HOW TO STRETCH A HORSE (10 Easy Horse Stretches)

hey guys so this week we're going to be showing you how to stretch your horse and i'm also going to show you some exercises you can do to help your horse stay limber and flexible and before we get started our question this week is have you ever had your horse massaged or adjusted by the chiropractor so i am actually a certified equine massage therapist so i work on tucker all the time i've also had him adjusted by the chiropractor i find that it's a great natural way to fix things with your horse and so if you've had any of that done with your horse just comment and let us know below also don't forget to like this video and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos so how many of you have pulled a muscle before i definitely have so by stretching your horse you're going to help decrease the risk of injury for them especially when it comes to ligaments and tendons and muscle injuries you're also going to help your horse become more flexible which is always good stretching can also help your horse build muscle and keep the muscle tone that they need so before we stretch i'm just going to make sure that i warm tucker up you never want to stretch cold muscles because that can actually lead to an injury so i'm gonna have him move around and get his muscles nice and warm and then we can start stretching so these first few stretches are usually the horse's favorite because it involves treats so our first stretch is called the nose to hip stretch and what this is going to do is i'm going to bring the horse's nose back towards their hip right here their point of hip and this is going to cause them to stretch all throughout their top line and through their neck muscles on the other side so how i'm going to do this is i'm going to take my treat and get my horse's attention and as you can see he's already being very attentive and i'm going to bring his nose back to his hip using my treat and i just want him to hold this for a few seconds so we got a bite out of it come on and so i'll have him hold there you go good boy and that way those muscles are getting nice and stretched so this is a stretch that you can do on both sides of your horse and that way you get that balance throughout the horse's body no he's got it tucker knows how to get the treats that's for sure hold it hold it hold it there good so our next stretch is called the bowing stretch and it's pretty self-explanatory but i'm going to show you guys how to do this so the bowing stretch is also another great exercise for stretching the horse's top line all the way from the rump up through the neck so for this stretch he's going to be putting his head in between his front legs and stretching like as if he were bowing so i just want to make sure my lead rope isn't going to get tangled or in his way i like to try and keep it loose so i'm not pulling on his head or it's not getting stuck in between his legs and his head so how i'm gonna do this stretch is i have my treat i'm gonna put it in between his two front legs here and when he brings his nose towards me i'm gonna bring my hand back towards his hind end and just hold it come on hold it a few seconds there we go good boy so the next stretch we're going to do is called the tail pull stretch and all i'm going to do here is pull the horse's tail back and this is going to help align the spine and stretch those muscles throughout the back all right so this is a pretty simple stretch i'm just going to walk back here and get my horse's tail and then i can just go to the end of the tail here and lean my pressure and i'll just hold that for a few seconds and then i'll release it and then i can lean again oh he's gonna come towards me hold and then release good boy one more time i'm gonna hold and then i'll release good boy so not everyone feels comfortable standing behind their horse and pulling the horse's tail i've actually seen some horses kick out when this has been done so if that's your situation there is another way you can do this exercise if you stand here right beside the horse's back leg and you can grab the tail and the way i'm going to stretch this here is i can put my elbow or my hand into the horse's leg and then i'll just use my other hand to apply that pressure and hold it and then i'll release and so by standing right here i'm number one keeping myself safer compared to if i'm staying behind the horse and if the horse is to try and kick me here if i'm close to the horse the horse isn't going to be able to get as much momentum as if i was standing behind them so that's something to be aware of and to note but anyway you can do this on both sides and i'll do it a few times on each side i'll hold it for a few seconds and then release and then i'll hold and release so you may notice tucker isn't tied to anything or no one's holding him he gets these stretches done almost every day and so he knows to just stand still but i recommend you have someone holding your horse or you have your horse tied up as you're doing this and that will just give you the security that you need and the horse won't be able to just walk away if they wanted to so our next stretch is called the nose to ground stretch and we actually do this in a lot of our videos so horses were naturally built to have their heads down grazing all day long but in today's world they usually have their heads up and they're eating out of a hay net or maybe eating a round bale and so this will cause tension in their withers it's also going to cause them their back to hollow out when they put their neck up so what this is going to help do is number one stretch the top line across as it should be but also release tension in the neck and in the withers so if you have a horse that finds this stretch hard that means they may have tension throughout their neck and their withers so this is a great way that we can relieve that tension so this exercise does require a little bit of training so all i'm going to do is i want my horse to lower their head when i apply pressure to their lead rope or their pole so that'll look something like this where i can bring his nose all the way down to the ground if your horse isn't used to pressure being applied like that