Was not a good one :-( longitudinal tear on the medial aspect of the check ligament.
The upside is the fibre alignment and density is good so continue walking him out. continue to stretch walking by one minute/week. He can go out for brief periods in a double stable sized pen.
Tuesday 9 December 2014
Monday 8 December 2014
Understanding horse training, fitness and performance - David Marlin
http://davidmarlin.co.uk/portfolio/understanding-horse-training-fitness-and-performance/
Copyright David Marlin 2014
Training, Fitness and Performance
Dr David Marlin
There are three main reasons why we train horses. These are:
1. to make them easier to ride and manage
2. to improve their performance
3. to decrease the risk of injury during exercise and or competition
What is training?
Training can be physical, that is increasing the capacity for exercise or the ease with which a horse can exercise by increasing muscle strength or muscle endurance. However, not all training is “physical”. When we train horses to jump or to learn new movements this often may not affect the horse physically and the improvement may simply come as a result of the horse “learning” or practising the skill.
Training is repeated episodes or bouts of exercise that have a cumulative effect on a horse’s physical or mental capacity for exercise. Improvement in the physical capacity for exercise is what we call fitness. A single piece of exercise has very little impact on a horse’s fitness. It is the combined effect of many repeated exercise sessions that produce a training effect.
We can think of two types of training that we perform with horses. Physical training makes exercise easier for the horse or allows the horse to exercise for longer or allows a horse to run faster or jump higher or further or accelerate faster. These changes come about mainly because with training the locomotory (movement) muscles and the heart (which is also made of a special type of muscle) have a tremendous capacity to change and adapt to repeated bout of exercise.
The other type of training we commonly undertake with horses is focussed more on improving skill and modifying behaviour. Training a horse to load into a trailer or to stand when we mount into the saddle are examples of behavioural training and do not involve any physical changes in the horse’s body. Training a horse to perform dressage movements is primarily skill training but may also have a small physical training component as well. Whilst we are teaching the horse how to perform these movements (the skill training) we may also get some development of the muscles involved in making these movements (physical training).
What is the difference between exercise and training?
Any activity that increases the metabolic activity of muscles (increases the rate at which they are using energy) can be considered to constitute exercise. This results in other changes in the horse’s body including increases in breathing rate and depth and heart rate. These changes occur to help transport more oxygen to the muscles and to remove heat and waster products such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid. Exercise always uses up energy, but does not always result in an increase in fitness.
How does the horse’s body respond to exercise?
Single bouts of exercise have very little effect on a horse’s fitness. Why is this? Lets take the example of an event horse that has been turned out in the paddock for 4 months over the winter. The rider puts together a training plan with daily training exercise starting February 1st for a competition on May 1st. The reason you cannot expect anything from a single session is because even an unfit horse has a high capacity for exercise. The rider knows that they are going to repeat the exercise perhaps daily for the next two weeks. The horse’s body does not know what’s coming. It will only begin to adapt and change if the exercise stimulus is repeated.
The horse’s body can adapt to changes in the level of daily exercise quite quickly. But if the intensity of exercise is not increased then the horse’s body will adapt but no further changes will take place.
We start with an unfit horse and start trotting for 45 minutes a day. The figure above shows that when we first start training our horse (Day 0) there is initially no increase in fitness. However, the horse’s body soon gets the message and begins to adapt. Fitness increases slowly and then quite rapidly. But after around 10 days of training, the response starts to slow down and plateau. This is because the horse can now comfortably trot for 45 minutes each day. Why would the horse’s body waste energy trying to adapt to be able to canter at cross-country pace for 10 minutes? It won’t. It will only adapt to the level to which it is “stressed” or challenged. It cannot predict what you have in mind for the future.
This gives us our first general rule of training – Change the intensity of the training around every 2-3 weeks.
What can I expect to see as my horse gets fitter?
Training an unfit horse is quite rewarding. If all is going well you should soon notice quite an improvement in your horse’s ability to handle its’ daily training sessions. You may notice after a week or so that your horse maintains a more even pace or even starts to get a little stronger and pull. You may also notice that your horse is sweating less or that when you pull-up he is not breathing as hard. If you are training with a heart rate monitor you should notice that his heart rate is lower during exercise and that his heart rate drops (recovers) much more quickly when you stop exercising. This all points to the fact that your horse has increased his fitness as a result of your training and that he is now coping with the exercise more easily. This is the point to increase the training load (difficulty). This can be done by increasing speed, distance or using softer surfaces or hills or even working in hotter part of the day and we will look at this later on.
Training and the law of diminishing returns
The reason why you often notice the most improvement in your horse’s fitness at the start of your training programme is because training follows the law of diminishing returns. At the start you put in 10 units of training and get 10 units of increase in fitness. But as your horse gets fitter, 10 units of training gives less and less units of fitness.
Training is a compromise
No-one can be good at everything. In sport, all-rounders in sports such cricket who can bat and bowl may be very good sportsmen, but are usually not the best as specialised batsman or bowlers. The best batsman are rarely the best bowlers and the best bowlers often bat low down the batting order. The same is true of Olympic heptathletes. They may be great all round athletes, but none of them is likely to win a gold medal in any of the events they compete in against those athletes who specialise in the individual events. We can think of the event horse as a good equestrian example of the all-round athlete. They do a reasonable dressage and show-jumping, but we would never see them competing at Olympic level in pure dressage or show-jumping.
Why can’t a horse be a champion sprinter over a ¼ of a mile and a champion endurance horse over 100 miles? The answer lies in the physical attributes required for each task. Sprinters require large, powerful muscles to accelerate them and maintain them at a high speed for a short distance. Peak speed can only be maintained for short periods relying primarily on anaerobic metabolism (without oxygen) and lactic acid production. To cover 100 miles requires the ability to run at a fast average speed relying almost entirely on aerobic metabolism (with oxygen). In order to maximise the transport of oxygen into the muscle cells, the muscle cells themselves are thin and packed with mitochondria (where the oxygen is used to produce energy in the form of ATP) and surrounded by an extensive network of capillaries (small blood vessels). The muscles of a sprinter are the exact opposite. The fibres are big, have few blood vessels (because oxygen is of lower importance) and have few mitochondria.
The reason a human marathon runner and a human sprinter look different is mainly down to muscle bulk. The same is true for the ¼ horse and the endurance horse. Most of the reason why the horses have different muscle is due to different genes.
Can you train a born sprinter to be better at endurance and vice versa? The answer is yes. But, training a ¼ horse at speeds that will develop its aerobic capacity will have two main effects. It will lose some muscle bulk, it will become better at using oxygen, it will improve its endurance performance but it will also become slower over a ¼ mile. And, it will never be as good an endurance horse as a sprinter. The same is true for an endurance horse. We can improve its speed over ¼ mile but this will be at the expense of its endurance capacity.
The reason a horse cannot excel at both sprinting and endurance is because the type of muscle development is in opposite directions. If you train a horse with a combination of sprint and aerobic (endurance) type exercise, you will not maximise sprinting speed nor endurance capacity, but end up somewhere in the middle…a horse that will be moderately fast over moderate distances.
SPRINT ENDURANCE
Big fibres Small fibres
Few blood vessels Many blood vessels
Large muscles Small muscles
High top-speed Low top-speed
Getting the right balance between fitness and risk of injury
If we were to enter an unfit horse in a race there are two things we could expect to happen. The first is that the horse would perform poorly, and in all probability finish last and way behind the rest of the field. The second consequence we might expect is for the horse to pick up an injury. So unfit horses are at risk of injury and poor performance. We know that fit horses perform better but are they at a decreased risk of injury? Unfortunately, scientific studies show us that orthopaedic injuries (injuries to the limbs) are very common in horses in training. Horses that are either trained by covering high numbers of miles at low speeds or those that cover shorter distances at high speeds are both at risk of injuries. Good training is about balancing fitness, performance and risk of injury.
If every 2-3 weeks the intensity of training is increased, but if the increases are too big (see 1), then there is a high risk of injury. In young racehorses the injury may be sore shins or even a fracture. If the intensity of training is increased every 2-3 week but the increase is too small, then fitness increases more slowly (2) and this may result in “wear and tear” type injuries to structures like the foot and joints (arthritic conditions).
Too big an increase in Training Load
Weeks 1 and 2: Trot 30 min per day
Weeks 3 and 4: Medium Canter 2 miles, 3 days per week
Weeks 5 and 6: Gallop 2 miles, 3 days per week
Too small an increase in Training Load
Weeks 1 and 2: Trot 30 min per day
Weeks 3 and 4: Trot 40 min per day
Weeks 5 and 6: Trot 50 min per day
How do I know how hard exercise is for my horse?
How hard a piece of exercise is for a horse depends on some factors specific to the horse such as it’s innate or genetic ability or talent, its current level of fitness, its age and any health problems or injuries.
How hard a piece of exercise is also varies with other factors such as:
• Speed
• Distance/Time
• Weight carried
• Terrain
• Going
• Climate
Thus, exercising fast for a long time carrying a heavy weight uphill on soft-ground in a hot climate would be about as intense an exercise that you devise for a horse. Similarly, very low intensity exercise could consist of walking for 10 minutes carrying a small child down a slight hill on firm ground in cool weather.
How often do you need to exercise a horse to get it fit?
A large number of conventional training programmes dictate that horses should be exercised 6 days a week with one day off. In recent times other trainers have experimented with training regimens where horses are exercised twice a day for 7 days a week. Quality of training exercise rather than quantity is extremely important. For aerobic training, horses may only need to be trained 3 days per week. This does not mean that they cannot be ridden 6 or even 7 days a week, simply that structured exercise sessions should be undertaken every other day. A common type of training that is both ineffective and likely to lead to injury is the concentrated type of training that sometimes occurs when people have to work and manage their horses. In this situation the training may be “shoe-horned” into the weekends, with sessions on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday and no further quality exercise until the following weekend.
The horse’s body needs time to adapt to the stresses of physical training. Piling on day after day is more likely to lead to injury and also be less effective in getting horses fit. Why? Because although three successive days of hard training may initially generate a bigger training response, because the stimulus is not repeated again the effect starts to decline. This type of training will have some effect, but not nearly as great as quality bouts of exercise every other day.
Understanding training load
Training load is the “stress” you place on your horse’s body over a period of time. The type of stress that results in an increase in fitness and performance is physiological rather than psychological. Training load is determined by factors such as:
Intensity – how intense (hard) the load (work/exercise) is
Duration – how long the load is applied
Frequency – how often the load is applied e.g. twice daily, daily, every other day, weekly
Do all horses respond the same to training?
The answer to this question is definitely no. How you respond to training to a large extent depends on a horse’s genetic makeup and of course any injuries, health issues, management issues, previous training and age.
To start with a simple example, we can consider two three-year old racehorses. One is well-bred and has a large heart and a tremendous capacity for exercise, even when unfit. The other horse is moderately well-bred. We train both horses together on the track. They both gallop together at the same speed and for the same distance with jockeys and saddles of the same weight. Which horse finds the work easiest? If we do this 2-3 times a week, in a month which horse will be fitter? The answers are straightforward: the horse with the lesser ability will find the training harder, but this horse will increase in fitness more. At the end of the month the more able horse may still have greater potential, but in order to realise that potential we are going to have to up his training speeds and or distances over our moderate horse. We can no longer train them together.
If you find the horse example difficult to follow, imagine a serious amateur marathon runner and an Olympic marathon runner who moves in next door. The two become friends and decide to train together. The problem is that if they run at the amateurs pace, the Olympic runner does not even break a sweat and goes home feeling he has only warmed-up. If they run at the Olympic runners pace, the amateur gets left behind before they have even run the first few miles.
How can we train both athletes at an appropriate level in order to maximise their fitness? How can we avoid training the amateur runner or the moderate horse too hard or the Olympic marathon runner or well-bred horse too softly? We need some simple indicator of how hard the body finds exercise. Under laboratory situations the Gold-standard measurement for athletes competing in aerobic events (those that rely primarily on energy generation using oxygen) is how much oxygen is being used as a proportion of the maximum rate that oxygen is being used. This is technically very difficult to measure in horses even on treadmills let alone under field conditions. Fortunately, a very good alternative is to measure heart rate during exercise? Heart rate may not be such as useful indicator of training load in very short, high-power events such as barrel racing or ¼ horse racing, in which the majority of energy is derived from anaerobic metabolism. But as can be seen from the figure below, most equestrian disciplines rely primarily on aerobic metabolism.
Anaerobic – energy generated without oxygen which leads to lactic acid. Can only be used for short periods of exercise.
Aerobic – energy generated with oxygen. Becomes more important the longer the exercise is.
Heart rate as an indicator of exercise intensity
Why is heart rate a good indicator of exercise intensity? The harder a horse works, the more the muscles contract and the more energy in the form of ATP is used. The more ATP is used the more energy must be provided either from the anaerobic (without oxygen) breakdown of glycogen to produce lactic acid or by the breakdown of glycogen or fats with oxygen in mitochondria (aerobic metabolism). The harder a horse works, the more oxygen its muscles use. The more oxygen that is required at the muscles, the faster the heart must pump in order to deliver sufficient oxygen. So oxygen consumption (VO2) by the muscles and heart rate both increase together with increasing intensity of exercise.
Heart rate and oxygen consumption by the muscles both increase linearly initially. That is if the rate of oxygen usage doubles, the heart rate must also double. However, a point is reached where neither can increase further and a plateau or maximum rate is reached. The maximum heart rate is reached just before the speed at which maximum oxygen uptake is reached. This is normally when the horse is almost at its maximum pace. The horse can still run even faster when it has reached its’ maximum oxygen uptake, but beyond this all the additional energy required must come from anaerobic metabolism with the production of lactic acid.
In simple terms, the faster a horse runs or the harder it works (remembering that trotting uphill in sand in hot weather could be equally as physically demanding as a fast canter on level ground in cool weather) the higher its heart rate will be.
How do we classify intensity of exercise in horses?
There are two practical ways we can try to assess how hard a horse is exercising under field conditions and these both involve using heart rate (expressed as beats per minute or bpm for short). In the first example we simply use a heart rate monitor and we can judge the exercise intensity based on how high the heart rate is. For example:
Heart rate Activity
30-40 bpm Rest
40-80 bpm Low-intensity exercise e.g. walking
80-120 bpm Low-medium intensity exercise e.g. trotting
120-160 bpm Medium-intensity exercise e.g. canter
160-200 bpm Medium-High intensity exercise e.g. fast canter
200-240 bpm High intensity exercise e.g. galloping
In general terms this works quite well but there is one limitation. As a horse gets older its maximum heart rate decreases (the same happens in people as well). So whilst a 2 year-old horse might have a maximum heart rate of 230 bpm, a similar breed/sex/weight horse 20 years older may only have a maximum heart rate of 210 bpm. Let’s try and explain why this is important when it comes to exercise.
If we exercise the two horses together and they are galloping side-by-side, then we can say that they are both working at the same absolute exercise intensity. When we measure the heart rate of each horse during the exercise, we also find these are similar at around 210 bpm. Can we conclude the horses are working as hard as each other? In absolute terms, yes we can. They are both doing the same thing. However, in terms of relative exercise intensity, the older horse is working harder. Why?
