Having worked with racehorses in a riding, rehabilitation and physiotherapy capacity, experience has shown that by maintaining muscle elasticity, regularly identifying and treating uneven muscle development, tensions and spasms and ensuring joints can flex and extend to their maximum capacity has had significantly positive results in performance.
Physiotherapy can compliment your training regime by helping your horses to improve in areas such as abnormal gait, stride length, strength and balance, as well as reduce the risk of injury. It is also common for racehorses to adopt gaits such as hanging, leading leg preferences and shortened strides which can ultimately affect performance. Physiotherapy can identify the triggers for such compensations and work with you to restore and exceed potential.
In addition, I am hoping to begin attending race meets to offer physiotherapy post racing or should a horse encounter a fall or trauma during a race. Treating acute trauma, whether it is a muscular tear, strain or bruising, can significantly improve healing and reduce secondary issues that can affect future training and performance.
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PHYSIO FOR THE COMPETITION HORSE
My experience has proven that by maintaining muscle elasticity, regularly identifying and treating muscle tensions and ensuring joints can flex and extend to their maximum capacity can ultimately increase stride length, improve strength and reduce the risk of injury, therefore helping your animal to exceed its natural ability and perform to a higher level.
Intensive training not only builds muscle strength and tone, but also creates tension within the muscles as they are held static during movement and transitions. Your physiotherapist can identify these tensions and work to reduce and relax them, thus enabling your horse work beyond it's normal range of movement.
Jumping demands sudden propulsion and spurts of energy with the inside or leading hind leg taking the strain of the full body weight while the horse turns and jumps. Although not always obvious, a horse that drops in performance or begins to refuse jumps may well be suffering a strain or pull of the hind limb muscles and as such the activity of jumping or approach become painful.
Your physiotherapist can identify the area of discomfort or pain and work to release the problem.
Should your horse fall or land awkwardly, further physiotherapy treatment can be performed to reduce bruising, inflammation or muscular tears. Please see the section on treatments to identify the appropriate therapy for your horses injury or condition.
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PHYSIO FOR THE INJURED HORSE
Should injury occur such as sore shins, tendon, ligament strains, fractures, flesh wounds or muscular lameness, physiotherapy can compliment veterinary treatment by aiding structural repair and reducing muscle wastage.
Our aim is to enable the horse to return to work with a significantly reduced risk of re-injury. In addition, a full rehabilitation programme can be written for each individual helping to re-build their strength and return to full work. Please see the treatments section for further information.
PHYSIO FOR THE ELDERLY HORSE
Like humans, animals also slow down with age and experience the same aches and pains as we do.
Physiotherapy can aid and maintain joint and muscle function, health, and improve circulation, which together improves overall mobility and helps to reduce the pain and discomfort of ageing limbs. In addition, early intervention can prolong the animals' career and reduce the occurrence of certain conditions as well as improve quality of life.