they may at first jerk their head up so the way you teach your horse to lower their head like this is i'm gonna put my hand right here on my lead rope and i'll just pull down lightly towards the ground and if the horse doesn't respond i'll gen i'll start gradually increasing the pressure i'm using to pull down towards the ground and so then i'll just hold the pressure and i might have to hold it for even a minute in the beginning until the horse will just drop their nose in the slightest so i'll pull down see how he dropped his nose and i let go of the pressure so i'll pull down he drops his nose and so this is a good place to start i'm just gonna release the pressure as soon as he responds in the beginning and once he gets the concept then i'll start holding the pressure further so he has to go all the way to the ground so same thing with the pull of the horse i'm going to press down lightly if he doesn't respond i'll press down a little harder and so on and so forth until he'll soften his head and i'll release that pressure so i'll press down release the pressure and then i'll just encourage them to hold that for a minute so we can hold it for a few seconds i know you're smelling my boot and then we can release so eventually with most of the horses i work with i teach them to do this stretch and then eventually i can just leave them there and they'll just sit here like this they kind of look like a drugged horse but this feels really nice to them it relieves that tension and it's also relaxing to them if you notice when a horse gets nervous they immediately put their head up and they're looking around so if i can get my horse to soften and relax this is also a great way to help them calm down and just chill out for a minute so the next stretch we're gonna do i like to call the circus pony stretch and the reason i call it that is because if you've ever gone to the circus you've probably seen an elephant stand on a really tiny platform so that their feet are really close together so this is basically what this stretch looks like and what it's going to do is it's going to stretch number one the horse's top line a lot of these stretches are stretching the horse's top line but it's also going to really specifically stretch through the hips and the pelvis and help the pelvis turn as it should this stretch can also help build your horse's core muscles so just like humans horses have abs and they need to build that muscle so they can carry themselves more properly so i like to think of this as a little bit more of an advanced stretch just because there's more training to it but what i'm going to do is i'm going to give him a cue here to step his back legs forward and bring his feet under him there come on keep coming good and i'm just trying to get those hind feet as close to the front feet as i can alright there we go look how lifted his back is his back is lifted his hind end is under him and so right now it's like he's doing a crunch and he's holding it so let him hold this for a few seconds and then he can step out of it good boy all right so i'll just put him there for a minute so as you can see it does look like he's standing on a pedestal or something but this is a really complicated thing to teach your horse and we actually have an entire video dedicated to that otherwise this video would be way too long and you probably get bored i'll put a link in the description to that video that video is actually about teaching your horse to lay down this is one of the steps i use to teach a horse to do this so if you want to get your horse to do this stretch you can go ahead and go check out that video and i'll walk you through how to get them to do this so our next stretch is called the tummy tuck stretch what we're going to do here is we're going to encourage the horse to lift their belly and when they do this they're going to engage their oblique muscles and their abdominal muscles which are through here and this is also going to help them stretch their back and so this is a great overall stretch and workout for your horse all right so the way you do this is i'm going to take my hand here find my horse's belly button so that's my one spot and then i go back a few more inches towards their hind and more and i'm going to drag my thumb up their belly and see how he lifts his back so i can hold this for a few seconds and then i'll release and so this is something you can do a few times on each side i try and do it five times on each side and lift good boy and so these are kind of like crunches in a way and so you don't want to do too much of them otherwise your horse can get sore so i just want to do enough so that he's building that muscle and also stretching through his back so let me go on the other side and you guys can see how he's lifting his back a little bit better all right so if you guys look now you can see how his back is kind of just dipped a little bit so when i lift it drag my thumbs see how it becomes straight and he straightens it up so he's holding those muscles right now i'm going to let him hold it for a few seconds and then i'll release good boy so let me walk you guys through what i'm doing with my hands to get him to stretch so i'm bringing my hand under his belly and finding his belly button which is about right here it's a little past his girth area and then i'm taking my other hand and putting it a little bit back more towards his hind end i'm going to take my thumb and i'm going to drag my finger up his side like this and i am going to be applying pressure probably like a medium pressure so i'm going to drag up and he'll lift and i drag to about right here and i'm just going to hold it and then on release so this next exercise is called the butt tuck stretch and it's very much like the tummy tuck and that we're just going to get the horse to engage their core muscles it's going to act like a crunch and that's going to stretch the horse this time more through their hip and their back and it's going to encourage them to lift their back and strengthen those back muscles that they need so you probably noticed that i have tucker just attached to the fence over here this is just because this exercise what we're going to be doing is kind of pushing on the