SARAH: "I have seen riders get on and walk their horse
for half a lap around the ring before putting
them right to work."
I, first of all, love that intro sentence.
DR LYDIA GRAY: I have seen that too, yeah.
SARAH: "Is this just asking for an injury?
What's the proper way and length of time
to warm up a horse, particularly before taking a jumping lesson.
Also, my horse spends most of her day in a stall.
Does she need even more warm-up time?"
Oh, great question.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Really good questions.
So thank you.
Now, I get to talk about my favorite book.
SARAH: Yay!
DR LYDIA GRAY: This is Conditioning Sport Horses
by Dr. Hilary Clayton.
What I'm not going to do is turn the book around and show
you her picture, because she would kill me,
because it's from a long, long time ago,
and she doesn't look like that anymore.
She has a much better haircut.
SARAH: It's very period-based haircut.
DR LYDIA GRAY: It's very '80s.
But it's a fantastic book, and I'm actually
going to quote some things right from it, because it's so good.
But her first question was, is this asking for an injury?
SARAH: Yes.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yes.
Yes is the answer.
"An effective warm-up enhances performance and reduces
the risk of injury."
So it's right there in black and white.
She also says, "During the warm-up,
the temperature of the muscles increases and is beneficial,
because warm muscles not only contract more powerfully,
the fibers are more compliant or elastic,
which reduces the risk of injury due to tearing of the fibers."
So how do you warm up?
Knowing that yes, you have to warm up
longer and slower and more gentle
if your horse is stalled or older--
another reason-- or it's cold.
In cold weather, your warm-up must be longer.
And using a quarter sheet is a really good idea,
because it gets the horse warmer faster
so you can work more safely.
But the walk on long rein or a free rein
is the first step that you do.
And this could be anywhere from a few minutes,
if you pull a horse out from pasture, to one
like if yours is stalled could be 10 or even 15 minutes.
The next thing you do is an active trot or canter.
You pick the gait that your horse is most comfortable
and relaxed in.
If your horse is going to fight you in the trot,
that's not helping your warm-up, because part of it
is not only the physical benefits of the warm-up
before work but the mental benefits.
So the whole body, head to toe, mind and body
needs to be relaxed.
So warm-up at the active gait that they're
going to be most [SIGHS] at, which might
be canter for some horses.
Then this book says - the dressage rider -
you get to your suppling work.
Depending on what you're doing, you sound like a hunter/jumper,
so you're not going to have him as much as I do.
But you can leg yield.
You can shoulder-fore, shoulder-in.
You can do circles, changes of direction, serpentines.
Get the horse bending and moving, and loose and goose,
and front and back.
And then you go right to your work.
And what that means is, hers is a jumping lesson
she wants specific guidance for.
OK, the advice is, from your warm-up,
add on segments of the work that you're
going to do that day, the training or the schooling,
but in less difficult, less strenuous version.
So if she's going to jump, let's say, 2' 6",
then start by doing poles on the ground,
and then add an 18-inch cross rail.
So you gradually build up to your work.
So you don't go from the walk and the active trot and even
the suppling work right to the 2' 6" fence.
So she's a jumping lesson person.
But if you were a dressage person or you're a reiner,
you would follow the same protocol.
You would leave the warm-up.
You don't even know.
The horse doesn't know.
It's that gradual.
And you build in, you layer in the work
that you're going to be doing until you eventually
get to your peak.
And then, of course you have the warm-down.
So there's the warm-up, and the work, warm-down, cool-down,
so your four segments.
But she's absolutely right, though the goal
is to reduce injury, enhance performance.
SARAH: And I think there are--
at least in my experience, there are safer shortcuts
that you can take, and then there
are some less good options.
So I think a lot of people think like,
"Oh, if my horse needs to move around a lot before I ride,
I should just lunge him."
It's going to depend on how your horse is on the lunge line.
If he's wild, he's not--
DR LYDIA GRAY: Excellent point.
SARAH: --warming up slowly.
He's warming up very, very aggressively.
And so some of the other shortcuts--
you mentioned the quarter sheet.
There are also some therapeutic leg
wraps, because certainly the legs have
a lot of those tendons and ligaments
that we worry about being a little bit less elastic--
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
SARAH: --when you start doing your work.
And so some of those therapeutic products
that can warm up the legs with things like ceramic--
SmartPak carries a lot of those.
So if you guys ever are wanting to look
for things that can particularly help you in the winter
when you're not very eager to spend 15 minutes casually
walking around the ring, some of those can be good options.