Level Up Equine Therapy

RIDER FITNESS CHALLENGE Our horses shouldn’t be the only ones we take care of in health and fitness, we are apart of that equation too! Ever get your butt kicked by a kid or youth? That’s because they are small, flexible and fearless. Prioritize your own health and fitness and I promise you will feel it in the saddle and so will your horse! How long can you hold two point position? You should feel it in your calf and quads! Keep your core tight and “zip up” your ribcage to keep your spine aligned. I love doing this everyday when I’m warming up my horse. It challenges me as the rider to be fit, balanced and strong.

As I start to progress in sessions on clients horses I love to incorporate my tools to get a very concentrated treatment to focus on a specific area. I can note how the treatment progresses between readings and my motion of my roller bar. The microcurrent is being sent right through my roller bar using a equine specific gel and into the tissue.

Athletes receive physical therapy. They have several forms of physical therapy. There is chiropractic, massage, stretching, mobility, stabilization and there is modalities to increase healing and recovery. Our horses are athletes. They too require these things. The importance of building a team to keep your horses feeling good so you can get the best performance and longevity from your equine athletes! Failing to PREPARE will result in REPAIR. Booking for November now and we have exciting things coming so be sure to be on the look out! 🤩 *also winter is coming and if you know me, I despise the cold.. I’ll be like this till spring in my heated jacket and insulated pants! 🤪

Muscles are smart. They hold onto the memory of pain. Horses particularly can hold onto the emotional memory of pain, meaning even if you have released the pain from their muscle, their brain will remember the pain and can easily continue the compensation pattern and create tension again. This is why it can take several sessions to release, retrain and promote proper function. The electro-myopulse is a completely different instrument on its own as the waveform is sloped and communicates directly to the soft and connective tissues using low amperage microcurrent. The current is sent into the body from the instrument and picked up along the horses natural current and sent to the areas needing cellular dysfunction addressed. When we correct the cellular function we are aiding the body to heal and function at optimal levels. In return this encourages faster recovery, effective relief and long lasting results.

You’ve seen it.. you’ve heard about it.. but you still don’t really understand it or how it works.. Kinesiology tape! Quick little video of a mare experiencing the K tape benefits with a voiceover (sound on to listen in). Kinesiology tape is an adhesive flexible tape that we can apply the all areas of the body. It’s has many benefits ⬇️ 🔅 Decompression 🔅 Increases proprioception (awareness of where the body is) 🔅 Immediately sends signals to the brain to tell it “hey, we are helping address this area” 🔅 Increases blood flow 🔅 Aids in muscle and skeletal support 🔅 Tool used to correct muscle imbalance, nerve damage, hyperactivity, posture, joint stabilization, relieve inflammation and encourage better effective biomechanics. The flexibility of the tape is what allows us to address practically any issue. Think of it as a 24/7 massage. As the tape is applied to your horse, they become hyperaware that this tape is there, which can alter the way they move using a muscle or joint (proprioception). The tape can also aid in helping us encourage the muscles to break the pain cycle, as muscle holds onto the memory of pain even if you release a problem during a bodywork session, often the horse will remember that it hurt before so it must still hurt, the tape can provide continued support past the sessions time and help encourage the body to forget the pain was there and to correct compensation from happening. The tape also can correct asymmetrical patterns in the body by constantly reminding it “hey, don’t forget to walk this way or use this muscle”. Kinesiology tape is extremely beneficial following bodywork sessions and can work as a stand alone. Any questions feel free to message me ☺️

❗️EXERCISE CHALLENGE ❗️ Lunging your horse doesn’t need to be boring and matter of fact it shouldn’t! You can in fact condition and train optimally from the ground, just have to think outside the box! Next time you pop your horse in the lunge, try challenging them to do spiral circles. Start big and slow, trotting typically is where I start. Then when they are confident and strong enough you can do this loping. This exercise has many benefits in the saddle and you can do many variations of it on the ground too! This mainly loads and deloads muscles, as the circles get smaller and more challenging your horse has to use more muscles to get slower and really focus on balance and rhythm. Putting small but necessary stress and strain on their body to complete the maneuvers then as you allow them to travel back out to a larger circle it deloads those muscles a little and gives them a easier job for the time being. Jetta, the mare here, is a barrel horse so challenging her to small circles and conditioning her muscles to this type of training is a necessity to her discipline. This is what I would also call conditioning for soundness, failing to condition our horses for the job they have to do is failing to condition for soundness in their discipline. Football players don’t only run straight lines and throw the ball from a stand still. Train your athletes for the job!

