Rock your Horses World
Hey Athletes!
When exercising and conditioning our horses, we most often think about adding in hill work, trot sets or long gallops, pole work or cavalettis. While these things are great for building strength, they aren’t necessarily building stability. Stability exercises are done very slow and precise, controlled by the postural muscles around the spine. Try it yourself. Lay on your back and plan to move. Pay close attention to how your stabilizer muscles engage in that split second just before you lift your head off the floor to move.
Unstable horses are predisposed to poor performance, injury and behavioural issues. When a horse’s stability is poor, their joints are subjected to more of the shear forces when they move. Therefore, if we can improve stability, we can reduce the shear forces on the joints and improve compressive force. So how can we do that?
Rocking!
When we gently rock the horse’s weight between their limbs, we are initiating isometric contractions in the muscles. Isometric contraction occurs when the muscle length remains pretty much the same as tension is produced so these exercises are much easier on the joints because the muscle fibres are still firing without requiring extra joint movement. Isometric exercises are helpful for those horses and humans that suffer from arthritis, as other forms of exercise may aggravate the arthritis by using the muscles to move a joint through full range of motion.
The video below demonstrates how to perform the rocking exercise with your horse. Like any new exercise, take it gentle and slow. It is more challenging than you think! As your horse builds up their stabilizer muscles, we can increase the difficulty of the exercise by increasing the sets or reps, or moving to an unstable surface (sand vs concrete or stability pads). We can further increase the difficulty by lifting a limb. Again, try it yourself! If you have access to stability pads (or even your mattress!), try standing still and taking notice of your stabilizer muscles keeping you upright. Then try standing on one foot. It’s not as easy as it looks!
Rock on!
-Ashley