SPORTHORSE PERFORMANCE
Sport horses of every discipline demonstrate the versatility of the equine athlete. Maintaining variety and strength through their training is vital to performance.
How to support Sport horses?
The German training handbook believes that your horses should be trained to the level that they compete at in both jumping and Dressage disciplines.
In its purest form, Dressage is the basic training of your horse to learn to carry themselves in balanced, controlled and correct ways. Injury, compensation and strength changes over time, and each can have great effect on biomechanics. Over time, this can lead to pain and training problems, as well as contribute to injuries.
Ridden assessments throughout the rehabilitation process, obviously once appropriate and signed off by the vet, can be a valuable addition to targeting and improving the process.
The extra 1%
Correct Dressage training allows horses to move more independently, symmetrically and correctly. This moves the needle closer to correcting patterns of inefficient biomechanics, allowing these patients to benefit from rehabilitation in a truly long-term way.
The most successful rehabilitation cases benefit from riders make efforts to vary the strengthening exercises used. Poor biomechanics can result from, and can cause, injury and pain. While it is not always possible to entirely change this, showing horses a way to move their bodies and muscles in a fluid, free, strong and symmetrical way, is the best antidote to compensations pre- and post-injury.
Exercises on the ground as part of a physiotherapist prescribed exercise programme, and exercises under saddle as part of a dressage training schedule are crucial methods of strengthening and conditioning our horses' muscles.