The old horse has a maximum of 210 and when we measure his heart rate during the gallop we find he is working at 210 bpm, his maximum. Therefore we can express his relative exercise intensity as a % of his maximum heart rate or %HRmax for short:
Relative exercise intensity (%) = heart rate during exercise / maximum heart rate x 100
Older Horse
= 210 bpm / 210 bpm x 100
= 100% maximum heart rate (%HRmax)
We can now make the same calculation for the younger horse:
Relative exercise intensity (%) = heart rate during exercise / maximum heart rate x 100
Younger Horse
= 210 bpm / 230 bpm x 100
= 91% maximum heart rate (%HRmax)
So what we find is that although both horses are doing exactly the same exercise at the same heart rate, in terms of the relative exercise intensity the older horse is working harder than the younger horse.
Another way to think of absolute and relative intensity is to think of a car. The speed is what the car is actually doing but the rev counter tells you how hard the engine has to work to run the car at this speed. The rev counter in a horse is the heart rate which we can measure with a heart rate monitor. Differences in relative exercise intensity, even when measured heart rate responses between two horses may be similar can also occur due to difference in breed, athletic (genetic ability), health and fitness.
Exercise intensity based on % of maximum heart rate
The table below gives the approximate relative intensities for different values of %HRmax in horses. The actual heart rate values that could reasonably be expected for a 10 year-old sport horse are also shown. The actual values for any horse will depend on factors such as fitness, health and ability.
Approximate heart rate for a 10 year-old sport horse
50-65 %HRmax 110-143 bpm
65-80 %HRmax 143-176 bpm
80-95 %HRmax 176-198 bpm
95-100 %HRmax 198-220 bpm
How do we measure maximum heart rate?
There are two ways we can try to work out a horses’ maximum heart rate. The first is to perform an incremental exercise test either on a high speed treadmill or in the field. This involved exercising the horse, following an appropriate warm-up, at 5-6 different speeds from trot, through canter and up to maximal gallop. Each speed needs to be maintained for around 2 minutes for the heart rate to stabilise. This type of test is most readily carried out on a treadmill as this gives a greater degree of control. To do this under field conditions an oval track of at least ½ mile around is required. The horse is then ridden for perhaps 1 lap at trot, two laps at slow-canter, 3 laps at medium-canter, 3 or 4 laps at fast canter and 4 laps at gallop. This type of test involves working horses quite hard and is not advisable unless you have good facilities.
An easier way to get an estimate of HRmax rather than measure it is to use the following equation:
HRmax (bpm) = 220 (bpm) – age (in years)
This is the same as the equation that is used to estimate HRmax in people as was validated for horses in a scientific study in 2006.
Some limitations in using heart rate in horses that you should be aware of
1) Excitement
If a horse is excited his heart rate may be increased above the level that is actually required for the exercise he is doing. This is most common when the heart rate is below around 160-170bpm. Thus, in horses exercising at walk and trot, the heart rate in excitable horses does not always give a true reflection of how hard the horse is working. This is easy to spot with experience.
The trace below shows some good examples of periodic elevations in heart rate in a horse at trot. The horse is maintaining a good steady pace but the heart rate fluctuates up and down from as low as 114 bpm to as high as 156 bpm. In the trace below, when the horse moves into walk there is a large increase in heart rate which then settles down as the horse continues to walk. This is often observed in horses, even in ones that are not particularly excitable.
Elevations in heart rate that are independent and appear unrelated to the intensity of exercise are also often most common in the early stages of exercise before a horse has been warmed-up. In very excitable horses the heart rate may only be a reliable indicator when the horse is working at a fast-canter (i.e. exercise heart rates would be over 170 bpm) or in the first 1-2 minutes recovery after a piece of fast exercise at canter or gallop. In the figure below, the heart rate drops quickly from the end of the canter (marked by the arrow) but after around 2 minutes there is a small increase of 15 bpm (circled). If the heart rate was measured at this point it could lead us to conclude that the horse had not recovered well.
2) Pain
Heart rate is also elevated by pain. Of course veterinary surgeons use this when making clinical examinations of horses. A horse with signs of colic and a heart rate of 80 bpm is probably in significant pain. Heart rate can also be elevated by horses with lameness or sometimes when there is pain but no obvious lameness. This can be used to the horse owner or trainers advantage, especially if you monitor heart rate regularly and get to know what to expect for different horses. If you warm your horse up for exercise you will soon begin to build-up a picture of what is normal for his heart rate. If the heart rate at walk is normally between 60 and 70 bpm and you find that one day it is close to 90 bpm, this is a good indicator that there may be a problem. It could be that your horse has pain or it could be that he has some other illness, such as an infection. Whatever the case, this is an indication to stop riding, check for stones trapped in the foot or other obvious external injuries and look at the horse for lameness. If there is no obvious problem then it may be wise to take your horse back to his stable and take his temperature. A higher than normal heart rate during exercise is a warning sign that should not be ignored.
3) Dehydration
A dehydrated horse will have a higher heart rate than a normally hydrated horse. The heart pumps a certain amount of blood into the arteries with every beat. The muscles need blood flowing through them at a particular rate in order that they can have enough oxygen. If required rate of blood flow is 50 litres per minute and the heart can pump one litre with each beat (known as stroke volume), then we can see the heart would need to beat at around 50 bpm (50 beats per minute x 1 litre = 50 litres/minute). The volume of blood being pumped each minute is known as the cardiac output (litres/minute). However, if the horse became dehydrated then the volume of blood in the circulation would be decreased. This in turn would mean that the amount the heart could pump with each beat would be decreased. If the amount of blood being pumped with each beat decreased to only 0.5 litres, the horse would still need blood flowing around the body at 50 litres/minute, so the only way to now achieve this would be for the heart to pump twice as fast i.e. 100 bpm x 0.5 litres = 50 litres/minute. This is why dehydrated horses have higher heart rates at rest and during exercise compared with when they are fully hydrated.
4) Heat
Exercising in the heat may cause your horses heart rate to be higher than if the horse was exercising in cooler conditions. For example, if you school your horse in the morning the heart rate may only be between 80 and 120 bpm, but the same schooling in the middle of the day in summer may cause the heart rates to be between 90 and 130 bpm. Heat can also cause the horses heart rate to drift upwards over time. This is known as cardiac drift. So if you start trotting on a warm day at a heart rate of 110 bpm, you may find that 30 minutes later the heart rate has drifted up to 120 bpm.
5) Abnormalities in heart rhythm – Arrhythmias
Horses can sometimes develop abnormalities of heart rhythm where the heart does not beat regularly and these can be difficult for heart rate monitors to accurately calculate the true heart rate. If you are having problems getting a reliable heart rate recording from a horse, especially one in which you have previously managed to get good recordings it is worth finding a stethoscope and listening to the heart or feeling for a pulse to see if the rhythm is regular. In fit horses at low heart rates horses do sometimes miss or “drop” beats. The rhythm is essentially normal except that there is sometimes a long pause between beats every 3-4 beats where one beat is missed or dropped:
Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat
This is perfectly normal and the veterinary name for this is 2nd degree atrio-ventricular or 2nd degree A-V block. If the rate is very low because of 2nd degree A-V block then the heart rate monitor may struggle to measure this. If you don’t believe the rhythm is regular, with the exception of dropped beats described above, then you should seek veterinary advice.
1) Designing and applying Fitness Training Programmes for horses
How you approach training a horse will depend on many factors, including:
• Age (maturity)
• Previous training history
• Previous health problems and current health
• Discipline
• Level of competition
• Temperament
• Facilities available
Basic Rules in Training Horses
1) Many horses are overloaded in training.
2) The most common injuries are orthopaedic and occur during training.
3) Injuries occur to the legs and to the areas in contact with the saddle
4) The goal of training is to improve skill, performance and resistance to injury
5) Horses do not respond in the same way as human athletes
6) Training load should be increased gradually
7) Horses need periods of time to recover physically and possibly even mentally in training
8) Long durations of exercise at low-moderate intensity (heart rates below 160 bpm) will not influence fitness beyond the first few months of training
Facilities for Training
The most basic training facility is usually an all-weather manege or field or land on which a horse is ridden. Working on horses on surfaces that are very soft or very hard and or uneven greatly increases the risk on injury. The risk of injury also increases with increasing speed so it may be worth considering boxing or riding horses to good ground or all-weather gallops if you need to do faster work but your surfaces at home are not ideal. Remember that uphill exercise will make the horse work harder. A gallop on the flat will be approximately equal to a canter up a moderately steep hill (~10% incline). Don’t forget to also consider the environmental conditions. When exercising on hot day with no wind and moderate to high humidity your horse may be working around a third harder than when being exercised on a cool, breezy day. Other facilities that are often used include horsewalkers, swimming pools and treadmills and can all have their use.
Treadmills are ideal for controlled exercise. They have the advantage that the horse works in a straight line and without weight on its back. Treadmill exercise can be used to settle horses that have a tendency to pull and horses that are prone to back problems. It is possible on most treadmills to vary the incline, however trotting horses fast (above 5 m/s) uphill should be avoided as this appears to increase the risk of hindlimb lameness. Treadmill surfaces are often towards the hard side and may not suit horses with a very upright front leg conformation. Even though the surface is usually harder the treadmill has the advantage that the surface is consistently flat. Treadmill exercise can therefore be used to replace ridden exercise.
Horsewalkers are widely used and give the advantage of controlled exercise at walk and trot. Standard practice is to reverse the direction of exercise so that horse are not always working on the same direction of turning. Horsewalkers are used for warming-up before exercise, for warming-down and as supplemental exercise. They are labour saving but overuse should be avoided. There is currently a question mark over whether round walkers, especially smaller ones, could increase the risk of injury. However, there are many factors to be considered including the surface of the walker and the horses previous history of injury. Oval walkers may offer a more natural way to exercise horses as they combine straight line and turning exercise. A variation on the normal treadmill is the water treadmill. These usually only operate at speeds of walk and trot. They increase the effort above exercise on a normal treadmill as the horse must push its legs through the water.
Another variation on the horsewalker are sea-walkers. A sea-walker is effectively a horsewalker with a circular channel of water in which the horse walks. The temperature of the water is usually maintained around 5°C. These are useful for reducing inflammation in the limbs, especially immediately following hard exercise. When used immediately after exercise the warm-down of the muscles by walking is combined with cooling of the lower legs.
Swimming pools are also often used. These come in essentially two configurations, round and straight. Swimming has the advantage of being “non-weight bearing exercise”. What this means is that although the muscle, heart and respiratory system are being trained when a horse swims, there is no loading on the limbs and so the risk of injury should be lower. Swimming is a good substitute for ridden exercise and can be used for example as a replacement on alternate days. Swimming is however a bit like ridden exercise in that the effort is related to how fast the horse is moving. If a horse is allowed to swim slowly then it will get less benefit than if it is encouraged to work in the pool. Swimming does not suit all horses and can easily be overused. Horses that hollow their backs when swimming may be at increased risk of developing injuries.
Fitness for Purpose
The level of fitness developed through training should be appropriate for the type and level of competition that the horse is being prepared for. For example, the level of cardiovascular (heart and aerobic) fitness that an advanced event horse requires is much greater than for a novice event horse. Similarly, any horse performing dressage does not require the same level of cardiovascular fitness as an event horse.
Dressage
Scientific studies have shown that in competition Dressage horses work at heart rates between 120 and 150 b.p.m. This suggests that the majority of the effort is aerobic. However, because some muscle groups are worked very intensely for short periods of time, there may be anaerobic components to the training and competition. Aerobic conditioning is relatively straightforward. As a rough guide, to improve aerobic capacity the horse should be trained at around a heart rate of 150-180 b.p.m. building up to around 10 minutes three times a week. For an unfit horse this would most likely equate to slow canter and for a fitter horse, a fast canter. In order to train specific muscle groups involved in specific movements, training can be achieved by performing those movements. The ideal approach is to initially perform the movements for short periods (e.g. 20-30 seconds) with an alternative form of recovery exercise, such as walking or trotting or even cantering for several minutes, in between. This ensures that the muscles do not become excessively fatigued. Also, repeated short bouts of specific exercise result in a greater overall physical training effect that one long intense session. In order to increase muscle size and therefore strength which will make the movements more expansive and easier for the horse to perform, specific strength conditioning can be introduced. This would include exercises such as being long-reined behind a “sledge”, onto which increasing weight can be added or driving in harness. This type of exercise has been shown to increase hindlimb and forelimb muscle size and strength in as little as 2 weeks. Physical conditioning (NOT skill training) of dressage horses that have previously been trained can probably be achieved in around 12-16 weeks.
Showjumping
Aerobic ability is probably least important in showjumpers. Whilst there is a significant proportion of the total energy that a horse uses to go around a course of jumps that comes from aerobic metabolism (oxygen), anaerobic metabolism (without oxygen and producing lactic acid) is mainly used for the jumping efforts. For example, a study from Holland in 2006 showed that when horses went round a course of jumps with the poles taken out (i.e. they cantered around the course at the same speed as they would when jumping but there were no jumping efforts) the heart rate (as an indicator of aerobic effort) was only about 1/6th higher whilst the lactic acid (as an indicator of anaerobic effort) was around 4 times higher. This proves that the cantering comes mainly from aerobic but the jumping ability comes from anaerobic. So it would be counter-productive to spend too much time training a showjumper aerobically (i.e. at heart rates between 150 and 180bpm). Most of the training should focus on work at higher heart rates (above 180 bpm), with short periods of intense exercise.
Human athletes rarely train simply by replicating the movements or exercise that they have to do in competition. For example, human hurdlers would train on the track, running and jumping hurdles, but they would also spend a considerable amount of time in the gym. In order to replicate the equivalent of human gym work for horses we need to be a little more creative. Showjumpers, like dressage horses, can also benefit from exercise specifically designed to develop larger muscles. These exercises include pulling exercises such as long-reining behind a sledge, being driven or working uphill on a treadmill in harness against a weight. These types of training have the advantage of increasing the effort without increasing loading on the more injury prone structures such as tendons and joints.
Eventing
Training for eventing is challenging as the rider must balance the different requirements of the different disciplines. As we can see from the sections of showjumping and dressage, the type of training we would use for these is not ideal preparation for the cross-country phase. For example, maximising showjumping capacity by specific strength training would be to the detriment of aerobic capacity cross-country. In a number of different studies of event horses, the common fining has been that the intensity of training has often been much lower than the intensity of competition. For example, out of 14 event horses in Australia being prepared for a three-star CCI, the highest heart rates in 13 of the horses were only between 120 and 180 b.p.m. when the peak heart rates during cross-country in these horses were around 195 b.p.m. Therefore, only one horse was exercising hard enough in training in order to be prepared appropriately for competition. A previously trained event horse should be competition fit after 12-16 weeks of training.
Maintaining Fitness
Once a horse has reached a suitable level of fitness it is not necessary to maintain the same level of training in order to maintain that fitness level. For human athletes, once they have reached competition fitness, if the training intensity is reduced this usually results in a decrease in fitness and performance. However, once horses have reached competition fitness, they will retain physical fitness even if the amount of weekly exercise is reduced. This of course may not be true for skill training.
