muscles

🌟🌟Unpopular opinion🌟🌟  So . . . What’s my beef 🍖 🐄 with pole work clinics?

I love pole work, I’m a massive fan of it, but as I know I have mentioned to many of my clients before, I am just not a fan of this whole pole clinic craze that every man and his 🐕‍🦺 seems to be running at the moment without, it seems, little knowledge of the biomechanics involved.

Ground poles & raised poles are great as part of a training, conditioning or rehabilitation programme to:

• Train proprioception, coordination, skill, balance and dynamic stability 

• Improve/restore joint range of motion

• Develop core strength & activate or strengthen back muscles

• Strengthen propulsive muscles

• Provide variety within training

Stepping over a pole is a complex motor skill requiring neuromotor control and proprioceptive stimuli. Visual perception of the position and size of the obstacle is relayed to the neuromotor control centre to make decisions which command the peripheral nervous system to make an appropriate muscular response.

However, not every pole work exercise is suitable for every horse’s individual needs and if performed incorrectly can set them back in their training or rehab. There aren’t really any generic one size fits all pole work exercises. If you set any array of poles out and put a horse in front of it they will virtually always find a way to get to the other side. Do we conclude it was an appropriate exercise just because the horse managed to make it to the other side without falling in a heap? NO!

When I watch horses navigate pole exercises I set, I am constantly evaluating and re-evaluating on each pass the strategies they use to get to the other side, as for the pole exercise to be of benefit they must be using functionally correct movement patterns otherwise we may as well not bother.

What am I looking for: 

> Maintaining a soft top line

> Suppleness 

> Engaged core

> Lift in the thoracic sling

> Limb flexion in the correct part of the swing phase

> Straightness

Horses that find the exercise too difficult will use other strategies to navigate the pole set:

> Raising their head and neck, putting the spine into extension, losing good dynamic posture

> Unable to maintain balance so looses straightness

> Rushing

> Flexing the hindlimb further in retraction

> Performing a passage like motion

> Circumducting the hind limb

In both ground work and ridden work (when appropriate), I watch my clients horses over various pole exercises to evaluate what strategies the horse uses. I can then change the difficulty level up or down or change the whole exercise if needed.  Doing pole work badly is worse than not doing it at all because you will be further ingraining a poor movement pattern, you can be doing more harm than good. 

I also like to coach ground work so then I can teach owners what to look for in a quality movement & poor movement so they know when a pole exercise, lateral exercise, rehabilitation exercise, etc. is good/bad for their horse or when their horse is becoming fatigued with the exercise. One horses weakness is another horses strength area, the way one horse passed over the poles is different to the next one so in a clinic type situation (where there are usually about 4 horses but I have seen up to 6 in some!) the exercise, distances, arrangements would need to be altered every 2 minutes for each individuals movement pattern. This just isn’t feasible so most coaches will just leave them all to do the same exercise, for some it might be perfect but for others in the group far from it, which can be of real detriment😔 A pole clinic can seem like a cheaper way to get tuition, to get your horse out and about, to experience work in a group situation and to have social time with your friends, but not if you are doing them all the time and taking some of the exercises home to repeat when you have no idea if they are the right exercises for your individual horse. There is no way all 6 horses in one group have the exact same needs when it comes to any exercise but especially pole work, so at least a few horses within the group are not doing the right exercises their horse needs. If you then take some of these inappropriate exercises home with you and repeat them on a regular basis this further enhances their weaknesses, poor posture, poor movement which ultimately leads to injury.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen some really bad examples of inappropriate pole exercises recently, ultimately to the detriment of the horse. One example was being called a passage pole clinic where the coach was setting the poles on purpose to make the horse struggle so they would have to get this passage like movement. This is fine if you have a horse that is at the correct training level to be doing passage, but not one of the participants (horse or rider) was at this level. If this exercise was repeated too often in a horse that has not been progressively conditioned to this level of work (& I mean over years not weeks), it will cause injury very quickly 😭

If you want any more information or to discuss further, feel free to contact me.

How do I build muscle on my horse?

This is a question that I get asked a lot especially regarding a certain area. For example, lack of back muscle, hind end, gluteal region, top line, neck etc. Where ever your horse might be lacking, there is one simple answer, exercise & correct nutrition.

There is no magical topline gaining feed or supplement that is going to make your horse gain muscle in the specific area it needs to, however saying that he horse cannot build correct muscle without good general nutrition.  The horse needs to get more energy from the food than it is using per day putting them into a positive energy balance and specifically it needs good quality protein.  What denotes protein quality is the essential amino acid lysine but you cannot simply increase the amount or protein or lysine in the diet to increase the amount of muscle, it doesn’t work like that.  They cannot absorb or use more than their recommended daily amount, feeding too much can cause other problems putting the kidneys under pressure to filter it out into urine.  You will find creatine in lots of horse muscle building supplements which although they have been shown to work for human muscle building, have absolutely no effect on horses as they cannot absorb it. Overall for muscle & general health it is recommended to replace energy from starches & sugars with energy from oils, a balanced vitamin & mineral supplement especially vitamin E, lysine and sufficient salt & electrolytes if in heavy work.

When it comes to the exercise, a variety of correct and appropriate exercise gradually increasing in intensity, duration & frequency over an appropriate amount of time (that varies depending on the individual horse their signalment; age, fitness level, ailments, etc.) is the one thing that in conjunction with correct nutrition can build muscle. We do not increase intensity, duration & frequency at the same time we only ever do one at a time and take a great amount of care not to over train as eventually this will have a negative effect on both muscle building and overall fitness. Once they are at a good general level of health and fitness we start to use more targeted exercises to help with the areas of concern in particular.

What increases the intensity for them? Some things such as terrain, speed, duration, environment, type of exercise, surface all have an effect on the intensity so we can control & use that to help our training. However, other things naturally increase the intensity for the horse that we don’t have as much control over but we need to take into account when thinking about building muscle such as their overall health, weight and condition score, their conformation, the riders weight, weather etc.

Muscle training & training horses in general is a very fine line between loading the muscles hard enough to not only increase the number of muscle fibres (hyperplasia) but also to increase the size of the muscle fibres too (hypertrophy), while at the same time avoiding damage to bone, joints, tendons and ligaments. This why it is important to have regular assessments with someone like me that is a strength and conditioning coach, rider coach and equine physical therapist to ensure that the training programs’ intensity is correct for this horse at the present time.  If there is failure to gain muscle despite targeted training we must consider that this could be due to musculoskeletal disorders or pain, again why regular reassessments with your equine physical therapist are required to monitor this. Just because your horse is not “lame” this does not mean that there cannot be an underlying musculoskeletal condition such as back, neck or SIJ pathology, pain from issues like saddle fit, bridle fit, bitting problems or pain from other disorders within the body such as gastric ulcers. For more information or to discuss your horses training plan, please feel free to contact me.