At max speed however, all the rear leg is doing is swinging back and forth along the axis of the hip as fast as possible. It's more the action of a piston than any sort of grace or style.

As the rear leg hits the ground there is an upward forward thrust into the horse's bound that allows the front legs to stretch a certain distance. I suspect that the length of the front leg stretch, instead of being governed by the force of rear leg thrust, is likely more governed by the weight of the horse. Lighter horses can have a bounding type stride. If you watch the ground pounders (instead of bounders), have u ever seen a light weight pounder. The pounders tend to be heavy horses, particularly on the rear end, and I think they are pounders because they are too heavy for the rear leg thrust to lift them off the ground high enough to permit a full forward thrust. Thus, the pounder rear leg action is mostly back and forth as fast as possible whereas bounder action creates more visible upward thrust along with the forward thrust.

The moral of this story is that if the jock is going to affect the striding action and create an optimal stride what is he going to do in terms of this leg action described above. And, putting the Q another way, is there any such thing as an optimal stride?