  A maximally rotating Kerr black hole is said to be extremal. In this paper we
introduce the corresponding restrictions for isolated and dynamical horizons.
These reduce to the standard notions for Kerr but in general do not require the
horizon to be either stationary or rotationally symmetric. We consider physical
implications and applications of these results. In particular we introduce a
parameter e which characterizes how close a horizon is to extremality and
should be calculable in numerical simulations.