Do not underestimate the power of walking‼️ I’m currently 28 weeks pregnant with my 3rd baby. (Yes I just had a baby! Yes I’m pregnant again! Lol!) so anything more than walking in the saddle has become pretty uncomfortable for quite some time now. So while it’s easy to get stuck in the mindset “I don’t need to ride because it’s pointless” it’s important to remember walking is a very effective exercise! I started off my ride with 20 minutes of walking around the fields. On the fields my horse has to navigate logs, creek, ditches, hills and varies terrains. You try walking on the even floor of your house then go walk in a field. There is a major difference! This all increases stamina, strength, endurance and proprioception. A horse on a trail has to be hyper aware of where they place their feet. I ended my ride with 10 minutes in the softness of my arena. I worked on following her nose, bending, counter arc, spins, backing, figure 8’s, side passing, two tracking, spiral circles and squares. All at the walk! This is beneficial to her tuning, timing, proper execution and form, proprioception, muscle loaded and del-loading ,muscle memory and conditioning. I ride when I feel up to it, I try to get on 1-2 times a week, but if I cannot ride whether it’s physical or time wise (because I am out here during my 10 month olds nap) then that’s when I rotate in lunging and different variations of that. If you’re like me and don’t have an indoor to enjoy in the winter, it can be difficult to navigate the weather. But in the end, your horse will thank you for their “easy” but effective work out!

I snuck out while the baby was napping to massage my personal horse Freya. Don’t mind the outfit, it’s warm and comfy. 🤪 Freya is a coming 5 year old mare I got end of September last year that was completely untouched. She’s come a long way in being handled and looking forward to progressing her training this spring. Today was her first massage ever, and as you can see when I found a stress point she clearly told me with her body language (moving, flinging her head) that she was uncomfortable. As I started to get into releasing the restriction she began to relax and quiet down and started to release (licking, chewing and yawning) even though she was questioning and looking at me as to what was happening. The body holds onto emotional pain, which means even after the pain is gone it takes a while for the body to let go of the memory of the pain being there. This mare is an aggressive pawer when anxiety hits so her shoulders on both sides, the left more than the right (her dominant paw side) holds a lot of tension and trauma. When a horse is experiencing and holding onto pain they tell us the only way they know how to, in her case move away and fling her head. It’s quite incredible watching the proof of listening with your hands, watching with your eyes and absorbing what they are trying to tell you then you provide a source of relief and it’s rewarding to watch them release. This is the beauty of bodywork. 💖

My personal testimony! This is my red mare, Lexi. She has had a mystery lameness since fall of 2019. It would go away with injections, but then come right back after about 6-8 weeks. I felt defeated and at the time, she was my second string horse so I didn’t have all the money to dump into diagnostics and we came to the conclusion it was either soft tissue or something else, so I threw her out to the pasture while I ran my other horse. I’ve periodically would check in on her, sometimes it was so subtle you couldn’t see it, but could feel it under saddle. Other times it was very obvious.. the mare is accident prone, she has had laminitis once, cut a chunk out of her front right leg, and took a really bad trip may of 2020 during a run and has been completely out of the game since then. Fast forward to when I got home from my certification and started treating her with the acuscope immediately! She’s had periodic treatments when I could fit them in, I believe 6-7 total, hasn’t been touched with it in 2 weeks now. The weather has been decent to where my roundpen was dry and safe to evaluate and much to my surprise, she’s pretty dang sound! I’m thrilled! I plan to put her into a 3 treatment/ week program while I bring her back from pasture condition VERY slowly in April. Follow along to see how we make out! First clip in this was June/July of 2020 after about 8 weeks off after her bad trip during a run in May where she was really off. Second clip is end of September 2021, third clip was today!