Over-training
In human athletes a condition known as “over-training” is recognised. In over-trained athletes despite no obvious health or injury problems and despite maintaining their training level, performance decreases. Often any changes in the athletes can be very subtle and hard to detect and may be something as a slight change in mood. Over-training of this nature has been hard to demonstrate in horses. Horses are often recognised to go “stale” and whether this is simply a psychological problem or a problem with a physical basis is hard to know. What is more common in horses is “overloading”. This is where horses are trained too hard to the extent that they suffer injury.
Tapering
Most human athletes use an approach known as tapering when approaching competition. This involves maintaining the intensity of training but decreasing the amount of time spent training. This approach has been shown to allow muscles to fully recover strength and to maximise energy stores and result improved performance. Scientific studies have shown that Standardbred racehorses that were tapered ran faster than those that were conventionally trained i.e. normal training was
maintained right up to and including the day of competition.
In many equestrian disciplines it is not uncommon to observe riders who rather than decrease or even maintain training intensity as they approach competition, actually start to ride harder, more frequently and for longer. In some cases, where the sport has a high skill component this might be justified for individual horses, but from the physical component of performance this is almost certainly likely to be detrimental. In many cases it may be that the main reason for increased riding is related more to the riders anxiety than the horse actual need for increased work and working closely with a sports psychologist to address this may be highly beneficial.
Date: September 12, 2014
Copyright David Marlin 2014
Training, Fitness and Performance
Dr David Marlin
There are three main reasons why we train horses. These are:
1. to make them easier to ride and manage
2. to improve their performance
3. to decrease the risk of injury during exercise and or competition
What is training?
Training can be physical, that is increasing the capacity for exercise or the ease with which a horse can exercise by increasing muscle strength or muscle endurance. However, not all training is “physical”. When we train horses to jump or to learn new movements this often may not affect the horse physically and the improvement may simply come as a result of the horse “learning” or practising the skill.
Training is repeated episodes or bouts of exercise that have a cumulative effect on a horse’s physical or mental capacity for exercise. Improvement in the physical capacity for exercise is what we call fitness. A single piece of exercise has very little impact on a horse’s fitness. It is the combined effect of many repeated exercise sessions that produce a training effect.
We can think of two types of training that we perform with horses. Physical training makes exercise easier for the horse or allows the horse to exercise for longer or allows a horse to run faster or jump higher or further or accelerate faster. These changes come about mainly because with training the locomotory (movement) muscles and the heart (which is also made of a special type of muscle) have a tremendous capacity to change and adapt to repeated bout of exercise.
The other type of training we commonly undertake with horses is focussed more on improving skill and modifying behaviour. Training a horse to load into a trailer or to stand when we mount into the saddle are examples of behavioural training and do not involve any physical changes in the horse’s body. Training a horse to perform dressage movements is primarily skill training but may also have a small physical training component as well. Whilst we are teaching the horse how to perform these movements (the skill training) we may also get some development of the muscles involved in making these movements (physical training).
What is the difference between exercise and training?
Any activity that increases the metabolic activity of muscles (increases the rate at which they are using energy) can be considered to constitute exercise. This results in other changes in the horse’s body including increases in breathing rate and depth and heart rate. These changes occur to help transport more oxygen to the muscles and to remove heat and waster products such as carbon dioxide and lactic acid. Exercise always uses up energy, but does not always result in an increase in fitness.
How does the horse’s body respond to exercise?
Single bouts of exercise have very little effect on a horse’s fitness. Why is this? Lets take the example of an event horse that has been turned out in the paddock for 4 months over the winter. The rider puts together a training plan with daily training exercise starting February 1st for a competition on May 1st. The reason you cannot expect anything from a single session is because even an unfit horse has a high capacity for exercise. The rider knows that they are going to repeat the exercise perhaps daily for the next two weeks. The horse’s body does not know what’s coming. It will only begin to adapt and change if the exercise stimulus is repeated.
The horse’s body can adapt to changes in the level of daily exercise quite quickly. But if the intensity of exercise is not increased then the horse’s body will adapt but no further changes will take place.
We start with an unfit horse and start trotting for 45 minutes a day. The figure above shows that when we first start training our horse (Day 0) there is initially no increase in fitness. However, the horse’s body soon gets the message and begins to adapt. Fitness increases slowly and then quite rapidly. But after around 10 days of training, the response starts to slow down and plateau. This is because the horse can now comfortably trot for 45 minutes each day. Why would the horse’s body waste energy trying to adapt to be able to canter at cross-country pace for 10 minutes? It won’t. It will only adapt to the level to which it is “stressed” or challenged. It cannot predict what you have in mind for the future.
This gives us our first general rule of training – Change the intensity of the training around every 2-3 weeks.
What can I expect to see as my horse gets fitter?
Training an unfit horse is quite rewarding. If all is going well you should soon notice quite an improvement in your horse’s ability to handle its’ daily training sessions. You may notice after a week or so that your horse maintains a more even pace or even starts to get a little stronger and pull. You may also notice that your horse is sweating less or that when you pull-up he is not breathing as hard. If you are training with a heart rate monitor you should notice that his heart rate is lower during exercise and that his heart rate drops (recovers) much more quickly when you stop exercising. This all points to the fact that your horse has increased his fitness as a result of your training and that he is now coping with the exercise more easily. This is the point to increase the training load (difficulty). This can be done by increasing speed, distance or using softer surfaces or hills or even working in hotter part of the day and we will look at this later on.
Training and the law of diminishing returns
The reason why you often notice the most improvement in your horse’s fitness at the start of your training programme is because training follows the law of diminishing returns. At the start you put in 10 units of training and get 10 units of increase in fitness. But as your horse gets fitter, 10 units of training gives less and less units of fitness.
Training is a compromise
No-one can be good at everything. In sport, all-rounders in sports such cricket who can bat and bowl may be very good sportsmen, but are usually not the best as specialised batsman or bowlers. The best batsman are rarely the best bowlers and the best bowlers often bat low down the batting order. The same is true of Olympic heptathletes. They may be great all round athletes, but none of them is likely to win a gold medal in any of the events they compete in against those athletes who specialise in the individual events. We can think of the event horse as a good equestrian example of the all-round athlete. They do a reasonable dressage and show-jumping, but we would never see them competing at Olympic level in pure dressage or show-jumping.
Why can’t a horse be a champion sprinter over a ¼ of a mile and a champion endurance horse over 100 miles? The answer lies in the physical attributes required for each task. Sprinters require large, powerful muscles to accelerate them and maintain them at a high speed for a short distance. Peak speed can only be maintained for short periods relying primarily on anaerobic metabolism (without oxygen) and lactic acid production. To cover 100 miles requires the ability to run at a fast average speed relying almost entirely on aerobic metabolism (with oxygen). In order to maximise the transport of oxygen into the muscle cells, the muscle cells themselves are thin and packed with mitochondria (where the oxygen is used to produce energy in the form of ATP) and surrounded by an extensive network of capillaries (small blood vessels). The muscles of a sprinter are the exact opposite. The fibres are big, have few blood vessels (because oxygen is of lower importance) and have few mitochondria.
The reason a human marathon runner and a human sprinter look different is mainly down to muscle bulk. The same is true for the ¼ horse and the endurance horse. Most of the reason why the horses have different muscle is due to different genes.
Can you train a born sprinter to be better at endurance and vice versa? The answer is yes. But, training a ¼ horse at speeds that will develop its aerobic capacity will have two main effects. It will lose some muscle bulk, it will become better at using oxygen, it will improve its endurance performance but it will also become slower over a ¼ mile. And, it will never be as good an endurance horse as a sprinter. The same is true for an endurance horse. We can improve its speed over ¼ mile but this will be at the expense of its endurance capacity.
The reason a horse cannot excel at both sprinting and endurance is because the type of muscle development is in opposite directions. If you train a horse with a combination of sprint and aerobic (endurance) type exercise, you will not maximise sprinting speed nor endurance capacity, but end up somewhere in the middle…a horse that will be moderately fast over moderate distances.
SPRINT ENDURANCE
Big fibres Small fibres
Few blood vessels Many blood vessels
Large muscles Small muscles
High top-speed Low top-speed
Getting the right balance between fitness and risk of injury
If we were to enter an unfit horse in a race there are two things we could expect to happen. The first is that the horse would perform poorly, and in all probability finish last and way behind the rest of the field. The second consequence we might expect is for the horse to pick up an injury. So unfit horses are at risk of injury and poor performance. We know that fit horses perform better but are they at a decreased risk of injury? Unfortunately, scientific studies show us that orthopaedic injuries (injuries to the limbs) are very common in horses in training. Horses that are either trained by covering high numbers of miles at low speeds or those that cover shorter distances at high speeds are both at risk of injuries. Good training is about balancing fitness, performance and risk of injury.
If every 2-3 weeks the intensity of training is increased, but if the increases are too big (see 1), then there is a high risk of injury. In young racehorses the injury may be sore shins or even a fracture. If the intensity of training is increased every 2-3 week but the increase is too small, then fitness increases more slowly (2) and this may result in “wear and tear” type injuries to structures like the foot and joints (arthritic conditions).
Too big an increase in Training Load
Weeks 1 and 2: Trot 30 min per day
Weeks 3 and 4: Medium Canter 2 miles, 3 days per week
Weeks 5 and 6: Gallop 2 miles, 3 days per week
Too small an increase in Training Load
Weeks 1 and 2: Trot 30 min per day
Weeks 3 and 4: Trot 40 min per day
Weeks 5 and 6: Trot 50 min per day
How do I know how hard exercise is for my horse?
How hard a piece of exercise is for a horse depends on some factors specific to the horse such as it’s innate or genetic ability or talent, its current level of fitness, its age and any health problems or injuries.
How hard a piece of exercise is also varies with other factors such as:
• Speed
• Distance/Time
• Weight carried
• Terrain
• Going
• Climate
Thus, exercising fast for a long time carrying a heavy weight uphill on soft-ground in a hot climate would be about as intense an exercise that you devise for a horse. Similarly, very low intensity exercise could consist of walking for 10 minutes carrying a small child down a slight hill on firm ground in cool weather.
How often do you need to exercise a horse to get it fit?
A large number of conventional training programmes dictate that horses should be exercised 6 days a week with one day off. In recent times other trainers have experimented with training regimens where horses are exercised twice a day for 7 days a week. Quality of training exercise rather than quantity is extremely important. For aerobic training, horses may only need to be trained 3 days per week. This does not mean that they cannot be ridden 6 or even 7 days a week, simply that structured exercise sessions should be undertaken every other day. A common type of training that is both ineffective and likely to lead to injury is the concentrated type of training that sometimes occurs when people have to work and manage their horses. In this situation the training may be “shoe-horned” into the weekends, with sessions on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday and no further quality exercise until the following weekend.
The horse’s body needs time to adapt to the stresses of physical training. Piling on day after day is more likely to lead to injury and also be less effective in getting horses fit. Why? Because although three successive days of hard training may initially generate a bigger training response, because the stimulus is not repeated again the effect starts to decline. This type of training will have some effect, but not nearly as great as quality bouts of exercise every other day.
Understanding training load
Training load is the “stress” you place on your horse’s body over a period of time. The type of stress that results in an increase in fitness and performance is physiological rather than psychological. Training load is determined by factors such as:
Intensity – how intense (hard) the load (work/exercise) is
Duration – how long the load is applied
Frequency – how often the load is applied e.g. twice daily, daily, every other day, weekly
Do all horses respond the same to training?
The answer to this question is definitely no. How you respond to training to a large extent depends on a horse’s genetic makeup and of course any injuries, health issues, management issues, previous training and age.
To start with a simple example, we can consider two three-year old racehorses. One is well-bred and has a large heart and a tremendous capacity for exercise, even when unfit. The other horse is moderately well-bred. We train both horses together on the track. They both gallop together at the same speed and for the same distance with jockeys and saddles of the same weight. Which horse finds the work easiest? If we do this 2-3 times a week, in a month which horse will be fitter? The answers are straightforward: the horse with the lesser ability will find the training harder, but this horse will increase in fitness more. At the end of the month the more able horse may still have greater potential, but in order to realise that potential we are going to have to up his training speeds and or distances over our moderate horse. We can no longer train them together.
If you find the horse example difficult to follow, imagine a serious amateur marathon runner and an Olympic marathon runner who moves in next door. The two become friends and decide to train together. The problem is that if they run at the amateurs pace, the Olympic runner does not even break a sweat and goes home feeling he has only warmed-up. If they run at the Olympic runners pace, the amateur gets left behind before they have even run the first few miles.
How can we train both athletes at an appropriate level in order to maximise their fitness? How can we avoid training the amateur runner or the moderate horse too hard or the Olympic marathon runner or well-bred horse too softly? We need some simple indicator of how hard the body finds exercise. Under laboratory situations the Gold-standard measurement for athletes competing in aerobic events (those that rely primarily on energy generation using oxygen) is how much oxygen is being used as a proportion of the maximum rate that oxygen is being used. This is technically very difficult to measure in horses even on treadmills let alone under field conditions. Fortunately, a very good alternative is to measure heart rate during exercise? Heart rate may not be such as useful indicator of training load in very short, high-power events such as barrel racing or ¼ horse racing, in which the majority of energy is derived from anaerobic metabolism. But as can be seen from the figure below, most equestrian disciplines rely primarily on aerobic metabolism.
Anaerobic – energy generated without oxygen which leads to lactic acid. Can only be used for short periods of exercise.
Aerobic – energy generated with oxygen. Becomes more important the longer the exercise is.
Heart rate as an indicator of exercise intensity
Why is heart rate a good indicator of exercise intensity? The harder a horse works, the more the muscles contract and the more energy in the form of ATP is used. The more ATP is used the more energy must be provided either from the anaerobic (without oxygen) breakdown of glycogen to produce lactic acid or by the breakdown of glycogen or fats with oxygen in mitochondria (aerobic metabolism). The harder a horse works, the more oxygen its muscles use. The more oxygen that is required at the muscles, the faster the heart must pump in order to deliver sufficient oxygen. So oxygen consumption (VO2) by the muscles and heart rate both increase together with increasing intensity of exercise.
Heart rate and oxygen consumption by the muscles both increase linearly initially. That is if the rate of oxygen usage doubles, the heart rate must also double. However, a point is reached where neither can increase further and a plateau or maximum rate is reached. The maximum heart rate is reached just before the speed at which maximum oxygen uptake is reached. This is normally when the horse is almost at its maximum pace. The horse can still run even faster when it has reached its’ maximum oxygen uptake, but beyond this all the additional energy required must come from anaerobic metabolism with the production of lactic acid.
In simple terms, the faster a horse runs or the harder it works (remembering that trotting uphill in sand in hot weather could be equally as physically demanding as a fast canter on level ground in cool weather) the higher its heart rate will be.
How do we classify intensity of exercise in horses?
