Targeting Your Horse’s Core Strength

Targeting Your Horse’s Core Strength

As we learn more and more about the horse’s body and how things are connected, we try and find better ways of keeping our horse safe, healthy and most importantly, happy.

There are lots of new fads that promise quick cures for imbalances, whether they are found in the feet or the upper body, but to find a long-term solution, we need to realise that, unfortunately, these imbalances have an underlying cause.

Usually, the underlying cause is either pain, bad training, ill-fitting gear, an unbalanced rider or husbandry issues.

This means that if the problem is a badly fitting saddle, a change in training is not going to help much. If the horse has grown unbalanced feet due to compensating for shoulder pain, feeding minerals for hoof growth is not the solution. And a horse that is kept isolated and develops behaviour issue as a result, will not become calm and happy with a chiropractic treatment.

To have a healthy and happy horse, we need a team of professionals to support us on the horse-keeping journey and our horse needs friends, exercise and healthy nutrition. Nevertheless, there are things you can do effectively and on an everyday basis to help your horse stay happy and healthy.

Horses, like any other animal or human, need movement, stability and mobility to stay healthy. Yes, they move while they are in the paddock with their friends and they are moving while being trained, but we can add more specific movements to their day – to help them stay healthy and to help us notice issues before they become big problems. Let’s have a closer look at this.

A joint needs to be able to move in a certain way for the whole body to stay healthy. If we get restrictions in a joint or a joint is too loose, we change not only that one joint, but through compensation patterns, we change the whole horse.

And the change doesn’t just affect the musculo-skeletal part of the horse but everything from breathing to blood flow, digestion to hoof balance and even the nervous system will be affected. We will talk more about these in later posts.

So how can you, as a horse owner help your own horse and catch little issues before they become major problems?

A simple way is by adding a few stretches and core strength exercises to your horse’s everyday routine. They don’t take long and the better you know what your horse is capable of, the sooner you will notice when things are ‘not right’.

By practicing stretches with your horse on a regular basis (5 to 7 days a week), you also get to know your horse’s body.

If suddenly he is not as flexible as he was yesterday or a week ago, you have the opportunity to get these problems addressed before the rest of the body has to compensate too much.

With increased flexibility we also increase joint stability and overall mobility and decrease the risk of injury.

Knowing where our horses are weaker and where they are stronger also helps us put together a better training plan. Regardless of whether you compete at the highest level or you take your horse on a hack once every few weeks, the stronger the core the healthier your horse. Because let’s face it, nobody is perfect, but we can aim to improve ourselves and our horses so they can stay healthy and happy for as long as possible.

In future parts of this series we will show you some stretches and core strength exercises which you can use on a regular basis to get to know your horse’s body better, improve core strength and spinal health and to keep your four legged friend happy.

SOURCE: HORSES AND PEOPLE