Medical Considerations for Therapeutic Riding People with cerebral palsy have difficulty coordinating and producing purposeful, functional movements. Some people have too much muscle tone, such as those with spasticity. Their muscles hold their limbs in rather stiff postures and it is difficult to relax these muscles. Thus, the rider cannot move his limbs easily except in the direction the spastic muscles pull. Other types of tone abnormalities include fluctuating tone, as seen in athetoid cerebral palsy and hypotonia, or too little tone.
Tone is an elusive thing to quantify.
Using treatment techniques to temporarily make tone more normal does not suddenly result in normal, coordinated movement patterns. In fact, increased tone may be the result of pathologic weaknesses in other muscle groups coupled with the normal human desire to move. Muscle fibers are known to change over time, resulting in increasing, age-related difficulty in maintaining posture. It may be true that abnormal tone, especially spasticity, is an abnormal response to normal sensation, such as touch and movement sensation. Orthopedic problems occur in people with cerebral palsy, perhaps partly because of the interaction of the abnormal neurologic system with the muscles, joints and soft tissues.