There are two practical ways we can try to assess how hard a horse is exercising under field conditions and these both involve using heart rate (expressed as beats per minute or bpm for short). In the first example we simply use a heart rate monitor and we can judge the exercise intensity based on how high the heart rate is. For example:
Heart rate Activity
30-40 bpm Rest
40-80 bpm Low-intensity exercise e.g. walking
80-120 bpm Low-medium intensity exercise e.g. trotting
120-160 bpm Medium-intensity exercise e.g. canter
160-200 bpm Medium-High intensity exercise e.g. fast canter
200-240 bpm High intensity exercise e.g. galloping
In general terms this works quite well but there is one limitation. As a horse gets older its maximum heart rate decreases (the same happens in people as well). So whilst a 2 year-old horse might have a maximum heart rate of 230 bpm, a similar breed/sex/weight horse 20 years older may only have a maximum heart rate of 210 bpm. Let’s try and explain why this is important when it comes to exercise.
If we exercise the two horses together and they are galloping side-by-side, then we can say that they are both working at the same absolute exercise intensity. When we measure the heart rate of each horse during the exercise, we also find these are similar at around 210 bpm. Can we conclude the horses are working as hard as each other? In absolute terms, yes we can. They are both doing the same thing. However, in terms of relative exercise intensity, the older horse is working harder. Why?
The old horse has a maximum of 210 and when we measure his heart rate during the gallop we find he is working at 210 bpm, his maximum. Therefore we can express his relative exercise intensity as a % of his maximum heart rate or %HRmax for short:
Relative exercise intensity (%) = heart rate during exercise / maximum heart rate x 100
Older Horse
= 210 bpm / 210 bpm x 100
= 100% maximum heart rate (%HRmax)
We can now make the same calculation for the younger horse:
Relative exercise intensity (%) = heart rate during exercise / maximum heart rate x 100
Younger Horse
= 210 bpm / 230 bpm x 100
= 91% maximum heart rate (%HRmax)
So what we find is that although both horses are doing exactly the same exercise at the same heart rate, in terms of the relative exercise intensity the older horse is working harder than the younger horse.
Another way to think of absolute and relative intensity is to think of a car. The speed is what the car is actually doing but the rev counter tells you how hard the engine has to work to run the car at this speed. The rev counter in a horse is the heart rate which we can measure with a heart rate monitor. Differences in relative exercise intensity, even when measured heart rate responses between two horses may be similar can also occur due to difference in breed, athletic (genetic ability), health and fitness.
Exercise intensity based on % of maximum heart rate
The table below gives the approximate relative intensities for different values of %HRmax in horses. The actual heart rate values that could reasonably be expected for a 10 year-old sport horse are also shown. The actual values for any horse will depend on factors such as fitness, health and ability.
Approximate heart rate for a 10 year-old sport horse
50-65 %HRmax 110-143 bpm
65-80 %HRmax 143-176 bpm
80-95 %HRmax 176-198 bpm
95-100 %HRmax 198-220 bpm
How do we measure maximum heart rate?
There are two ways we can try to work out a horses’ maximum heart rate. The first is to perform an incremental exercise test either on a high speed treadmill or in the field. This involved exercising the horse, following an appropriate warm-up, at 5-6 different speeds from trot, through canter and up to maximal gallop. Each speed needs to be maintained for around 2 minutes for the heart rate to stabilise. This type of test is most readily carried out on a treadmill as this gives a greater degree of control. To do this under field conditions an oval track of at least ½ mile around is required. The horse is then ridden for perhaps 1 lap at trot, two laps at slow-canter, 3 laps at medium-canter, 3 or 4 laps at fast canter and 4 laps at gallop. This type of test involves working horses quite hard and is not advisable unless you have good facilities.
An easier way to get an estimate of HRmax rather than measure it is to use the following equation:
HRmax (bpm) = 220 (bpm) – age (in years)
This is the same as the equation that is used to estimate HRmax in people as was validated for horses in a scientific study in 2006.
Some limitations in using heart rate in horses that you should be aware of
1) Excitement
If a horse is excited his heart rate may be increased above the level that is actually required for the exercise he is doing. This is most common when the heart rate is below around 160-170bpm. Thus, in horses exercising at walk and trot, the heart rate in excitable horses does not always give a true reflection of how hard the horse is working. This is easy to spot with experience.
The trace below shows some good examples of periodic elevations in heart rate in a horse at trot. The horse is maintaining a good steady pace but the heart rate fluctuates up and down from as low as 114 bpm to as high as 156 bpm. In the trace below, when the horse moves into walk there is a large increase in heart rate which then settles down as the horse continues to walk. This is often observed in horses, even in ones that are not particularly excitable.
Elevations in heart rate that are independent and appear unrelated to the intensity of exercise are also often most common in the early stages of exercise before a horse has been warmed-up. In very excitable horses the heart rate may only be a reliable indicator when the horse is working at a fast-canter (i.e. exercise heart rates would be over 170 bpm) or in the first 1-2 minutes recovery after a piece of fast exercise at canter or gallop. In the figure below, the heart rate drops quickly from the end of the canter (marked by the arrow) but after around 2 minutes there is a small increase of 15 bpm (circled). If the heart rate was measured at this point it could lead us to conclude that the horse had not recovered well.
2) Pain
Heart rate is also elevated by pain. Of course veterinary surgeons use this when making clinical examinations of horses. A horse with signs of colic and a heart rate of 80 bpm is probably in significant pain. Heart rate can also be elevated by horses with lameness or sometimes when there is pain but no obvious lameness. This can be used to the horse owner or trainers advantage, especially if you monitor heart rate regularly and get to know what to expect for different horses. If you warm your horse up for exercise you will soon begin to build-up a picture of what is normal for his heart rate. If the heart rate at walk is normally between 60 and 70 bpm and you find that one day it is close to 90 bpm, this is a good indicator that there may be a problem. It could be that your horse has pain or it could be that he has some other illness, such as an infection. Whatever the case, this is an indication to stop riding, check for stones trapped in the foot or other obvious external injuries and look at the horse for lameness. If there is no obvious problem then it may be wise to take your horse back to his stable and take his temperature. A higher than normal heart rate during exercise is a warning sign that should not be ignored.
3) Dehydration
A dehydrated horse will have a higher heart rate than a normally hydrated horse. The heart pumps a certain amount of blood into the arteries with every beat. The muscles need blood flowing through them at a particular rate in order that they can have enough oxygen. If required rate of blood flow is 50 litres per minute and the heart can pump one litre with each beat (known as stroke volume), then we can see the heart would need to beat at around 50 bpm (50 beats per minute x 1 litre = 50 litres/minute). The volume of blood being pumped each minute is known as the cardiac output (litres/minute). However, if the horse became dehydrated then the volume of blood in the circulation would be decreased. This in turn would mean that the amount the heart could pump with each beat would be decreased. If the amount of blood being pumped with each beat decreased to only 0.5 litres, the horse would still need blood flowing around the body at 50 litres/minute, so the only way to now achieve this would be for the heart to pump twice as fast i.e. 100 bpm x 0.5 litres = 50 litres/minute. This is why dehydrated horses have higher heart rates at rest and during exercise compared with when they are fully hydrated.
4) Heat
Exercising in the heat may cause your horses heart rate to be higher than if the horse was exercising in cooler conditions. For example, if you school your horse in the morning the heart rate may only be between 80 and 120 bpm, but the same schooling in the middle of the day in summer may cause the heart rates to be between 90 and 130 bpm. Heat can also cause the horses heart rate to drift upwards over time. This is known as cardiac drift. So if you start trotting on a warm day at a heart rate of 110 bpm, you may find that 30 minutes later the heart rate has drifted up to 120 bpm.
5) Abnormalities in heart rhythm – Arrhythmias
Horses can sometimes develop abnormalities of heart rhythm where the heart does not beat regularly and these can be difficult for heart rate monitors to accurately calculate the true heart rate. If you are having problems getting a reliable heart rate recording from a horse, especially one in which you have previously managed to get good recordings it is worth finding a stethoscope and listening to the heart or feeling for a pulse to see if the rhythm is regular. In fit horses at low heart rates horses do sometimes miss or “drop” beats. The rhythm is essentially normal except that there is sometimes a long pause between beats every 3-4 beats where one beat is missed or dropped:
Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat Beat
This is perfectly normal and the veterinary name for this is 2nd degree atrio-ventricular or 2nd degree A-V block. If the rate is very low because of 2nd degree A-V block then the heart rate monitor may struggle to measure this. If you don’t believe the rhythm is regular, with the exception of dropped beats described above, then you should seek veterinary advice.
1) Designing and applying Fitness Training Programmes for horses
How you approach training a horse will depend on many factors, including:
• Age (maturity)
• Previous training history
• Previous health problems and current health
• Discipline
• Level of competition
• Temperament
• Facilities available
Basic Rules in Training Horses
1) Many horses are overloaded in training.
2) The most common injuries are orthopaedic and occur during training.
3) Injuries occur to the legs and to the areas in contact with the saddle
4) The goal of training is to improve skill, performance and resistance to injury
5) Horses do not respond in the same way as human athletes
6) Training load should be increased gradually
7) Horses need periods of time to recover physically and possibly even mentally in training
8) Long durations of exercise at low-moderate intensity (heart rates below 160 bpm) will not influence fitness beyond the first few months of training
Facilities for Training
The most basic training facility is usually an all-weather manege or field or land on which a horse is ridden. Working on horses on surfaces that are very soft or very hard and or uneven greatly increases the risk on injury. The risk of injury also increases with increasing speed so it may be worth considering boxing or riding horses to good ground or all-weather gallops if you need to do faster work but your surfaces at home are not ideal. Remember that uphill exercise will make the horse work harder. A gallop on the flat will be approximately equal to a canter up a moderately steep hill (~10% incline). Don’t forget to also consider the environmental conditions. When exercising on hot day with no wind and moderate to high humidity your horse may be working around a third harder than when being exercised on a cool, breezy day. Other facilities that are often used include horsewalkers, swimming pools and treadmills and can all have their use.
Treadmills are ideal for controlled exercise. They have the advantage that the horse works in a straight line and without weight on its back. Treadmill exercise can be used to settle horses that have a tendency to pull and horses that are prone to back problems. It is possible on most treadmills to vary the incline, however trotting horses fast (above 5 m/s) uphill should be avoided as this appears to increase the risk of hindlimb lameness. Treadmill surfaces are often towards the hard side and may not suit horses with a very upright front leg conformation. Even though the surface is usually harder the treadmill has the advantage that the surface is consistently flat. Treadmill exercise can therefore be used to replace ridden exercise.
Horsewalkers are widely used and give the advantage of controlled exercise at walk and trot. Standard practice is to reverse the direction of exercise so that horse are not always working on the same direction of turning. Horsewalkers are used for warming-up before exercise, for warming-down and as supplemental exercise. They are labour saving but overuse should be avoided. There is currently a question mark over whether round walkers, especially smaller ones, could increase the risk of injury. However, there are many factors to be considered including the surface of the walker and the horses previous history of injury. Oval walkers may offer a more natural way to exercise horses as they combine straight line and turning exercise. A variation on the normal treadmill is the water treadmill. These usually only operate at speeds of walk and trot. They increase the effort above exercise on a normal treadmill as the horse must push its legs through the water.
Another variation on the horsewalker are sea-walkers. A sea-walker is effectively a horsewalker with a circular channel of water in which the horse walks. The temperature of the water is usually maintained around 5°C. These are useful for reducing inflammation in the limbs, especially immediately following hard exercise. When used immediately after exercise the warm-down of the muscles by walking is combined with cooling of the lower legs.
Swimming pools are also often used. These come in essentially two configurations, round and straight. Swimming has the advantage of being “non-weight bearing exercise”. What this means is that although the muscle, heart and respiratory system are being trained when a horse swims, there is no loading on the limbs and so the risk of injury should be lower. Swimming is a good substitute for ridden exercise and can be used for example as a replacement on alternate days. Swimming is however a bit like ridden exercise in that the effort is related to how fast the horse is moving. If a horse is allowed to swim slowly then it will get less benefit than if it is encouraged to work in the pool. Swimming does not suit all horses and can easily be overused. Horses that hollow their backs when swimming may be at increased risk of developing injuries.
Fitness for Purpose
The level of fitness developed through training should be appropriate for the type and level of competition that the horse is being prepared for. For example, the level of cardiovascular (heart and aerobic) fitness that an advanced event horse requires is much greater than for a novice event horse. Similarly, any horse performing dressage does not require the same level of cardiovascular fitness as an event horse.
Dressage
Scientific studies have shown that in competition Dressage horses work at heart rates between 120 and 150 b.p.m. This suggests that the majority of the effort is aerobic. However, because some muscle groups are worked very intensely for short periods of time, there may be anaerobic components to the training and competition. Aerobic conditioning is relatively straightforward. As a rough guide, to improve aerobic capacity the horse should be trained at around a heart rate of 150-180 b.p.m. building up to around 10 minutes three times a week. For an unfit horse this would most likely equate to slow canter and for a fitter horse, a fast canter. In order to train specific muscle groups involved in specific movements, training can be achieved by performing those movements. The ideal approach is to initially perform the movements for short periods (e.g. 20-30 seconds) with an alternative form of recovery exercise, such as walking or trotting or even cantering for several minutes, in between. This ensures that the muscles do not become excessively fatigued. Also, repeated short bouts of specific exercise result in a greater overall physical training effect that one long intense session. In order to increase muscle size and therefore strength which will make the movements more expansive and easier for the horse to perform, specific strength conditioning can be introduced. This would include exercises such as being long-reined behind a “sledge”, onto which increasing weight can be added or driving in harness. This type of exercise has been shown to increase hindlimb and forelimb muscle size and strength in as little as 2 weeks. Physical conditioning (NOT skill training) of dressage horses that have previously been trained can probably be achieved in around 12-16 weeks.
Showjumping
Aerobic ability is probably least important in showjumpers. Whilst there is a significant proportion of the total energy that a horse uses to go around a course of jumps that comes from aerobic metabolism (oxygen), anaerobic metabolism (without oxygen and producing lactic acid) is mainly used for the jumping efforts. For example, a study from Holland in 2006 showed that when horses went round a course of jumps with the poles taken out (i.e. they cantered around the course at the same speed as they would when jumping but there were no jumping efforts) the heart rate (as an indicator of aerobic effort) was only about 1/6th higher whilst the lactic acid (as an indicator of anaerobic effort) was around 4 times higher. This proves that the cantering comes mainly from aerobic but the jumping ability comes from anaerobic. So it would be counter-productive to spend too much time training a showjumper aerobically (i.e. at heart rates between 150 and 180bpm). Most of the training should focus on work at higher heart rates (above 180 bpm), with short periods of intense exercise.
Human athletes rarely train simply by replicating the movements or exercise that they have to do in competition. For example, human hurdlers would train on the track, running and jumping hurdles, but they would also spend a considerable amount of time in the gym. In order to replicate the equivalent of human gym work for horses we need to be a little more creative. Showjumpers, like dressage horses, can also benefit from exercise specifically designed to develop larger muscles. These exercises include pulling exercises such as long-reining behind a sledge, being driven or working uphill on a treadmill in harness against a weight. These types of training have the advantage of increasing the effort without increasing loading on the more injury prone structures such as tendons and joints.
