Equine Lungeing & the Performance of your Horse

1. Equine Lungeing & The Performance of Your Horse www.wormers.co.uk

2. Naturally, this will be more important in some areas than in others. Of all the muscles in a horse’s body, among the least well-developed are often those underneath the saddle, and behind the withers. It’s these muscles which provide the ‘lift’ so beloved by equestrians. They’re also responsible for bearing the saddle and the rider. However well your saddle might fit your horse, and however svelte a jockey you might be, your weight (and that of your saddle) will impede bloodflow to these muscles while you’re riding, which in turn will inhibit development. If you’re looking to improve the physical performance of a horse, then it’s worth considering what lessons we might learn from training in humans. Human athletes, whatever their chosen discipline, achieve their physical prowess with a wide variety of different exercises. Though Mo Farah might spend a lot of his time running from place to place, he’ll also occasionally alternate with resistance exercises. A professional footballer that’s in the midst of a match will move in such a way that’s optimal for moving efficiently around the pitch – but during training, they’ll raise their knees up to their chests while running, stand on one leg while holding the other behind them, and run back and forth repeatedly between sets of cones. Effective Lungeing Lungeing is an exercise which is performed when you’re leading the horse around using a lunge rope. A Lungeing routine is a great way to acclimatise a hot horse before you ride it – and it’s also vital in building good habits. The back should be hollow, and the head held high. If you don’t have the correct posture, then the horse will just be compounding old habits rather than building beneficial new ones – and the longer these old habits persist, the more ingrained they’ll become. Discourage your horse from leaning forward, and ensure that its back is arched. This will help to develop your horse’s neglected core muscles, which will allow it to carry a rider more effectively, and achieve a superior balance. The reasons behind this is simple – in order to get all of the muscle groups into a condition that they might be useful in a real situation, it’s important to really exert them using exercises designed to hyper-stress them. This is especially important for rarely-used, though crucial, balancing muscles. If your quadriceps are gigantic and enormously strong, but the remainder of the muscles in the legs are puny, then injury is sure to result sooner or later. To borrow another human analogy, there are few real situations where you’ll need to do a hundred press-ups in a row, but being able to do it will surely improve many (directly and indirectly) related aspects of your life. While you’re Lungeing your horse from ground level, you’ll be able to observe its movements. Make sure that you take note of any motions that aren’t conducive to what you’re trying to achieve, and then correct them. Use your Lungeing sessions as an opportunity to reinforce simple commands – as this will make future sessions a great deal easier and more effective. The horse as an athlete So how do we apply this logic to horses? The answer lies in training them to perform movements to which they aren’t accustomed. The arena for this sort of performance is a Lungeing session, which a skilled equestrian will use to build up each individual muscle in a horse’s body, while keeping the whole in an effective balance. www.wormers.co.uk

3. In order to do Lungeing properly, you’ll need to protect both yourself and the horse you’ll be training. Give your horse boots and bandages around the lower legs, and be sure that you’re wearing gloves, a hat, and boots. In order to get the best from the session, begin with a gradual warm-up, and end with a gradual cool- down. This will allow the horse to push itself further during the actual Lungeing, and allow for better recovery afterwards. Symmetry A horse that’s undergone a regime of lunges will have a much smaller difference in stride length between the two reins. This is down to the improved balance that’s required during a strict Lungeing session. If your horse is going to be competing in dressage, then this is especially important. In Conclusion Horses are intelligent creatures, and they’ll benefit from mental stimulation. Be sure to mix up your Lungeing routine frequently, in order to keep your horse guessing. Test the pace and be a ruthless judge – if your horse is dawdling, then let it know. In order to transform your horse from a merely effective animal into a real competitor, a good Lungeing routine is essential. This means that learning to properly control each session and get the best from it is arguably as important for the horse as anything you’ll do in the saddle. Allocate your mental resources accordingly in each Lungeing session and re-enforcing good behaviours. The overall result should be a horse that’s more supple, more balanced, and easier to control and command. One crucial (and often neglected) component of a good Lungeing session is the need to improve your own voice aids. Keep everything you say simple, clear and consistent. If your horse is confused, then they won’t be recognising patterns – and they therefore won’t be learning. For safety’s sake, you’ll want to be sure that you’re able to stop your horse and keep it under control at a moment’s notice – a sharp ‘no’ should be a crucial part of your vocabulary. What Does Lungeing Do? If you’re doing it properly, rather than just leading your horse around a paddock for 20 minutes of pointless, then you’ll notice significant improvements in your horse’s performance, in a number of key respects. Stride Length When the muscles in a horse’s back are properly developed, they’ll be able to lift their legs higher more easily. As a direct consequence, they’ll be able to move their legs further with each stride, and thereby achieve a faster pace. www.wormers.co.uk

4. Beeston Animal Health Ltd., Whitchurch Road, Beeston Castle, Tarporley, Cheshire, CW6 9NJ www.wormers.co.uk