Winter Exercise Series: The benefits of using poles

Part 2 in this Winter Exercise Series, is the benefits of using poles with our horses. 

Polework is quite often suggested for horses exercise programmes, but do you really know the reasons why, and what we can achieve by adding poles to our horses plan?

I often recommend walk poles, and especially in the winter this can be a helpful type of exercise...it's low impact so reduced injury risk, but we can actually help the internal joint fluid and structures by increasing the movement through the joints, so super helpful when our horses are likely not having as much movement during the winter months due to stabling etc, to add a little bit of walk pole work! 

Walk poles are even do-able in the arena if you can't do much else! So if you can't ride, or can't trot due to the arena surface (frozen, wet, etc), or you are short on time, or it's about to go dark (!), you can still do walk poles for 10-15 minutes! And reap the benefits below! 

BENEFITS OF USING POLES WITH YOUR HORSE...: 

• Improve joint flexion
• Improve internal joint health
• Improve muscular strength
• Improved co-ordination
• Improved proprioception
• Core strength
• Postural improvement

And it doesn't have to be complicated!! The image accompanying this blog is me and Azuro doing the 'labyrinth' exercise, which is great for flexibility and symmetry, but you can literally just use a fan of 3 poles, or a straight line of 3 poles, it's more about doing something constructive rather than not doing anything! 

Poles can be useful for horses lacking focus, as they need to look where they are going (!), useful for senior horses as it gives them some low impact work to do that's super beneficial for their joints, useful to add into lunge sessions for a bit more strengthening work for a fitter horse, useful in rehabilitation processes, useful in postural improvement work as the horse has to lower his neck, so again lots of positive reasons to add poles into your horses schedule a couple of times per week! 

***If you want to learn more about the specifics of pole exercises, which exercises to use, and the up to date research on polework, it's included in my 'Strength & Straightness Online Training Programme'...CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS... Strength & Straightness Programme 

AND as always, if you have any questions, do contact me through the CONTACT page here on the site.