Eventing
Training for eventing is challenging as the rider must balance the different requirements of the different disciplines. As we can see from the sections of showjumping and dressage, the type of training we would use for these is not ideal preparation for the cross-country phase. For example, maximising showjumping capacity by specific strength training would be to the detriment of aerobic capacity cross-country. In a number of different studies of event horses, the common fining has been that the intensity of training has often been much lower than the intensity of competition. For example, out of 14 event horses in Australia being prepared for a three-star CCI, the highest heart rates in 13 of the horses were only between 120 and 180 b.p.m. when the peak heart rates during cross-country in these horses were around 195 b.p.m. Therefore, only one horse was exercising hard enough in training in order to be prepared appropriately for competition. A previously trained event horse should be competition fit after 12-16 weeks of training.
Maintaining Fitness
Once a horse has reached a suitable level of fitness it is not necessary to maintain the same level of training in order to maintain that fitness level. For human athletes, once they have reached competition fitness, if the training intensity is reduced this usually results in a decrease in fitness and performance. However, once horses have reached competition fitness, they will retain physical fitness even if the amount of weekly exercise is reduced. This of course may not be true for skill training.
Over-training
In human athletes a condition known as “over-training” is recognised. In over-trained athletes despite no obvious health or injury problems and despite maintaining their training level, performance decreases. Often any changes in the athletes can be very subtle and hard to detect and may be something as a slight change in mood. Over-training of this nature has been hard to demonstrate in horses. Horses are often recognised to go “stale” and whether this is simply a psychological problem or a problem with a physical basis is hard to know. What is more common in horses is “overloading”. This is where horses are trained too hard to the extent that they suffer injury.
Tapering
Most human athletes use an approach known as tapering when approaching competition. This involves maintaining the intensity of training but decreasing the amount of time spent training. This approach has been shown to allow muscles to fully recover strength and to maximise energy stores and result improved performance. Scientific studies have shown that Standardbred racehorses that were tapered ran faster than those that were conventionally trained i.e. normal training was
maintained right up to and including the day of competition.
In many equestrian disciplines it is not uncommon to observe riders who rather than decrease or even maintain training intensity as they approach competition, actually start to ride harder, more frequently and for longer. In some cases, where the sport has a high skill component this might be justified for individual horses, but from the physical component of performance this is almost certainly likely to be detrimental. In many cases it may be that the main reason for increased riding is related more to the riders anxiety than the horse actual need for increased work and working closely with a sports psychologist to address this may be highly beneficial.
Date: September 12, 2014
Sunday 7 December 2014
Joint supplements and bute
http://www.pegasushealth.com/blog/joint-supplements-and-bute/
A commonly asked question is if joint supplements can be fed along with bute or other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Ideally, the answer should be obtained from the vet who has prescribed the drug, since they should provide advice about what can and cannot be fed along with the drug. Joint supplements are classed as complementary feeds, not medicines or therapeutics, so in theory they are safe to feed with medication. Most joint supplements with commonly used ingredients can be safely fed with NSAIDs. The supplements have the benefit of no deleterious side effects.
NSAIDs work by inhibiting one of the enzymes (cyclo-oxygenase, or COX) involved in the inflammatory process, which reduces inflammation and pain. Unfortunately they also inhibit other enzymes, which mean they have some unwanted side effects, including gut irritation and ulceration (in most cases, only when used long term in high doses). They should, therefore, be used strictly under veterinary supervision and always at the lowest possible dose.
It’s not known precisely how joint supplement ingredients work, but there is some information available:
GlucosamineSupplies building blocks for glycosaminoglycan synthesis, stimulates hyaluronic acid production, and inhibits inflammatory mediators including nitric oxide, nuclear factor kappa B, and prostaglandin E2, and degradative enzymes such as collagenase and aggrecanase. Glucosamine protects against cartilage degradation in damaged or osteoarthritis samples in vitro. Neither glucosamine nor chondroitin have been found to inhibit COX enzymes.
Chondroitin
Its mode of action is believed to be a replacement of the proteoglycans in articular cartilage, which are lost in damage and/or inflammation, an anti-inflammatory effect and inhibition of enzymes involved in cartilage breakdown, as for glucosamine. Chondroitin also protects against cartilage degradation in damaged or osteoarthritis samples in vitro.
Its mode of action is believed to be a replacement of the proteoglycans in articular cartilage, which are lost in damage and/or inflammation, an anti-inflammatory effect and inhibition of enzymes involved in cartilage breakdown, as for glucosamine. Chondroitin also protects against cartilage degradation in damaged or osteoarthritis samples in vitro.
Boswellia
The biologically active ingredients are boswellic acids, and research studies have found that in particular, a compound called 3-O-acetyl-11-ketobetaboswellic acid (AKBA) seems to be active in inhibiting the action of 5-lipoxygenase, an enzyme involved in inflammation. The extra benefit of using boswellia as a joint-supporting supplement is that it doesn’t have the cartilage-degradative and stomach-irritating properties of commonly-used anti-inflammatory drugs.
The biologically active ingredients are boswellic acids, and research studies have found that in particular, a compound called 3-O-acetyl-11-ketobetaboswellic acid (AKBA) seems to be active in inhibiting the action of 5-lipoxygenase, an enzyme involved in inflammation. The extra benefit of using boswellia as a joint-supporting supplement is that it doesn’t have the cartilage-degradative and stomach-irritating properties of commonly-used anti-inflammatory drugs.
MSM
A biologically available source of sulphur, MSM’s therapeutic properties are believed to come from its antioxidant activity. It also has anti-inflammatory effects and blocks inflammatory mediators in human cartilage cells.
A biologically available source of sulphur, MSM’s therapeutic properties are believed to come from its antioxidant activity. It also has anti-inflammatory effects and blocks inflammatory mediators in human cartilage cells.
Turmeric
A group of pigments giving turmeric its yellow colour, curcuminoids, are believed to be the active component. Curcuminoids are powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. They inhibit the inflammatory mediator nuclear factor kappa B and block the interleukin-1-induced degradation of cartilage in in vitro models.
A group of pigments giving turmeric its yellow colour, curcuminoids, are believed to be the active component. Curcuminoids are powerful antioxidants and anti-inflammatories. They inhibit the inflammatory mediator nuclear factor kappa B and block the interleukin-1-induced degradation of cartilage in in vitro models.
Ginger
The active components – primarily phenolic compounds including gingerols – act on inflammatory mediators, inhibiting both prostaglandin and leukotriene synthesis, and inhibiting COX enzymes, thus having an anti-inflammatory effect.
The active components – primarily phenolic compounds including gingerols – act on inflammatory mediators, inhibiting both prostaglandin and leukotriene synthesis, and inhibiting COX enzymes, thus having an anti-inflammatory effect.
These active ingredients are fed to a great number of horses. Joint-supporting products are the biggest selling supplements, and many owners report good results. Recent research is encouraging. Researchers at Texas A&M University have found that supplementary glucosamine (15 g for a 500 kg horse) tended to ‘increase new cartilage production’ and ‘decrease the breakdown of existing cartilage’ in damaged joints of young horses. Researchers at the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket, UK recently presented a study showing that adult horses with slight lameness (1/10 to 4/10 lame) fed a joint supplement (containing a variety of ingredients including glucosamine and MSM) had a lower lameness grade than those on a placebo or before supplementation.
It’s recommended that you consult your veterinarian about the supplements you feed to your horse who has been prescribed NSAIDs. In general, however they are safe to feed alongside each other.
Tuesday 25 November 2014
Do Joint Supplements work in horses?
http://ker.equinews.com/article/do-joint-supplements-work-horses
Do Joint Supplements Work in Horses?
By Kentucky Equine Research Staff · October 28, 2014
An even better question than “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” appears to be “Do joint supplements for horses really work?”
According to the latest study1 published on the topic, the answer is no, but other experts suggest there is far more to the story and that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.
“There are several other studies both in live animals and in a laboratory setting that support the use of various joint supplements, leaving some of us optimistic that joint supplements are important,” says Kathleen Crandell, PhD, equine nutritionist at Kentucky Equine Research (KER).
In the recent study by Higler et al., 24 geriatric horses with “stiff joints and lack of joint flexibility” experienced no increase in stride length after three months of supplementation, whereas horses in the control group experienced increased motion in the knees and forelimb ankles. The authors used kinematic gait analysis when performing the study.
Some interesting things also worth noting were that none of the horses was diagnosed with a specific condition (e.g., fracture, osteoarthritis, tendon, or ligament injury, etc.) and the horses included in the study had very mild lameness—only grade 1 out of 5 using the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) lameness scale. Further, researchers noted horses were analyzed first at a walk and then at a trot throughout the study, which may have made the horses lose “their starting stiffness.”
Despite the fact that this study joins the “nay” side of the supplement debate, there are other factors to consider when deciding whether or not to use nutritional supplements, such as:
Many studies evaluate proprietary products, and it is well documented that not all nutritional supplements contain either the type or amount of ingredient that is indicated on the product label2, 3;
The study in question only looked at one such proprietary product and didn’t note a significant change in only three months of supplementation; and
The control group of horses in that study actually did experience a significant difference in various outcome measures compared to baseline.
“The significant changes in gait parameters in the control group may indicate the usefulness of exercise regimens in older horses,” concluded the study authors, which is an important finding of its own accord.
Additional details regarding the pros and cons of equine nutritional joint supplements is available online3, including detailed information on how to select a quality equine nutritional supplement.
Read more: Greasing the Joints, Part One and Part Two.
1Higler, M.H., H. Brommer, J.J. L’Ami, et al. 2014. The effects of a three-month oral supplementation with a nutraceutical and exercise on the locomotor pattern of aged horses. Equine Veterinary Journal 46:611–617.
2Oke, S., A. Aghazadeh-Habashi, J.S. Weese, et al. 2006. Evaluation of glucosamine levels in commercial equine oral supplements for joints. Equine Veterinary Journal 38(1):93–95.
3Oke, S.L., and C.W. McIlwraith. 2008. Review of the potential indications and contraindications of oral joint health supplements. AAEP Proceedings. 54:261–267.
Do Joint Supplements Work in Horses?
By Kentucky Equine Research Staff · October 28, 2014
An even better question than “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” appears to be “Do joint supplements for horses really work?”
According to the latest study1 published on the topic, the answer is no, but other experts suggest there is far more to the story and that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.
“There are several other studies both in live animals and in a laboratory setting that support the use of various joint supplements, leaving some of us optimistic that joint supplements are important,” says Kathleen Crandell, PhD, equine nutritionist at Kentucky Equine Research (KER).
In the recent study by Higler et al., 24 geriatric horses with “stiff joints and lack of joint flexibility” experienced no increase in stride length after three months of supplementation, whereas horses in the control group experienced increased motion in the knees and forelimb ankles. The authors used kinematic gait analysis when performing the study.
Some interesting things also worth noting were that none of the horses was diagnosed with a specific condition (e.g., fracture, osteoarthritis, tendon, or ligament injury, etc.) and the horses included in the study had very mild lameness—only grade 1 out of 5 using the American Association of Equine Practitioners (AAEP) lameness scale. Further, researchers noted horses were analyzed first at a walk and then at a trot throughout the study, which may have made the horses lose “their starting stiffness.”
Despite the fact that this study joins the “nay” side of the supplement debate, there are other factors to consider when deciding whether or not to use nutritional supplements, such as:
Many studies evaluate proprietary products, and it is well documented that not all nutritional supplements contain either the type or amount of ingredient that is indicated on the product label2, 3;
The study in question only looked at one such proprietary product and didn’t note a significant change in only three months of supplementation; and
The control group of horses in that study actually did experience a significant difference in various outcome measures compared to baseline.
“The significant changes in gait parameters in the control group may indicate the usefulness of exercise regimens in older horses,” concluded the study authors, which is an important finding of its own accord.
Additional details regarding the pros and cons of equine nutritional joint supplements is available online3, including detailed information on how to select a quality equine nutritional supplement.
Read more: Greasing the Joints, Part One and Part Two.
1Higler, M.H., H. Brommer, J.J. L’Ami, et al. 2014. The effects of a three-month oral supplementation with a nutraceutical and exercise on the locomotor pattern of aged horses. Equine Veterinary Journal 46:611–617.
2Oke, S., A. Aghazadeh-Habashi, J.S. Weese, et al. 2006. Evaluation of glucosamine levels in commercial equine oral supplements for joints. Equine Veterinary Journal 38(1):93–95.
3Oke, S.L., and C.W. McIlwraith. 2008. Review of the potential indications and contraindications of oral joint health supplements. AAEP Proceedings. 54:261–267.
Tuesday 30 September 2014
Lager lout pony
So started off improving the halt need to not dribble into the halt but walk into it, also think of the halt coming from my sternum and use legs (!)
Onto trot started off well need to sit left when LY on left rein.
Was just trotting on right rein towards A when I suddenly found myself teleporting 50m down the arena with Chorrie almost taking out Tom (!)
Got some fab work after that certainly had forwards for free, half pass was fab, who'd have thought six months ago I'd have been riding half pass?
Good times
Onto trot started off well need to sit left when LY on left rein.
Was just trotting on right rein towards A when I suddenly found myself teleporting 50m down the arena with Chorrie almost taking out Tom (!)
Got some fab work after that certainly had forwards for free, half pass was fab, who'd have thought six months ago I'd have been riding half pass?
Good times
Thursday 18 September 2014
And so there must come an end
Charlotte Kitley
Charlotte has blogged on The Huffington Post UK since 2013 and sadly passed away on Tuesday 16 September from bowel cancer. She wrote one final post that she wished to share with all of her readers. We are honoured to offer it to you here.
I've always been a good planner. I like lists and tick sheets, to-do notes and objectives. I'm very good at starting things, but honestly, I am also easily bored and quickly lose interest once the original excitement passes.
I haven't had the luxury of being allowed to be bored of having cancer. It isn't something you can just give up if you don't fancy doing it that day. There isn't a switch you can chose to turn off one day from the next. At least not for me. From my first day as a cancer patient, I have attended every test, scan and appointment. I have tried every treatment offered, from the standard medical therapies, to eating oiled cottage cheese, having acupuncture and juicing kale. Cancer has become our life. Holidays, haircuts and helicopter lessons have all been timed around good or bad chemo weekends. Danny and Lu, unwittingly as innocent by-standers have had their childhoods protected but also dictated by my various regimes. This is all they have ever known and, I hope, have still managed to turn out to be pretty good, well-rounded, loved and treasured children.
The innocence that we have protected them from has now had to be revealed. Following my birthday, I started to feel 'unwell'. We 'popped' to hospital where the usual set of tests were carried out. Unfortunately, when combined with a recent scan, the results were nothing short of devastating. We were no longer looking at a month by month action plan with a couple of months buffer at the end. I was given days, perhaps a couple of weeks to live. I wasn't expected to leave the hospital, but somehow, have managed to pull it out of the bag at the last moment and return home, to spend what little time I have with my darling children and loving husband.
As I write this, I am sat on the sofa, relatively pain-free and busy doing my little projects, sorting out the funeral and selling my car. We wake up every morning, grateful I can have a cuddle and kiss my babies.
