Horse Build Muscle - Daily Exercise Will Help Your Horse Build Muscle

I guess its time to get old yeller into shape. Well this is going to be pretty basic so if you're looking to train your mare for the race tracks, this may only be able to provide some basic info and you may need to keep looking. But for those who own a horse and like riding then this article is for you.

Now if your horse has not had good exercise for a while, and now you're thinking of making riding a routine, then perhaps the first thing you want to do is build up its hind quarters. You can try to tie down the horse's head and lunge her to work her back and hind quarters but hilly work is better. Going up hill will allow the horse to build its hind quarters itself.

Another tip to increase horse muscle and also stamina, is to prolong the exercise period and creating a greater variety in it. One of the better ways to do it is to create transitions between and within gaits on the long line. A good warm up transitional routine could be to trot/walk/trot. The key being the horse should be able to transition from the two easily and also this will increase/develop your communication with your horse.

Once the horse is warmed up, you can try to mix canter/trot/canter. This will develop the horse's rhythm and synchronization. Other transitions include Working trot/lengthened trot, Working canter/lengthened canter and Canter/walk/canter. However as far as muscle building goes, it is not necessary to do every single transition. The advanced transitions are for building muscle and for increasing the horse's responsiveness. But this is no doubt a strenuous work out for the horse.

So how to trot/walk/trot? Get your horse trotting at what you would consider a good pace then feather the whip near the hock and give the command to walk. The horse will not recognize the commands immediately and so this exercise will also help build the commands you give your horse. Eventually as the horse learns the signal, it will begin working wit its hocks more under its body. When starting out, work in the 20m circle radius,.

Canter/trot/canter: you will need to keep the number of canter and trot relatively the same. Ask for a working trot and keeping the whip near the hock and ask for the horse to transit to a canter. This too should be good in a 20 meter circle radius.

But as with humans, exercise is not the only thing a horse needs to build muscle. It also requires a proper protein diet. And for those of you who have been trying to build horse muscle, you will know that there are protein foods and then energy foods. So the question is which is better for building horse muscle. The answer is that the horse needs both, especially if you're training it for a major event. Some websites and show promoters feature a list of protein and energy food for horses on their websites so it would be a good idea to check those out.

One thing to keep in mind of course is that in addition to maintaining regular visits to the |Vet, make sure the horse is taken out daily if only for a small period of time. The issues of muscle building in non racing horses arise because they haven not been ridden for a long time and hence have had no exercise. If possible just take the horse for an uphill walk. Happy riding!

• Cassandra Bagley
• 05/08/2009, 12:59 AM
• 0 Comments