horse's rear and this is going to kind of encourage the horse to step and move forward out of the pressure and so i'm just gonna put him on the fence so he can't walk out of the pressure so this is another one of those exercises where if you're not confident standing behind the horse then this may not be one to do with them for now all right so i'm gonna stand behind my horse here i'm gonna find my point of hip which is right here and then my horse's tail and i'm gonna put my thumb in between the middle of them right here and i'm going to draw a line applying pressure towards the horse's tail and then down their leg all right so let me draw my line and see he's lifting his butt and his back and i'll just let him hold that for a few seconds and then i'll release all right so hip tail thumbs in the middle draw my line down and that was a big lift so i'll let him hold that and this is a great exercise i do with tucker he tends to have problems with his pelvis where that his pelvis may get tilted the wrong way so this exercise is great for correcting the pelvis and also just straightening this alignment through here so it's gonna strengthen these muscles and it's going to strengthen these muscles down below that help support the horse's back when they do that so let's talk about stretching the horse's legs our next stretch is called the hamstring and the hawk stretch and we're going to focus on these areas of the hind legs so this is a great stretch to do to help your horse decrease the risk of injury with their hind legs but also to build these muscles back here so let's think about if your horse is trotting over a trot pole they have to engage these muscles to hold their back leg up so this stretch is going to help build these muscles right here so i like to think of this stretch as the equivalent to trying to touch your toes as a human so what this is going to stretch is your horse's hamstring which if you stick your hand in the inside of your horse's back leg here's your hamstring and then back here is the hock so it's going to stretch all through here and help loosen up these tendons and ligaments and muscles so let me pick up his leg and what i'm going to do is i'm going to bring the leg forward until i have kind of a resistance and i'm going to bring it towards the ground so it's about an inch off the ground and i'm just going to hold it here i'm sure he's feeling the burn right now i remember trying to touch my toes and it was torture and i hated having to hold that stretch and then i'll let him put his foot down so real quick let's talk about leg stretches you want to be careful doing leg stretches because you can actually injure the horse so if he were to start resisting me and trying to pull his leg back and i'm just holding it here and fighting him he can easily pull his muscles so if he starts to fight me i want to kind of release the pressure a little bit and go back to an area that he's comfortable so like that i'll let him go back here and then i'll just gradually bring it back and hold and he's fighting so i'll go back hold it there good boy all right so i'm just going to do his other leg here hold it an inch above the ground about i'll let him feel the burn a little bit i know i'm feeling the burn to stand here like this and then i'll put it back good boy so our next stretch is called the stifle stretch and this is also going to be stretch working with the horse's back legs so your horse's stifle is right here on the horse's leg so what we're going to do if you've ever seen a farrier work on the horse we're going to take the leg and pull it backwards this is going to stretch the horse all through their abdominal muscles and through their stifle so let me get the leg here i'm just going to bring it back as far as he'll let me and i'm just going to hold it here for a few seconds all right and so i'm just holding his leg back and he's fighting me a little bit so i'll move back to a place he's comfortable good boy all right so i'm going to do the other hind leg real quick i'm going to stretch it back and so when i do this stretch i also a lot of people like to hold the hoof down here but i want to kind of hold it up more and encourage that stretch good boy so our next stretch is called the girth stretch pretty self-explanatory we're going to be bringing the front leg forward to encourage stretching through the girth area so this area goes very overlooked you know it's being squeezed by a strap of leather so eventually it's going to build up some tension so hopefully by stretching the front leg and creating a stretch through here we can help relieve some of that tension so to me i like to do two parts to this stretch so what i'll do let me pick up my foot is i'll first take the leg and just stretch it up like this and i'll hold it for a few seconds and then i'll release because he wants to fight me come on a little stretch hold it and release so you can even visibly see that stretch through there and so once i've done this then i'll go and have him stretch out his leg for me so i can just hold his pastor in here and hold this for a few seconds what a good boy there you go so stretching your horse is something that you can do on a daily basis i recommend stretching your horse after you've ridden that way their muscles are warm and they can be stretched when you stretch cold muscles you risk injury so that's just something to be aware of if you want to stretch your horse before your ride you want to make sure that you lunge them or get them moving beforehand so then you can safely stretch them another thing to note is if your horse has any pre-existing injuries like a ligament tear or a tendon tear stretching could actually make those worse so you want to make sure you consult a veterinarian and that you're aware of this issue before you go ahead and try and stretch so if you got anything useful out of this video please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel for more weekly horse videos now tucker here is ready to go take a nap [Music] you

Channel: Equine Helper

Views: 29,721

Rating: 4.9846349 out of 5

Keywords: How to Stretch a Horse

Id: aJf6LlBhOaM

Length: 19min 6sec (1146 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 19 2020