As you read this, I will no longer be here. Rich will be trying to put one foot in front of the other, to get by, a day at a time, knowing I will no longer awake next to him. He will see me in the luxury of a dream, but in the harsh morning sun, the bed will be empty. He will get two cups from the cupboard, but realise there is only one coffee to make. Lucy will need someone to reach for her hairband box, but there won't be anyone to plait her hair. Danny will have lost one of his Lego policeman, but no one will know exactly which one it is or where to look. You will look for the latest update on the blog. There won't be one, this is the final chapter.
And so I leave a gaping, unjust, cruel and pointless hole, not just in Halliford Road, but in all the homes, thoughts and memories of other loved ones, friends and families. For that I am sorry. I would love to still be with you, laughing, eating my weird and latest miracle food, chatting rubbish 'Charleyisms'. I have so much life I still want to live, but know I won't have that. I want to be there for my friends as they move with their lives, see my children grow up and become old and grumpy with Rich. All these things are to be denied of me.
But, they are not to be denied of you. So, in my absence, please, please, enjoy life. Take it by both hands, grab it, shake it and believe in every second of it. Adore your children. You have literally no idea how blessed you are to shout at them in the morning to hurry up and clean their teeth.
Embrace your loved one and if they cannot embrace you back, find someone who will. Everyone deserves to love and be loved in return. Don't settle for less. Find a job you enjoy, but don't become a slave to it. You will not have 'I wish I'd worked more' on your headstone. Dance, laugh and eat with your friends. True, honest, strong friendships are an utter blessing and a choice we get to make, rather than have to share a loyalty with because there happens to be link through blood. Choose wisely then treasure them with all the love you can muster. Surround yourself with beautiful things. Life has a lot of grey and sadness - look for that rainbow and frame it. There is beauty in everything, sometimes you just have to look a little harder to see it.
So, that's it from me. Thank you so much for the love and kindness you've shown in your own little ways over the last 36 years. From the mean girls in the playing fields who pushed me into the stinging nettles aged six to the bereaved husbands who in the last week have told me what their wives did to help prepare their young children and everyone in between. They and you have all, in some small way helped me become the person I have been.
Please, now use that love for me and pass it to Rich, my children, family and close friends. And when you close your curtains tonight, look out for a star, it will be me, looking down, sipping a pina colada, enjoying a box of (very expensive) chocolates.
Good night, Good bye and God bless.
Charley xx
Charlotte has blogged on The Huffington Post UK since 2013 and sadly passed away on Tuesday 16 September from bowel cancer. She wrote one final post that she wished to share with all of her readers. We are honoured to offer it to you here.
I've always been a good planner. I like lists and tick sheets, to-do notes and objectives. I'm very good at starting things, but honestly, I am also easily bored and quickly lose interest once the original excitement passes.
I haven't had the luxury of being allowed to be bored of having cancer. It isn't something you can just give up if you don't fancy doing it that day. There isn't a switch you can chose to turn off one day from the next. At least not for me. From my first day as a cancer patient, I have attended every test, scan and appointment. I have tried every treatment offered, from the standard medical therapies, to eating oiled cottage cheese, having acupuncture and juicing kale. Cancer has become our life. Holidays, haircuts and helicopter lessons have all been timed around good or bad chemo weekends. Danny and Lu, unwittingly as innocent by-standers have had their childhoods protected but also dictated by my various regimes. This is all they have ever known and, I hope, have still managed to turn out to be pretty good, well-rounded, loved and treasured children.
The innocence that we have protected them from has now had to be revealed. Following my birthday, I started to feel 'unwell'. We 'popped' to hospital where the usual set of tests were carried out. Unfortunately, when combined with a recent scan, the results were nothing short of devastating. We were no longer looking at a month by month action plan with a couple of months buffer at the end. I was given days, perhaps a couple of weeks to live. I wasn't expected to leave the hospital, but somehow, have managed to pull it out of the bag at the last moment and return home, to spend what little time I have with my darling children and loving husband.
As I write this, I am sat on the sofa, relatively pain-free and busy doing my little projects, sorting out the funeral and selling my car. We wake up every morning, grateful I can have a cuddle and kiss my babies.
As you read this, I will no longer be here. Rich will be trying to put one foot in front of the other, to get by, a day at a time, knowing I will no longer awake next to him. He will see me in the luxury of a dream, but in the harsh morning sun, the bed will be empty. He will get two cups from the cupboard, but realise there is only one coffee to make. Lucy will need someone to reach for her hairband box, but there won't be anyone to plait her hair. Danny will have lost one of his Lego policeman, but no one will know exactly which one it is or where to look. You will look for the latest update on the blog. There won't be one, this is the final chapter.
And so I leave a gaping, unjust, cruel and pointless hole, not just in Halliford Road, but in all the homes, thoughts and memories of other loved ones, friends and families. For that I am sorry. I would love to still be with you, laughing, eating my weird and latest miracle food, chatting rubbish 'Charleyisms'. I have so much life I still want to live, but know I won't have that. I want to be there for my friends as they move with their lives, see my children grow up and become old and grumpy with Rich. All these things are to be denied of me.
But, they are not to be denied of you. So, in my absence, please, please, enjoy life. Take it by both hands, grab it, shake it and believe in every second of it. Adore your children. You have literally no idea how blessed you are to shout at them in the morning to hurry up and clean their teeth.
Embrace your loved one and if they cannot embrace you back, find someone who will. Everyone deserves to love and be loved in return. Don't settle for less. Find a job you enjoy, but don't become a slave to it. You will not have 'I wish I'd worked more' on your headstone. Dance, laugh and eat with your friends. True, honest, strong friendships are an utter blessing and a choice we get to make, rather than have to share a loyalty with because there happens to be link through blood. Choose wisely then treasure them with all the love you can muster. Surround yourself with beautiful things. Life has a lot of grey and sadness - look for that rainbow and frame it. There is beauty in everything, sometimes you just have to look a little harder to see it.
So, that's it from me. Thank you so much for the love and kindness you've shown in your own little ways over the last 36 years. From the mean girls in the playing fields who pushed me into the stinging nettles aged six to the bereaved husbands who in the last week have told me what their wives did to help prepare their young children and everyone in between. They and you have all, in some small way helped me become the person I have been.
Please, now use that love for me and pass it to Rich, my children, family and close friends. And when you close your curtains tonight, look out for a star, it will be me, looking down, sipping a pina colada, enjoying a box of (very expensive) chocolates.
Good night, Good bye and God bless.
Charley xx
Monday 15 September 2014
Saturday 13 September 2014
Crisp and correct
So Tom lesson this morning , explained C was a bit stiff and stuffy yesterday for Katie
Tom said he appeared to be a bit 'caus' as in casual he needs to walk on crisply and walk out
Keep him interested by keeping him busy, transitions, move him around, rein back nothing needs to be hard either on him or for him but keep his attention and waiting for the next thing
Trot do a 1/4 circle of trot then walk, rinse and repeat keep doing this, the way to access his back is to keep him onside and interested and not drill him into submission
Did some canter, initially just let him roll onwards then onto long side 2m loop counter bend ask for counter canter walk then true canter rinse and repeat
Canter serpentines in counter canter with simple changes
Finish on canter serpentines in true canter
Friday 12 September 2014
Day trip to Paris
Went on a day trip to Paris for Tony's birthday was fabulous day but very long we were up at 03:00 and not into bed until 01:00 so 22 hours awake
Louvre saw the Jan van Eyke The Virgin of Chancellor Ronin which is just amazing , the longer you look the more detail you see
Then onto the Musee D'Art Decoratifis which was fascinating until it got to the 1980s!
Lunch in our old haunt behind Rue d'Hyacinth with classic French surliness when asked for water which rather got thumped down
Stroll back through Tulleries to Orangerie then onto Musee D'Orsay which is my favourite the building is amazing and I love the collection
Whilst not the biggest Van Gough fan I adore his La nuit etoilee that they have
Coffe in the cafe as was starting to droop then back to Gard du Nord where we bought Champagne and Pringles for the journey home
Fabulous day :-)
Thornhill X90 that left Oxford at 04:10 to Victoria
07:01 Eurostar
20:13 Eurostar back home around 00:30
Wednesday 10 September 2014
You've got to want it
You've got to want it was the phrase that stuck from last night's lesson
I wanted to work on half pass in walk particularly doing the zig zag as that is where I get most confused
Take homes are keep the poll up, especially in trot, straighten, change bend FINISH the movement, DO not flop keep riding as Tom said you can't ride a walk/trot like that. Didn't have the heart to tell him that was pretty much how I've ridden ALL my tests BT (Before Tom)
Then onto canter did four loop serpentines with simple change over centre line very pleased with boy and with me too
I had started thinking this was beyond my skill level so set off half assed, at which point Tom pointed out you have to WANT IT, so rode a circle and restarted with a bit of fcuking conviction and lo it happened
Really chuffed with the boy
He was really onwards bound after the walk half pass and felt up for it, the trot work was just lovely a little on the edge at times but he was just lovely and to think forwards used to be such a big issue
Thursday 4 September 2014
Tuesday 2 September 2014
Tom
My back was dire so Tom rode
Wow that pony can move was so good to see him powering around the arena enjoying himself.
Tom said he feels better than the last time he rode him :-)
Have finally bitten bullet and ordered Sprenger stirrups to see if will help back/knees
Wow that pony can move was so good to see him powering around the arena enjoying himself.
Tom said he feels better than the last time he rode him :-)
Have finally bitten bullet and ordered Sprenger stirrups to see if will help back/knees
Tuesday 26 August 2014
Amazeballs just amazeballs
So not written up my Tom lessons my bad!
Some gems " have submission before you add in power" " check who is holding who"
Last lesson 19th August Tom rode Chorrie because I was a stess head with work and full on IBS, got on afterwards and wow, my lovely VW Polo has morphed into a Ferrari he felt so unlocked through his body started work on the canter which I need to let roll onwards
So fast forward to today I need more commitment ride everything for a ten, each transition should be the best I can do no half assed attempts
More work on canter again I need to let it roll forwards and encourage him to open up his stride
Simple changes should come from my body not my hands and do the change on a straight line
Trot post canter was cracking but again I must ride the transition and each stride not sit and wait for three strides
Homework is to work on simple transitions can also add in bits of Novice tests
Sunday 20 July 2014
Balanced Rider 19th July
So second group trip down to Quob, new Gang of Four, Yvonne having to pull out so Jac came along, nice to have done young blood :-)
Traffic was light so arrived early and went to invade tack shop, which has recently moved in with plans to expand HKM range stocked :-)))
Had lunch and met up with Kim, quick recap and spent the afternoon with Legless as a cooler room
So my asymmetries have clearly improved as per the objective assesement of the thingie that you yes your core to move
The mobiliser was a very interesting experience and showed where I have less spinal mobility
Had great fun doing a free ride on Legless lots of half pass and canter piris
Had a treatment on the table mostly around mobilising hips and thoracic spine
Champagne Magnum to finish then meg possible pony purchase :-)
Tom Graham 19th April
Leg yield head to wall shows use or lack of use of outside rein, I lose my left rein and bang we lies the angle
On and back within the LY
Half pass don't make it harder than it need be to half pass left then turn onto centre line from left rein
Walk piris have improved
Overall will to go forward has much improved
Hand still hurts :-(
Saturday 12 July 2014
Cotswold Confidence
So went along for a NLP day as I am still doing the "what ifs" well now it is the "So what ifs" :-)
"Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
"Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
Well I think my constant thinking of myself as a nervous rider has become my destiny so time to change my thoughts
Was interesting I couldn't recreate the fear was very positive actually
Need to remember to get on and just be, do the breathing then walk on
Think of being grounded through his legs
Visualise yourself as a confident rider model on a role model
Have homework to do
Was interesting I couldn't recreate the fear was very positive actually
Need to remember to get on and just be, do the breathing then walk on
Think of being grounded through his legs
Visualise yourself as a confident rider model on a role model
Have homework to do
Tuesday 8 July 2014
Commitment be the ham not the egg
So was late getting out of work but luckily Tom was caught in traffic so I was ready on time, was feeling pretty under the weather IBS having flared up again (TMI?)
So take away points
So take away points
- Hold the left rein *properly* (Jeez when will I get this consistently?)
- Be committed to the transition - At one point I lost connection so had a whinge and Tom pointed out the transition to walk was just not good enough I am too fluffy and indecisive and we sometimes just wallow and wade into transitions. Essentially I have made Chorrie in my image (do enough at work to stay out of trouble) so if I want more I need to be committed and just darn well ask properly.
- Started training trot half pass, I need to watch the angle, we are NOT riding GP so do NOT make them steep. So on left rein down centre line in left SI, keep him around inside (left) leg and move him across the diagonal to the left away from the right leg.
- I am still thinking ‘ooh well done good boy’ and flopping into a heap *finish* the movement
- Still need to do more adjusting pace (on and back) and flexion to keep him listening and with me
Wednesday 2 July 2014
I have read that flaxseed (linseed) meal can generate toxins when fed to horses. Is it safe to feed?
http://ker.equinews.com/answer-exchange/flaxseed-meal-horses
Q: I have read that flaxseed meal can generate toxins when fed to horses. Is it safe to feed?
A: Flaxseed contains cyanogenic glycosides, which are activated by enzymes in the seed to form cyanide. As long as the seed is intact, there is no cyanide development but when exposed to air or water the conversion to cyanide occurs. The longer the exposure, the greater the time for the reaction to occur.
This is why equine nutritionists recommended that flax be fed as soon as possible once it is ground. In times past when flax (linseed) was an integral part of many equine diets, flax was boiled to soften the hard outer shell. When dropped into boiling water, the enzyme deactivated and no cyanide was produced. On the other hand, if flax is put in cold water and brought to a boil, there will be some cyanide production. Heat and acid exposure deactivates the enzyme.
Whole flax seeds can be fed without any cyanide production because the acid in the stomach will denature the enzymes. Whole flaxseeds are chewed by the horse fairly effectively and may have some effect on keeping the digesta in the tract moving well, as the pectins in the flax form a glutinous gel. Some seeds, however, may escape digestion.
Commercially purchased ground flax will be “stabilized,” a heating process that denatures the enzyme, so they are considered safe to serve as-is. The stabilized product can be refrigerated after opening to extend the shelf life.
Even though there can be cyanide production when soaking or grinding flaxseeds, the total amounts are not very high. In fact, plant breeders have been working on developing lower glycidic strains of the plant during recent years. As it stands now, a horse would have to eat more than a couple pounds of raw ground flax that had been standing around awhile (or soaked in cold water) to ingest the amount of cyanide to approach having toxic effects. Normal intakes are anywhere from 2 to 8 oz per day and do not come anywhere near the amount that would be considered dangerous.
Please note that flax meal and ground flax are not the same thing. Flax meal is the product left after the oil is extracted from the seed. Ground flax is the whole seed that has been ground so that it has the same fat content as the whole seed.
Q: I have read that flaxseed meal can generate toxins when fed to horses. Is it safe to feed?
A: Flaxseed contains cyanogenic glycosides, which are activated by enzymes in the seed to form cyanide. As long as the seed is intact, there is no cyanide development but when exposed to air or water the conversion to cyanide occurs. The longer the exposure, the greater the time for the reaction to occur.
