Exercises
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Building a Healthy Topline: Tips and Exercises for Your Horse
The other day, I was asked an interesting question: ‘Can you recommend some exercises for “just the topline?”’ The short answer is no. You can’t separate or isolate the topline from the rest of the horse. It’s not a car where…
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Tips for Maintaining Your Horse’s Muscles, Tendons, and Joints in Cold Weather
Cold weather can cause increased stiffness your horse’s muscles, joints and tendons. Tasks that were easy in warmer weather become much more challenging when the body is cold. In chilly weather, your horse’s nervous system initiates adaptive responses. Muscles contract as…
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10 Tips to Improve Muscle Care & Recovery
Bonus info: Muscles, fascia, joints, and bones develop at different rates and require different stimuli for optimal health: 1. Muscles: Muscles adapt well to repetitive patterns and progressive overload. Gradually increasing resistance helps build strength and endurance over time. 2. Bones:…
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Step By Step: The Benefits Of Walk Poles For Horses
Recent studies have found that walking your horse over ground or raised poles strengthens muscles, increases range of motion in all 4 limbs and increases back flexion. Walk poles cause the horse to take higher, more exaggerated steps to clear either…
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Maximizing Your Horse’s Warm-Up: Enhancing Mobility and Skills with Right Angle Poles
Walk is an important part of any warm up with your horse. It’s generally recommended that we spend 10-20 minutes at the beginning of a ride letting the horse slowly start moving. Walk increases circulation bringing oxygen and nutrients to muscles,…
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Riding Exercise: Circles Inside Circles
This is one of my favorite exercises. I use it often both to evaluate and develop the horse and rider. It asks for several basic skills and it can be tailored to fit almost any skill set or level of ability.…
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Mobilize Your Horse’s Back And Improve His Walk
Walk is an effective way to mobilize your horse’s back. Here are 4 ways to improve the walk and increase back rotation: 𝟏. 𝐖𝐚𝐥𝐤 𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐬 This can be a single pole or a series of poles. This is a great exercise…
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Photobiomodulation Improves Health Through a Process Known as Hormesis
Hormesis occurs when a metabolic stressor stimulates the cells to improve overall health. This is similar to the way exercise works. Exercise is considered a stress on the body that causes a temporary increase in reactive oxygen species (free radicals), initiating…
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Understanding Fascial Adhesions: Causes, Effects, and Reducing the Risk of Developing
Fascial adhesions refer to the abnormal binding of fascial tissues, which are thin, fibrous layers of connective tissue that encase muscles, bones, and organs. Fascia plays an essential role in stabilizing and supporting the body, and transmitting forces and energy throughout…
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The Benefits of a Warm Up that Includes Massage
The easier it is for your horse to move freely and in good balance, the more capable it will be of doing what you ask it to do, and of doing it well. Exercise and the physical activity of the horse…