Last year I saw a video with Carl Hester’s groom gently stretching a horse before the ride. (Maybe it was someone else’s groom?) Does anyone else remember this? Anyone have a link?
No link (sorry), but an Equine Masseuse once showed me the stretch that pulls a foreleg out along with the “carrot stretch” to bring the neck around.
The leg stretch has the added benefit of making sure no fold of skin is beneath the girth.
Bringing the neck back to the girthline streches the shoulder too.
2 Likes
The only stretches I do religiously before my rides are the belly lifts/butt scratches (achieve a similar thing which is to lift the back). Sometimes side bending and between leg carrot stretches, but for the most part I like to reserve stretches for after the workout when the muscles are warm.
5 Likes
This. Warm muscles should be stretched, not cold ones. Most of the carrot stretch type things people do aren’t true stretches, so probably won’t hurt, but true stretching should never be done cold.
ETA- I meant to quote grey with chrome here but I can’t seem to get the quote function to work.
3 Likes
ditto the above. we only stretch after a ride, but will do the exercises like belly lifts and butt tucks before (when the muscles aren’t fatigued). but with regards to stretching, we do the foreleg forward, then each hind leg forward, across, then up. the difference between the hind leg stretches is they are for different muscle groups (or so i’m told by my body worker!). sometimes will do carrot stretches but i’m not great at being able to keep her head vertical when she comes out to the side and around.
1 Like
Is “light stretching” before exercise that risky? I was told by a sports medicine vet to do before and after. I personally (when I used to go to the gym pre-Covid) stretched before and after. I definitely see my horse able to stretch more deeply afterwards vs before… but I NEVER push stretching, I let her dictate how “deep” we go.
2 Likes
How can stretching hurt, if we do not force the stretch?
If you watch human athletes, they stretch before effort.
We as riders are advised to stretch to limber up before mounting.
I will continue doing what my body worker, massage therapist, and vet/chiro advise. Easy gently stretches both before and after work.
1 Like
In humans the research and recommendations have actually moved away from using passive stretching before athletic performance (doesn’t mean you won’t still see it - after all, old habits & ideas die hard. But watch closely and it’s not all hanging out working on the splits pre-game). Dynamic stretching & warm-ups are very much recommended though. So to take an example as a rider, if I wanted to limber up before riding (which I agree I should, whether I always do or not!) I might choose say, some walking lunges down the aisle, calf raises, some side bends and torso rotations, then arm and head circles. If I want to do some stretches that specifically target areas that will help me with riding, such as calf stretches on a stair or dead pigeon for my hips, I will save those passive, long-hold stretches for when I’m not about to mount up, and preferably when my muscles are warm. It’s not necessarily a safety thing there, but a matter of what will more effectively accomplish the goal at hand.
With horses the distinction between passive and dynamic stretching is generally pretty easy. If we have to physically take the horse’s body part into a position and hold it there, it’s passive. If the horse moves into a position by their own muscular action, it’s dynamic. So baited ie “carrot” stretches are dynamic, picking up and holding legs to different areas is passive.
There is always more risk to performing a passive stretch with a horse than a dynamic one simply because a horse can’t really give verbal feedback on how it’s working out for them. And because we choose the position they are holding there is some risk of choosing one less than ideal (for example, pulling the leg a little outward when we think we’re going straight forward). Finally, you’re often dealing with holding up the large, heavy leg of a large prey animal. Sometimes the leg gets pulled away less than smoothly. All these things remain a risk in the warm horse of course, but warm tissues are more likely to be resilient if there are baubles.
I know, I will get a lot of people who still swear by their pre-ride passive stretches for their horse In this case, I really think it boils down to the fact that the stretches probably ARE great for their horse. But they might be even better if moved to after a ride, while pre-ride routines focused more on activations and dynamic movement.
3 Likes
Horse or human, there’s no harm in some pre-work stretching, but it can’t be the same as what you could do after the muscles are good and warm.
What you can do with a horse who’d been in his stall for the previous X hours, is less than what you could do with the horse who’s been walking around a big pasture for the last 23 hours.
Pre-work stretching is more working through a range of motion, than real stretching. Asking the horse to relax his shoulder, or hip, and let us take the front leg forward to the extent of its basic ROM, gives feedback into the muscles. Supporting that leg bent, with our inside hand at the knee and outside hand on the fetlock and asking to move the leg in a small circle, gives us feedback. Pulling the hind leg forward, out to the side, across the midline, and behind him, is “stretching” but only to the basic limit of the state of the muscle.
Teaching him to relax the leg we’re working on is great training for a whole lot of reasons.
After the ride, a lot more can be asked for - real stretching of the muscles
1 Like
I completely agree, even if it sounds like I was saying something different above… in an attempt to simplify I lost some clarity. I mentioned leg holds as usually passive, but what you describe of taking a leg through range of motion would be dynamic.
These exercises are great (as are long-hold passive stretches in the right circumstance) but it can actually be hard to teach people to do it really effectively… just like any of the many things with horses that require “feel”.
Get yourself a copy of Beating Muscle Injuries in Horses.
I agree, words can’t replace walking someone through how it feels. And this gets exponentially harder, IMHO and IME, when people don’t do these things themselves. Not going through any sort of mobility training, HIIT training, strength training, with a purpose with a trainer who will push you, so you feel sore and tired and want to stop and learning to know when you NEED to stop vs WANTING to stop… If you’ve never experienced any of that, it’s just so much harder to “hear” the horse and his “wants” vs his “needs”
SUCH a good book!!