This is why equine nutritionists recommended that flax be fed as soon as possible once it is ground. In times past when flax (linseed) was an integral part of many equine diets, flax was boiled to soften the hard outer shell. When dropped into boiling water, the enzyme deactivated and no cyanide was produced. On the other hand, if flax is put in cold water and brought to a boil, there will be some cyanide production. Heat and acid exposure deactivates the enzyme.
Whole flax seeds can be fed without any cyanide production because the acid in the stomach will denature the enzymes. Whole flaxseeds are chewed by the horse fairly effectively and may have some effect on keeping the digesta in the tract moving well, as the pectins in the flax form a glutinous gel. Some seeds, however, may escape digestion.
Commercially purchased ground flax will be “stabilized,” a heating process that denatures the enzyme, so they are considered safe to serve as-is. The stabilized product can be refrigerated after opening to extend the shelf life.
Even though there can be cyanide production when soaking or grinding flaxseeds, the total amounts are not very high. In fact, plant breeders have been working on developing lower glycidic strains of the plant during recent years. As it stands now, a horse would have to eat more than a couple pounds of raw ground flax that had been standing around awhile (or soaked in cold water) to ingest the amount of cyanide to approach having toxic effects. Normal intakes are anywhere from 2 to 8 oz per day and do not come anywhere near the amount that would be considered dangerous.
Please note that flax meal and ground flax are not the same thing. Flax meal is the product left after the oil is extracted from the seed. Ground flax is the whole seed that has been ground so that it has the same fat content as the whole seed.
Saturday 28 June 2014
More Mr Fabulous
So started off with Tom asking how it had been since last lesson and what did I want to work on this session
Explained had been concentrating on suppleness as felt this was biggest missing link as he had good natural rhythm and contact aways came good if we had rhythm and suppleness
Wanted Tom to watch me start working in and to discuss afterwards
So worked in really pleased with how much progress we have made, he moves sideways away from my leg now so much better now, need to watch left shoulder is straight.
Then looked at trot need to go with him and not get behind him, also I need to raise my game and not get a piece of good work, praise him and then just stop riding (SFO also has said this ) praise him and finish properly not just abandon him
Worked on leg yield then SI or towards medium trot
Next exercise was SI up centre line then take counter flexion then refine this down to just a feeling of counter flexion, in trot do I have options can I collect or push the trot on? Doesn't need to be huge either way just need to test I have the adjustability.
So take home message was I need to test the adjustability more, it should be invisible to onlookers it will also keep him focused (and me!)
Was another excellent lesson Chorrie improves every lesson so wish I had found Tom years ago he had improved the way I ride Chorrie beyond recognition and I now have a horse that can go forwards
Pony in a billion
Thursday 26 June 2014
Warning of multiple anthelmintic resistance
See Equine Science Update
Research published recently in the International Journal of Parasitology warns of impending multi-drug resistance in strongyles on British Thoroughbred stud farms.
The study, involving scientists in Edinburgh, Bristol and Liverpool, looked at the efficacy of anthelmintics against worms in horses on 16 stud farms.
To assess the efficacy against strongyles, faecal worm egg count reduction (FECR) tests were carried out on samples from 429 horses. Faecal egg counts were performed before and 14 -17 days after treatment with one of the four available broad-spectrum anthelmintics: ivermectin; moxidectin; pyrantel or fenbendazole.
Moxidectin was efficacious in all tests, resulting in mean faecal egg count reduction in the range of 99.8-100%. Ivermectin showed reduced efficacy (FECR 85.7% -100%) in one group of yearlings. Five groups of yearlings showed reduced efficacy of pyrantel (FECR ranging from 0-13%). However, pyrantel was still efficacious when administered to mares. Fenbendazole always had low efficacy (FECR 0.4 – 42%).
A different pattern of efficacy was found against the large roundworm Parascaris equorum. Tests carried out on four farms showed reduced efficacy of ivermectin (FECR 25.5% – 91.2%). However fenbendazole had acceptable efficacy (FECR 97.5% – 99.9%).
The research team also performed faecal egg counts at about 2 week intervals after anthelmintic treatment for up to 12 weeks to determine the strongyle egg reappearance period for moxidectin, ivermectin and pyrantel. They found that the egg reappearance period for all three anthelmintics was shorter than had been observed previously. This is considered to be an early indicator of developing resistance.
“Overall,” they conclude, “our results indicate that ivermectin and moxidectin administration provided acceptable efficacy at 14 days; however, egg reappearance period results suggest that these products are working less effectively than measured previously. As shortened egg reappearance period is believed to be an early indicator of resistance, this highlights the issue of impending multi-drug resistance in strongyles on stud farms.”
For more details see:
Anthelmintic efficacy on UK Thoroughbred stud farms.
Relf VE, Lester HE, Morgan ER, Hodgkinson JE, Matthews JB.
Int J Parasitol. 2014 Apr 15. pii: S0020-7519(14)00078-2.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijpara.2014.03.006.
Research published recently in the International Journal of Parasitology warns of impending multi-drug resistance in strongyles on British Thoroughbred stud farms.
The study, involving scientists in Edinburgh, Bristol and Liverpool, looked at the efficacy of anthelmintics against worms in horses on 16 stud farms.
To assess the efficacy against strongyles, faecal worm egg count reduction (FECR) tests were carried out on samples from 429 horses. Faecal egg counts were performed before and 14 -17 days after treatment with one of the four available broad-spectrum anthelmintics: ivermectin; moxidectin; pyrantel or fenbendazole.
Moxidectin was efficacious in all tests, resulting in mean faecal egg count reduction in the range of 99.8-100%. Ivermectin showed reduced efficacy (FECR 85.7% -100%) in one group of yearlings. Five groups of yearlings showed reduced efficacy of pyrantel (FECR ranging from 0-13%). However, pyrantel was still efficacious when administered to mares. Fenbendazole always had low efficacy (FECR 0.4 – 42%).
A different pattern of efficacy was found against the large roundworm Parascaris equorum. Tests carried out on four farms showed reduced efficacy of ivermectin (FECR 25.5% – 91.2%). However fenbendazole had acceptable efficacy (FECR 97.5% – 99.9%).
The research team also performed faecal egg counts at about 2 week intervals after anthelmintic treatment for up to 12 weeks to determine the strongyle egg reappearance period for moxidectin, ivermectin and pyrantel. They found that the egg reappearance period for all three anthelmintics was shorter than had been observed previously. This is considered to be an early indicator of developing resistance.
“Overall,” they conclude, “our results indicate that ivermectin and moxidectin administration provided acceptable efficacy at 14 days; however, egg reappearance period results suggest that these products are working less effectively than measured previously. As shortened egg reappearance period is believed to be an early indicator of resistance, this highlights the issue of impending multi-drug resistance in strongyles on stud farms.”
For more details see:
Anthelmintic efficacy on UK Thoroughbred stud farms.
Relf VE, Lester HE, Morgan ER, Hodgkinson JE, Matthews JB.
Int J Parasitol. 2014 Apr 15. pii: S0020-7519(14)00078-2.
doi: 10.1016/j.ijpara.2014.03.006.
Sunday 22 June 2014
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun
Lesson at 12:00 was wonderfully sunny and warm and the horseflies were out, so cracked on quickly to trot to try and lose them.
Have been working on right rein in trot and today was better than left rein so guess I need to look at that this week and work towards evening then up
Really thrilled with the boy's attitude it was hot but he worked his socks off so pleased.
Leg yields are feeling better he was forwards
Happy days
Have been working on right rein in trot and today was better than left rein so guess I need to look at that this week and work towards evening then up
Really thrilled with the boy's attitude it was hot but he worked his socks off so pleased.
Leg yields are feeling better he was forwards
Happy days
Saturday 21 June 2014
Pony shopping
Pony shopping a tale of two halves
In brief the bay that was everyone's number one choice was IMO not really working at Ad Med as advert, didn't even get on as was IMO stiff doing half passes in trot and canter, change was tight. Very poorly presented IMO I expect as a minimum mane and tail brushed, clean tack and clean hooves not oiled as that isn't what everyone likes to do.
Goodness he was a full up 16:3hh
So was only there 20 minutes, made excuses thanked for their time and left so we were now going to be an hour and twenty early for pony number two the ginger job.
Rang owner who was at yard pooh picking and was happy for us to be early
Got there and ginger was in mane and tail brushed :-) owner was lovely did a walk and trot up, in hand circles on hard. Tacked him up having asked what bridle I wanted to see him in.
Rode him in school lots to like needs to work more from behind IMO
I got on which is in itself a testament to ginger job and rode him in walk and a tiny bit of trot. I felt safe but really wanted someone like YO or Tom to get after me to ride him. However I am chuffed I rode an unknown horse and didn't have a melt down ( this has happened)
Wednesday 18 June 2014
What’s the Scoop on Carbohydrates in Horse Feeds?
From a plant perspective, carbohydrates fall into three categories: simple sugars active in plant intermediary metabolism; storage compounds such as sucrose, starch, and fructans; and structural carbohydrates such as pectin, cellulose, and hemicelluloses. For the horse, however, it is more appropriate to classify carbohydrates by where and how quickly they are digested and absorbed.
Undigested starch from cereal grains and fructans from pasture are the most likely compounds contributing to lactic acidosis in the hindgut.Carbohydrates can be digested and absorbed as monosaccharides, simple sugars (primarily glucose and fructose), in the small intestine, or they can be fermented in the large intestine to produce volatile fatty acids (VFA) or lactic acid. The rate of fermentation and types of end products produced are quite variable and can have significant effects on the health and well-being of the horse.
Starch is the predominant carbohydrate fraction in cereal grains. Although all starch is made up of glucose chains, the starch molecule is constructed different in various types of grain. These differences in the architecture of individual starches have a large impact on how well they are digested in the horse’s small intestine. Of the grains most commonly fed to horses, oats contain the most digestible form of starch, followed by sorghum, corn, and barley. Processing of grains can have a huge effect of prececal starch digestibility and glycemic index. This is particularly true for barley, sorghum, and corn.
The quantity of blood glucose produced in response to a meal is a useful measure of a feed’s hydrolysable carbohydrate content. The glycemic index of a feed indicates the rate of carbohydrate absorption after the horse ingests that feed. For the purpose of comparison, oats are assigned a glycemic index of 100. Steam-flaked corn has a higher glycemic index of 144, as does sweet feed at 129, indicating that more glucose is derived from their prececal digestion than from oats. Feeds with lower glycemic indices include cracked corn (90), rice bran (47), alfalfa hay (46), and bluestem grass hay (23).
Rapid fermentation can produce lactic acid, which may lead to a cascade of events culminating in laminitis. Undigested starch from cereal grains and fructans from pasture are the most likely compounds contributing to lactic acidosis in the hindgut. Slowly fermentable carbohydrates from the plant cell wall are absolutely essential to maintain a healthy microbial environment in the hindgut, and provide a major source of digestible energy for many horses.
Obesity is a growing problem in the horse population and is an important risk factor for laminitis through the association with insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. Excessive caloric intake can lead to the development of obesity and other clinical signs in horses with equine metabolic syndrome and pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction. Owners should monitor body condition of their horses and should not let them become obese. In general, a horse whose ribs are easily seen may be too thin; a horse whose ribs can’t be felt by pressing the fingertips over the horse’s barrel is probably too fat; and a horse whose ribs can’t be easily seen but can easily be felt with fingertip pressure is at a reasonable weight.
Undigested starch from cereal grains and fructans from pasture are the most likely compounds contributing to lactic acidosis in the hindgut.Carbohydrates can be digested and absorbed as monosaccharides, simple sugars (primarily glucose and fructose), in the small intestine, or they can be fermented in the large intestine to produce volatile fatty acids (VFA) or lactic acid. The rate of fermentation and types of end products produced are quite variable and can have significant effects on the health and well-being of the horse.
Starch is the predominant carbohydrate fraction in cereal grains. Although all starch is made up of glucose chains, the starch molecule is constructed different in various types of grain. These differences in the architecture of individual starches have a large impact on how well they are digested in the horse’s small intestine. Of the grains most commonly fed to horses, oats contain the most digestible form of starch, followed by sorghum, corn, and barley. Processing of grains can have a huge effect of prececal starch digestibility and glycemic index. This is particularly true for barley, sorghum, and corn.
The quantity of blood glucose produced in response to a meal is a useful measure of a feed’s hydrolysable carbohydrate content. The glycemic index of a feed indicates the rate of carbohydrate absorption after the horse ingests that feed. For the purpose of comparison, oats are assigned a glycemic index of 100. Steam-flaked corn has a higher glycemic index of 144, as does sweet feed at 129, indicating that more glucose is derived from their prececal digestion than from oats. Feeds with lower glycemic indices include cracked corn (90), rice bran (47), alfalfa hay (46), and bluestem grass hay (23).
Rapid fermentation can produce lactic acid, which may lead to a cascade of events culminating in laminitis. Undigested starch from cereal grains and fructans from pasture are the most likely compounds contributing to lactic acidosis in the hindgut. Slowly fermentable carbohydrates from the plant cell wall are absolutely essential to maintain a healthy microbial environment in the hindgut, and provide a major source of digestible energy for many horses.
Obesity is a growing problem in the horse population and is an important risk factor for laminitis through the association with insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. Excessive caloric intake can lead to the development of obesity and other clinical signs in horses with equine metabolic syndrome and pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction. Owners should monitor body condition of their horses and should not let them become obese. In general, a horse whose ribs are easily seen may be too thin; a horse whose ribs can’t be felt by pressing the fingertips over the horse’s barrel is probably too fat; and a horse whose ribs can’t be easily seen but can easily be felt with fingertip pressure is at a reasonable weight.
Tuesday 17 June 2014
Beaglie vet visit
So visit to vet today for lump and bumps check, nail clip and breathing issue review
Basically for sixteen he is fab, realistically as didn't respond to meds previously little to do. In absolute terms he is doing well avoid walking in heat ( which we do) progression likely to be slow
All that for £10 .45 :-) so much cheaper than our second opinion feline practice.
Going to try Rafferty with them on Thursday as suspect he has arthritis be interesting to compare bills
Basically for sixteen he is fab, realistically as didn't respond to meds previously little to do. In absolute terms he is doing well avoid walking in heat ( which we do) progression likely to be slow
All that for £10 .45 :-) so much cheaper than our second opinion feline practice.
Going to try Rafferty with them on Thursday as suspect he has arthritis be interesting to compare bills
Sunday 15 June 2014
Q&A: Understanding Fiber Types
http://www.equinews.com/answer-exchange/detergent-fiber-forages-horses
The fiber fractions found in plants are cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin. Some fiber is digestible (hemicellulose and some of the cellulose), and some is not (lignin). There is currently no exact method of measuring the proportion of digestible fiber (by microbial fermentation) to indigestible fiber in forage. The old “crude fiber” measure is grossly inaccurate. At this time, acid detergent fiber (ADF) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) are used, and these measure combinations of fractions of fibers.
NDF: includes low digestibility or indigestible cell wall/structural fiber so includes cellulose, hemicelluloses, and all lignin. High NDF means low digestibility (these are all elements within the cell wall).
ADF: lignin, cellulose, some ash, and silica. High ADF means low digestibility. Hemicellulose is estimated by subtracting ADF from NDF (these are elements within the cell wall of the plant).
