If Your Horse Gets Too Much Of This, He'll Never Be In Top Physical Condition (And No, It's Not Exercise)
Your horse’s body is a marvellous machine. It’s built for speed, stamina, and agility. But like our own human bodies, your horse’s body must be in good physical condition in order to keep him injury-free and performing at his best. So in addition to giving him exercise, you also have to give him rest - but not too much. Here’s why…
How Your Horse Can Master Any Task
You’ve probably heard the phrase “repetition is the mother of all learning.” I’d take that one step further and say repetition is the mother of doing almost anything. Or at least doing it well. Same goes for physical fitness.
In order to get your horse truly physically fit, you have to stress his muscles and joints repeatedly at regular intervals. And once you start down this path of getting him in shape, you have to follow through with it consistently.
It doesn’t have to be every single day. But whatever schedule you choose for getting your horse in shape, you have to stay committed to it. After a good workout, you have to let him rest. But if give him too much rest, you could be nullifying the benefits of all that exercise.
Why Too Much Rest Can Be A Bad Thing
In order to strengthen your horse, you have to stress him again before he has had a chance to fully recover from the previous day’s workout (unless he’s injured, of course). I know that sounds backwards, but here’s why it’s not.
When you apply progressively small amounts of stress over a long period of time, you’re essentially challenging his body to adapt to the load. I’ve yet to see a horse whose body didn’t respond to the challenge.
You want his bones, cartilage, ligaments, and tendons to slowly respond to the increased workload. When they do, he’ll get progressively stronger, not to mention more confident. But the health benefits don’t just stop at the muscles: you’ll be increasing his cardiovascular health as well using this same method.
However, if you give him too much rest, his muscles will rebuild themselves into the condition they were in prior to his previous workout. Without more exercise in a relatively short time, his muscles will have nothing to build upon.
In other words, his body will have “forgotten” about the prior exercise. The net result is his body will have reset itself. And he will have lost any physical conditioning gain he might have had. So the key is to stress his muscles again before they have a chance to completely recover from the last workout he had.
The Payoff For Your Horse: Strength and Endurance
Regardless of what activity you’re preparing your horse for, you can never go wrong by getting him in good physical condition. Exercise is crucial. And so is rest - as long as they’re done in the right amounts. Too much exercise could injure him. Too much rest may nullify the health benefits.
So how much exercise should you give him? And how often? Those are great questions for a trained professional. If you have one available, by all means ask. But if you don’t, a great place to start is your equine veterinarian. Nobody knows horse training better.
And when your horse is in good physical condition, he’ll be a lot more capable of taking you where you want to go, whether it’s a longer trail ride or an equestrian competition.
Yours for Better Horse Health,
Sierra Lynch
Tags: Horse Training
It seems to me that finding the balance between work and rest can be difficult because it can vary between individuals.
Because I ride outside and the weather doesn’t co-operate with what I’d like my riding schedule to be, I always have to remind myself to start out slowly again after each weather induced break. Frustrating for me but much better for my horses.