How do I start exercising ?
Read more on our blog for rider’s wanting to get in tip top shape for their competition season. Natasha Gunston from the Eventing Physiologist provides some great tips and hints. Natasha combines her love and knowledge of the human body, biomechanics and equestrian sport to provide specialist advice and training programs for rider fitness. The outcome of her work is better performance and communication between horse and rider and this works for all equestrian sport disciplines.
In this blog Natasha emphasises that strengthening work is key to improving performance and minimising the risk of injury. Developing an understanding of your body and where it is in space is critical to ensure you are balanced and “straight” on your horse. You cannot achieve straightness in your horse if the rider is also not straight. Read her great blog here and see if you can find others to “buddy” up with to improve your fitness and strength.
What’s news for June
Make a diary note for 20/21 May for the next club training day and competition.
We are getting ready for our official event on 8/9 July. The grounds are looking great and we need some help to put on the finishing touches before the competition weekend.
We will be hosting a working bee on the weekends of 24/25 June and 1/2 July. Come along and get involved - no need to RSVP just show up in your working clothes - there’s plenty to do!
We desperately need XC jump stewards for our event on Sunday 9 July. Please get in touch if you or someone you know can help out. Great snacks provided!
Get your nominations in for our event - entries close on 28 June.
Why Hemp is so great for our four legged friends
Hemp makes a cost effective and nutritious alternative for your horses. High in fibre and essential fatty acids it is also high in protein and low in sugar.
A reminder from one of our main club sponsors - Ananda Equine feed, about the versatility of hemp and the benefits it can bring for horses. If you were lucky enough to win a bag of this feed at our last competition this will be great reading. If you’d like to try some, you can purchase Ananda feed from National Farmer’s Warehouse - another great sponsor of the club.
Hemp is a member of the cannabis family, but it contains very low levels of THC, the psychoactive compound found in marijuana. In fact our feed is tested to ensure zero THC in animal feed. Instead, hemp is rich in a variety of nutrients, including protein, fibre, and essential fatty acids. These nutrients make hemp an ideal feed source for horses, providing them with the energy and nutrients they need to maintain their health and performance.
One of the primary benefits of hemp feed for horses is its high protein content. Hemp contains between 20-30% protein, which is similar to other high-quality feed sources, such as soybean meal and alfalfa. Protein is essential for the growth and repair of muscles, making it particularly important for performance horses. Additionally, hemp protein is highly digestible, meaning that horses can easily absorb and utilize the nutrients it provides.
Hemp is also an excellent source of fibre, which is important for maintaining digestive health in horses. The fiber in hemp helps to promote the growth of beneficial bacteria in the horse's gut, which can help to prevent digestive problems such as colic and diarrhea. Hemp fibre also helps to slow down the passage of food through the digestive system, allowing horses to better absorb nutrients from their feed.
Another benefit of hemp feed for horses is its high content of essential fatty acids. Hemp is particularly rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, which are essential for maintaining healthy skin, coat, and hooves. Omega-3 fatty acids are also known for their anti-inflammatory properties, which can help to reduce the risk of certain health conditions in horses, such as arthritis and allergies.
Finally, hemp is a sustainable crop that can be grown without the use of pesticides and herbicides, making it a more environmentally friendly feed source than many other options. This is particularly important for horse owners who are concerned about the impact of their animals on the environment.
In conclusion, hemp feed offers a wide range of benefits for horses, including high levels of protein, fiber, and essential fatty acids, as well as sustainable and environmentally friendly production. If you are considering using hemp as a feed source for your horses, it is important to work with a veterinarian or equine nutritionist to ensure that you are providing your animals with a balanced and nutritionally complete diet.
Sources:
Gentry, L. R., Mudge, C. L., & Venditti, N. E. (2020). Nutritional Value and Health Benefits of Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) Seeds and Sprouts for Animals and Humans. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 68(34), 9125-9135.
Knych, H. K., Stanley, S. D., McKemie, D. S., & Kass, P. H. (2019). The Pharmacokinetics of Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabinol, Cannabidiol, and Cannabinol in Horses. Journal of veterinary pharmacology and therapeutics, 42(4), 445-451.
Moore-Colyer, M. (2019). The role of nutrition in equine colic. The Veterinary Nurse, 10(7), 398-402.
Ralston, S. L. (2018). Equine clinical nutrition: feeding and care. John Wiley & Sons
The walk: don’t just sit there! - use it in your everyday work
Why it is important to include walk as part of your regular work-out for fitness and for the development of suppleness and rhythm.
For many riders, getting your horse fit means lots of trotting, cantering and (if you are an eventing rider) lots of jumping and galloping. Whilst all of this is important, many riders neglect or underestimate the importance of walking in the fitness program. Walking is important to all disciplines for both conditioning and for recovery and it is good for both muscle development and for mental development. Let’s explore this further.
Firstly, it is important to “ride” the walk, not just sit there and relax, allowing your horse to wander, jig or dawdle. Whilst this might be ok on a trail ride or general family day out, when we are talking work-outs this is not enough! Remember that in walk all faults of both horse and rider are visible (Wehorse 2019). If there are any issues with contact or rhythm then these will be obvious and much easier to concentrate on at the walk than at any other gait. Training your horse is like learning to speak another language, if there is a miscommunication then yelling at the horse (overuse of aids or riding faster) won’t help them to understand you any better. This goes for teaching new movements, get it right in walk first and then move to trot or canter.
“What does not work in walk won’t work in trot or canter” Anja Beran
Many experts suggest that the first 10 - 15 mins of every workout should be spent in walk. To warm up, the walk should be forward and active (but not hurried), the horse should be kept straight and walking with purpose but not jigging or anticipating a faster gait (it’s harder than it sounds). The horse should be allowed to start in a long frame stretched into the bridle. Think… “free walk on a long rein”… from most dressage tests. The bonus of this as part of your training, is not just that it gives the horse time to warm up its back and other muscles (particularly for older horses with a little arthritis) but it also gives you the time to practice this movement for your dressage test (it’s worth double points remember). In winter is is particularly important to allow time for all the ligaments, tendons and joints to warm up before moving to harder work.
Use this time to practice lengthening and shortening the reins without disrupting the quality of the walk and also work on shortening and then lengthening the walk to develop elasticity, steadiness and rhythm. Moving through the “gears” in walk is an important part of your horses training and will create balance. Allowing another 10 mins of walk at the end of your workout not only helps the horse cool down, but also creates calmness. It is also good to use hills for the warm up and cool down walks as this helps build muscle and balance (Coffin 2020).
A “good” walk should see the horses shoulders moving freely with the hind feet tracking up to or over the prints of the front hooves. Whilst a large over track can be a good thing, it can be hard to maintain rhythm and purity with such a large walk. Think about what your hands and seat are doing in the walk. Are you allowing the horse to stretch and reach into the bridle and to move freely through the shoulders or are you restricting or blocking the movement. Is your seat relaxed but forward, not grinding down into the horses back and not pushing him out of his rhythm? Watch that you are not getting “busy” with your legs during walk. It is important to teach your horse to maintain their forward active walk with out your constant assistance so that they remain sensitive to your aids.
So go out now and get riding and practice your walk. If done with purpose and incorporated as a regular part of your work-out, you will begin to see the benefits in both your test scores, your horse’s performance and overall suppleness and calmness.
Sources
https://www.wehorse.com/en/blog/walk-horse-gait/
Coffin, T. 2020, Conditioning the event horse at the Novice and Training level, https://useventing.com/news-media/news/conditioning-the-event-horse-at-the-novice-and-training-levels