I would like to share a Tip of the Week from one of my favorite podcasts, The Dressage Radio Show. This week, they featured a tip from Lisa Wilcox.
"When we get busy with competitions coming up, we kind of get in a hurry with our work, and... the need to be warming our horses up and very well cooling our horses down... I think that it takes joints quite a bit of time to build up that synovial fluid that lubricates them through walking and trotting and cantering. And so my tip of the week would be, really pay attention to your warm ups.. before you get busy, give your horses a good 10-15 minutes of walking before you get to trotting.. really appreciate the size of your horses, the function of tendons, joints and ligaments, blood flows through to give it more elasticity, and how that all works together. So really take your time warming up. I warm my horses up within the length of the neck, long and low, nice elastic bending, starting out on big circles, then slowly spiraling down. And just as important as warming up, when you're done with all your hard work, and your collection work and your movements, its just as important to take that time to stretch those muscles back out and have them cool down properly- you don't want them to cool down in a knot. These types of movements that we are asking them to do require a lot of positive tension in those muscles to carry themselves, and now we have to do like a gymnast and stretch out after all the back handsprings we've been doing. So take your time in your warm up, take your time in cooling out, and you will have a friend for life."
If you would like to hear this podcast and others from previous weeks, you can listen in at http://dressageradio.horseradionetwork.com/, or subscribe to The Dressage Radio Show on iTunes.
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