Stretches (and muscle building) for your horse

Hi everyone,

I have a huge interest in helping my horse be as supple and relaxed and comfortable and correct as possible. And other than correct riding and ground work, I've taken a huge interest in stretches in and out of the saddle!

I thought I would share some exercises, and encourage you to share some as well! I found this article while looking for "Belly lifts." You should always be careful by doing any kind of stretch after you have let your horse warm up.

For the ground:

http://www.bevet.com/files/backlegstretchespdf.pdf

Under saddle:

http://www.artofriding.com/articles/longandlow.html


Also, I encourage you guys to check out this thread: HorseHelp: Building up your horses back, In-hand and Under Saddle

What other articles and/or stretches have helped your horse? Or that you recommend?

Get posting

Friendly bump!

Great articles! Thanks for sharing.....havent had the chance to do any under saddle stretches, due to my horse not being under saddle yet, lol, but the ground ones I do daily, and absolutely love them!

I can't wait for you to get on him, it'll feel so good knowing you helped him get there! :)

I want to do some of these with Squiggy. It isn't much of a challenge keeping her in shape, but building some muscle is harder. I like my horses buff.

Thanks for sharing. I do quite a few of these exercises with my girl T, but will now start to do them with Walka too. My vet was very impressed with how flexible T was at her exam last spring. She was more flexible then Walka (who is almost 1/2 her age) so it would behoove me to do these with him too.

Definitely, and you're welcome.

If anyone wants to contribute, feel free!

Good thread :) I do the carrot stretchs already and the belly lift, will try the leg ones

Thanks for sharing, I have never tried the ventral neck stretch so will be seeing how that goes. Just want to add, when you stretch the front legs forward parallel, so horses get it and kind of lean back a bit but not in avoidance, guess they are helping out and really trying to stretch out.

Sky great resources. Thanks for sharing.

Here's a video that I found in another thread. It is long but it deals a lot with stretching and achieving suppleness under saddle and on the longe line. Well worth the time, IMO.