ADF and NDF measurements of fiber content give an indication of digestibility and palatablilty of forage.
NDF is a measure of the plant’s cell wall content where the higher the value, the less the horse will eat of the hay (less digestible).
ADF is a measure of the fiber concentration shown as a percent where, as ADF increases, digestibility and nutrient availability decreases.
Hays with ADF levels above 45% have little nutritive value (lower than 31% are excellent). Hays with NDF values of 65% or greater are not very palatable (below 40% are excellent).
Essentially, the change that you are seeing from one hay test to the next has to do with the maturity of the hay at the time it is harvested. Different cuttings throughout the year will have different fiber fractions relative to the maturity of the plant at the time of cutting. With alfalfa, the detergent fiber levels (ADF and NDF) will increase with an increase in the amount of stems in the hay. Consequently, the more stems, the more lignin (an indigestible fiber component), which gives stiffness to the stems, and the less digestible fiber will be present.
The fiber fractions found in plants are cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin. Some fiber is digestible (hemicellulose and some of the cellulose), and some is not (lignin). There is currently no exact method of measuring the proportion of digestible fiber (by microbial fermentation) to indigestible fiber in forage. The old “crude fiber” measure is grossly inaccurate. At this time, acid detergent fiber (ADF) and neutral detergent fiber (NDF) are used, and these measure combinations of fractions of fibers.
NDF: includes low digestibility or indigestible cell wall/structural fiber so includes cellulose, hemicelluloses, and all lignin. High NDF means low digestibility (these are all elements within the cell wall).
ADF: lignin, cellulose, some ash, and silica. High ADF means low digestibility. Hemicellulose is estimated by subtracting ADF from NDF (these are elements within the cell wall of the plant).
ADF and NDF measurements of fiber content give an indication of digestibility and palatablilty of forage.
NDF is a measure of the plant’s cell wall content where the higher the value, the less the horse will eat of the hay (less digestible).
ADF is a measure of the fiber concentration shown as a percent where, as ADF increases, digestibility and nutrient availability decreases.
Hays with ADF levels above 45% have little nutritive value (lower than 31% are excellent). Hays with NDF values of 65% or greater are not very palatable (below 40% are excellent).
Essentially, the change that you are seeing from one hay test to the next has to do with the maturity of the hay at the time it is harvested. Different cuttings throughout the year will have different fiber fractions relative to the maturity of the plant at the time of cutting. With alfalfa, the detergent fiber levels (ADF and NDF) will increase with an increase in the amount of stems in the hay. Consequently, the more stems, the more lignin (an indigestible fiber component), which gives stiffness to the stems, and the less digestible fiber will be present.
Saturday 14 June 2014
Tom Graham 14th June
Newsflash: have been threatened with working without stirrups, if I am brave (mad?) enough next time!
So explained to Tom that I wanted to work on/check my understanding of warming up.
So for me Tom warms up based on the first three scales of training
but firstly I need to check that I have reaction, will he walk / halt crisply?
Once we have reaction then start to think
Is the rhythm good or bad? (good is relative to where you and the horse are, not an absolute scale )
Do we have equal suppleness left <-> right? Can you take left flexion and move Chorrie away from the left leg with the same ease you can take right flexion and move Chorrie away from the right leg?
Contact is it even ?
Do we still have reaction? Do we still have rhythm, suppleness and contact?
Then onto trot work again work through reaction, rhythm, suppleness and contact and so on and so forth.
The take home message was to evaluate what you have and to keep revisiting and evaluating. I have lots of exercises now to use.
The other lightbulb moment was leg yield we're pretty good going away from the right leg not so the left leg Tom finally got me to twig how to ride the shoulder first and not get him quarters leading.
Alison's lesson
Watched a bit of Al's lesson, looking really good one lightbulb moment for me was Tom saying that a lot of horses canter left because we are on the left rein not because we are aiding for left canter.
So to test on a straight line can you pick up left and right canter?
So explained to Tom that I wanted to work on/check my understanding of warming up.
So for me Tom warms up based on the first three scales of training
but firstly I need to check that I have reaction, will he walk / halt crisply?
Once we have reaction then start to think
Is the rhythm good or bad? (good is relative to where you and the horse are, not an absolute scale )
Do we have equal suppleness left <-> right? Can you take left flexion and move Chorrie away from the left leg with the same ease you can take right flexion and move Chorrie away from the right leg?
Contact is it even ?
Do we still have reaction? Do we still have rhythm, suppleness and contact?
Then onto trot work again work through reaction, rhythm, suppleness and contact and so on and so forth.
The take home message was to evaluate what you have and to keep revisiting and evaluating. I have lots of exercises now to use.
The other lightbulb moment was leg yield we're pretty good going away from the right leg not so the left leg Tom finally got me to twig how to ride the shoulder first and not get him quarters leading.
Alison's lesson
Watched a bit of Al's lesson, looking really good one lightbulb moment for me was Tom saying that a lot of horses canter left because we are on the left rein not because we are aiding for left canter.
So to test on a straight line can you pick up left and right canter?
Saturday 7 June 2014
Tom Graham
Lesson with Tom on Saturday forecast was set to heavy rain, I was on first at 08:30 woke up to a dry morning which was very unexpected, we didn't get the rain until 10:00 when it chucked it down flash flooding road closures the whole shebang. Was very pleased I'd elected to go first :-)
Tom asked how week had been said I wanted to look at contact in walk as it was deteriorating now I was attempting to keep fingers closed on left rein. Had tried to resolve with more impulsion, counter flexion, transitions, leg yield .
Tom had me doing counter flexion AND move the shoulders in on a circle then politely straighten if he started to fall onto left shoulder then counter flexion move shoulders politely straighten. Rinse and repeat.
Made a huge difference, I like the idea of politely straighten , it isn't punishment so don't swing horse back to inside flexion do it politely !
Tom also improved the leg yield I was not using my outside rein enough (correctly)
Tom did say I had become rather Pony Club, legs to go, hands to whoa
Interestingly enough in leg yield Tom suggested I use the whip to "irritate" the left hind into more activity had always assumed it would always be right hind in need of activation
Had some fabulous trot again Tom has a way of opening Chorrie up and freeing him off and then we fly
Again I need a different attitude need to be " we can do this" and ride with that conviction
Will be interesting to see if a month of this improves the tightness in his left side at his next physio appointment .
I like the way Tom operates, it isn't twack the bugger with the whip, there is understanding that as I change how I ride ( left hand) Chorrie will need time to adjust and we need to work him through it.
Slightly scary how Chorrie and I collude in our less desirable habits, Need to stay away from the arena sides as we both like to hug them a little too much
Friday 6 June 2014
Balanced Rider Exercises
Ball side to side with feet level and a still upper body
Legs against wall abductor stretch at least daily more often if possible
Arc exercise using ball ( the one Kim gave me on the demo)
Feet on ball bring ball to you keeping pelvis on floor (hands under to feel pressure) push ball away to point where pressure stays constant
When riding in walk, leg away exercise without using upper body or affecting other leg think mm
Balanced Rider individual assesement
So today I went back to Quob stables for an individual assessment.
Yesterday saddler was out to check fit and noticed in walk my hips don't move evenly left and right ( SFO has mentioned this too in the past ) I am also collapsed right ( as ever)
Started off with medical history then a biomechanical assesement
Kim is of the opinion that my un level pelvis is due to my abductors being shortened and until I loosen and lengthen them my pelvis will keep returning to unlevel no matter how many treatments I have.
My collapsed right side can be see off the horse which is good news as it means it can with time be corrected.
Spent time on the flexi chair which was enlightening as it made it clear how little movement I have towards the right with my pelvis. You sit on this saddle seat chair and have to move a dot on a screen within a define pattern, it sounded so simple but really shows up where you are stuck.
So have come away with a slew of exercises to do, but the most important thing to concentrate on is loosening my abductors. So we can restore equality of movement to the pelvis. Kim is of opinion most of my issues probably stem from my unlevel pelvis.
Some of the exercises seem very Feldencrais in origin in that there is no end gaining and it isn't about how " well" or how far .
Need at least three weeks to work on my exercises then I go back for reassessment
Also very interesting that a lot of what SFO has commented on such as not being able to move a leg without upper body joining in Kim picked up on.
It was a very intensive session mentally but I am very hopeful that this may be the piece of the jigsaw I have been looking for
The only downside is that I have to fix myself by doing a LOT of homework it isn't a case of come to Kim for three sessions and walk out fixed. So now will be a test of just how motivated am I really?
Thursday 5 June 2014
Lavinia visit
So pony has lost a little on the back template probably due to weight reduction template nicely even
Lavinia's new PA Kerry is just lovely
Shims adjusted so added shims in front, and added shim left as he has a slight 'hollow' left under my seat bone and this will support me not falling into hollow
When riding Lavinia observed I do not move when in walk equally left <-> right movement to right very restricted
Sunday 1 June 2014
Tom Graham @ Duttons Lesson Three
So safe to say lesson was bloody good :-)
I like Tom's style, he is very encouraging whilst expecting good work, he teaches you the why and gives you ideas for you to try, he doesn't ride the horse through you.
So today was a lot about not letting him brace his neck against me, Chorrie's default to new things seems to be to brace and block, however I must also be sure I am not blocking him.
Need to keep my left hand CLOSED around the rein, failure to do so leads to poor work.
Trot down long side half 10m circle, leg yield to track, shoulder in to end
Three quarter or centre line, shoulder in, should at least stay on my line as a minimum, feel which way he wants to lean.
Refresh trot with large circle give and retake rein, lengthen rein forwards, on and back.
Start diagonal line then flexion then leg yield ensure we go where I want and finish where I want.
Finished with on and back going large, bloody hell that boy can trot!
Tom is a god the difference we get over a lesson is simply bloody amazing
Need to remember to rebalance the trot and not just keep taking it don't ask beyond what he can freely give
I like Tom's style, he is very encouraging whilst expecting good work, he teaches you the why and gives you ideas for you to try, he doesn't ride the horse through you.
So today was a lot about not letting him brace his neck against me, Chorrie's default to new things seems to be to brace and block, however I must also be sure I am not blocking him.
Need to keep my left hand CLOSED around the rein, failure to do so leads to poor work.
Trot down long side half 10m circle, leg yield to track, shoulder in to end
Three quarter or centre line, shoulder in, should at least stay on my line as a minimum, feel which way he wants to lean.
Refresh trot with large circle give and retake rein, lengthen rein forwards, on and back.
Start diagonal line then flexion then leg yield ensure we go where I want and finish where I want.
Finished with on and back going large, bloody hell that boy can trot!
Tom is a god the difference we get over a lesson is simply bloody amazing
Need to remember to rebalance the trot and not just keep taking it don't ask beyond what he can freely give
Monday 26 May 2014
Lovely lunchtime Lorna lesson
So lesson at lunchtime I do love my boy so, pop him out in the morning and he willingly comes over to come in at 12:00 even though it must mean work
So am on board and Lorna arrives asks what we've been up to, so go over hacking, Tom Graham and Balanced Rider
Lorna points out the walk has little energy it isn't marching if we are going to improve his suppleness then it needs to be a good quality walk that is going somewhere
So basically when left to my own devices as time goes on between lessons I agree with C that we'll slob along
How many times has Lorna said about a marching walk, how many times has SFO said more energy?
So rule of thumb if he doesn't break to trot then we may well be slobbing
GOAL FOR THE WEEK: Active marching walk
Still need to watch left hand on right rein it holds too much possibly compensating for weaker left leg?
On and back in trot, good crisp halts
GOOD STUFF: Lorna noticed improvement in leg position, boy was more forwards with no whip, trot is improving
:-)
Sunday 25 May 2014
The Balanced Rider
Yesterday I set off with three others to
http://www.thebalancedrider.co.uk/index.html
it was a revelation and probably the best £30 I have spent on a clinic
We started off with a brief look at Harry the skeleton and a talk about common rider issues and a chat about use of the core and how ubiquitous using your core has become.
We then did exercises on gym balls that highlight sidedness and help you to use your abdominal muscles and how to even yourself up.
Also explored sitting in neutral on gym ball
So exercises were
1/ Sit on ball legs facing forward, lift one leg, then lift other leg. The leg that is easiest to lift (my left) is your weaker leg, it is easier because your strongest leg is on the ground
2/ Hula hooping your hips on the gym ball (good as a warm up)
3/ Shoulders on gym ball, knees bent lift a leg
4/ Lie sideways on gym ball, add in lift upper leg
5/ Lie face down tummy on gym ball all limbs off floor
Revelation here for me was HOW to move my shoulders back and down One at a time in a circling motion Second HUGE lightbulb moment was Kim's advice to correct crookedness off the horse and when on the horse just ride
Lots of laughing and falling off!
Then moved onto Legless their Racewood dressage simulator or stimulator as some gave called in when phoning to book
You may remember the awful lesson I had at Cullinghood with the awful lacking in empathy no real understanding of biomechanics hectoring person
Well chalk and cheese
So good stuff I sit in neutral spine, no collapse right in a good posture I don't have hands that caused Chorrie's injury but my left leg is locked and there is no softness in knee or ankle
I compensate by tipping pelvis slightly
Muscle is very tight from knicker line down for about a hand's breath so Kim had me moving my leg away a couple of centimetres alternately she did a bit of hands on and it freed off Totally amazeballs
I have got here before with SFO but of course it then tightens up again over time I have a specific exercise to do to loosen it off.
Can't wait to go back
http://www.thebalancedrider.co.uk/index.html
it was a revelation and probably the best £30 I have spent on a clinic
We started off with a brief look at Harry the skeleton and a talk about common rider issues and a chat about use of the core and how ubiquitous using your core has become.
We then did exercises on gym balls that highlight sidedness and help you to use your abdominal muscles and how to even yourself up.
Also explored sitting in neutral on gym ball
So exercises were
1/ Sit on ball legs facing forward, lift one leg, then lift other leg. The leg that is easiest to lift (my left) is your weaker leg, it is easier because your strongest leg is on the ground
2/ Hula hooping your hips on the gym ball (good as a warm up)
3/ Shoulders on gym ball, knees bent lift a leg
4/ Lie sideways on gym ball, add in lift upper leg
5/ Lie face down tummy on gym ball all limbs off floor
Revelation here for me was HOW to move my shoulders back and down One at a time in a circling motion Second HUGE lightbulb moment was Kim's advice to correct crookedness off the horse and when on the horse just ride
Lots of laughing and falling off!
Then moved onto Legless their Racewood dressage simulator or stimulator as some gave called in when phoning to book
You may remember the awful lesson I had at Cullinghood with the awful lacking in empathy no real understanding of biomechanics hectoring person
Well chalk and cheese
So good stuff I sit in neutral spine, no collapse right in a good posture I don't have hands that caused Chorrie's injury but my left leg is locked and there is no softness in knee or ankle
I compensate by tipping pelvis slightly
Muscle is very tight from knicker line down for about a hand's breath so Kim had me moving my leg away a couple of centimetres alternately she did a bit of hands on and it freed off Totally amazeballs
I have got here before with SFO but of course it then tightens up again over time I have a specific exercise to do to loosen it off.
Can't wait to go back
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