Most horse owners schedule consistent training sessions for their equine friends. Horses provide us with our best physical fitness time from weekend trail hackers to elite athletes. But have you ever pondered how consistent training and exercise help your horse over the long run?
Apart from the well-known advantages for heart and muscle development, consistent exercise helps horse exerciser for sale maintain a good weight and support digestive activity. In working horses, appropriate fitness training also increases bone mass and helps lower injury risk.
Still, the advantages of exercise transcend mere physical performance and fitness level. Your horse’s mental health depends on regular exercise as well; it helps to lower stereotypic behaviors, offers cerebral stimulation, and fosters trust between horse and rider. Discover more about the advantages of exercise for horses as well as some of the best training techniques to maintain fantastic shape in your horse independent of age or skill by reading on.
What are the Advantages of Horse Exercise?
Maintaining horse health and well-being depends mostly on exercise. Regular physical activity provides a lot of advantages for equines of all ages and lifestyles, whether they are galloping across open fields or engaged in regimented training.
Regular exercise offers your horse the following top health and wellbeing benefits:
- Enhances Heart Function
Frequent exercise helps horses’ hearts stay healthy. Through strengthening the heart and circulatory system and therefore enhancing athletic performance, fitness training produces cardiovascular adaptations.
Some of these favorable improvements in cardiovascular function can be quantified using an equine heart rate monitor.
- Increases Respiratory Function
Frequent exercise also supports respiratory health in horses by increasing more effective oxygen exchange. The higher energy requirement of the muscles causes the horse to consume more oxygen when it is exercising—that is, in trotting, cantering, or galloping.
The horse responds to this higher demand by raising its tidal volume—the volume of air inhaled and exhaled with each breath—and respiratory rate—the number of breaths per minute. Taken together, this is known as minute ventilation and computes the total air expelled each minute.
- Changes in Energy Metabolism
Regular exercise raises mitochondrial density and function, hence improving energy efficiency in horses of all ages. Found in cells, the organelles known as mitochondria are vital for generating the energy required for daily activities and exercise. Generating adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the main energy currency of cells falls to them.
High-intensity exercise and endurance training both activate mitochondrial adaptation, which helps cells to more effectively process energy. Long stretches of activity mostly at a walk and trot define endurance training, which has been found to increase mitochondrial function in equine muscle, therefore improving the capacity of muscle cells to produce ATP.
High-intensity exercise, including the demanding training employed for racehorses, has also been proven to induce mitochondrial biogenesis, hence increasing the amount of mitochondria in muscle cells.
- Increases Bone Mass
Studies reveal that exercise increases bone density in horses of all ages; young horses benefit most of all. Exercise strains the horse’s bones, which react to boost their strength. Exercise helps mature horses undergo a process known as bone remodeling, whereby broken bone cells are resorbed by the body and replaced with new, healthy cells. As horses age, appropriate activity helps to preserve their strength and integrity of bones.
The movement also affects the creation and quality of the ultimate structure of bone tissue for early-life stage horses. In one study, compared to non-exercised weanlings, sprinting horses five days a week had increased bone mass.
- Enhances Joint Condition
By raising blood flow to the joints and encouraging the creation of proteoglycans, a component of connective tissue, exercise also helps horses maintain good joint health. Connective tissue offers support, stability, and flexibility, therefore forming the structural framework both inside and around joints. Found at joints at the ends of bones, cartilage is a form of connective tissue that is essential as a shock absorber and keeps bones from grinding against one another.
- Releases Stress
From a range of elements connected to their surroundings and management, including transportation, handling, stall confinement, changing social groups, or incapacity to express natural behaviors, horses go under stress. Stress can compromise your horse’s mental state and cause them to be reluctant to work or challenging to handle. Cortisol levels, the main stress hormone, heart rate, and immune cell concentrations are among the various signs researchers employ to gauge stress in horses.
Wrapping-Up!
Exercise offers several advantages from enhanced bone strength to a lower chance of digestive problems and stereotypic behaviors, regardless of your horse’s athletic prime or moving towards a pleasant retirement.
