Swimming in place of galloping - Pros & Cons?

B

BEUnderTheInfluence

Well-Known Member
Joined
24 September 2010
Messages
155
Location
Lincolnshire
Visit site
I see more and more event riders replacing gallop sessions with occasionally swimming horses.

In my veiw the pros would be virtually no hammer on the horses joints and less chance of injury, it works all of their body and doesn't take long to raise their heart rate and work their muscles and cardio vascular system.

However....My question would be (having been looking at some of Paul Tapner's horses swimming) Like this horse for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJv5LPAI4o4&feature=channel_video_title

We teach horses from a young age not to fear water and to trust in the consistency of its depth, ie they can jump into, out of and through, its always going to be shallow and not a problem for them. Would asking a horse to swim cause mistrust of water? They might start scrambling into it slowly expecting to land neck high? I heard someone mention just this happened to one of Mary King's horses who after having been swam in place of galloping, became very wary of water and starting jumping in oddly...

Your thoughts please, a caramel aero bubble bar for anyone that comes up with some interesting experiences and thoughts! :D
 
Positives:
Very good cv workout for the horse without the associated wear and tear on joints as not weight bearing.

Negatives:
Can encourage horses not to 'engage landing gear' when jumping into water.
Can build muscle on the underside of the neck due to the horses holding their heads up.

Have never taken the horses swimming in a pool but did use to swim them at the beach occasionally when I lived on the south coast. My ginger horse (who used to be water phobic) loved it. Also have the 'salt water therapy' effect if in the sea :)
 
My horse swam regularly last year. He is certainly intelligent enough to realise the water he swam in and water at an event are two unconnected things! He never had a water problem before swimming and has certainly not had any since. The people that ran the place did warn me it could happen on rare occasions and to take him somewhere before his next event so we went to a ford nearby on a hack and he had no worries crossing it or being suspicious it was deep.
 
I took one of mine swimming when the ground was too hard for him to do fast work on. I think he realised it was 2 different situations- jumping in when competing and swimming. A physio said you should be careful with how often you swim them though as having their heads so high is unnatural and can cause other problems with things being out. Mine only swam once a week tops and physio was happy with this as it was saving the work on his old injury so it was worth it for him. I wouldn't swim a horse more often than that though
 
The biggest problem we found (mostly racehorses where I worked about 20 years ago) was that too much swimming changes the horses' action, and if you overdo it, it alters the way they gallop. However, the occasional swim wouldn't matter too much from that pov. Muscling on the underside of the neck is another thing that won't happen unless you overdo the swimming.

Personally having worked with a pool I prefer water treadmills.
 
Like with people, if you swim loads for fitness then go out and run although you're cardiovascularly fit you haven't conditioned your joints and tendons for weight bearing exertion so I personally would only do it as well as not instead of.
 
Not directly related to swimming, but my dressage horse has been a regular visitor to Liphook Equine Hospital to see lameness consultant vet.

(Hock / stifle / PSD / SI problems / foot balance problems!)

Vet says building up to galloping him twice a month is an ESSENTIAL part of his rehab and keeping him sound.

Which means those at my yard who have repeatedly told me galloping helped break him will have to eat their words!
 
Aqua treadmilling is great, really seen a massive difference in my horse, looked into swimming but the bennefits of the tradmill outweighed the swimming with the funny head/neck/back position
 
I have taken a couple of mine swimming (though one just couldn't :eek: had to be pulled out), but I would certainly not replace fast work with swimming for all the above mentioned reasons.
 
Swimming is beneficial for horses, we swam most of the racehorses every day in Australia, especially those that were fat and needed more work. I have a problem rom a biomechanical point of view with water treadmills (well any treadmills TBH) and their use with horses. Part of the natural spring mechanism of the horse's gait means that they use little energy to propell their legs forward, mainly it is used to push it back. Therefore, what I struggle to see the benefit of, in a treadmill situation the machine is doing most of the work to pull the leg back and then the natural spring action brings is forward, hence less work for the horse. From a fittening point of view I don't really see the sense in it all. From a human point of view I know it is easier to a run a mile on a treadmill than on the road, and I don't have spring action legs like a horse. So for fitness and conditioning surely it is better to do the work the horse is being prepared for. Swimming does offer resistance all round so IMHO I would prefer that to a treadmill of any kind. If it is for theraputic reasons I have had a lot of experience with the standing spas and they are very good.
 
I think we've covered the pros and cons - useful for fittening but shouldn't replace galloping, and can cause specific problems to watch out for/counteract.

I will say I have a personal bias against. The very first 3DE I ever did, the horse in front of me on xc broke down severely, collapsed and had to be destroyed on course. (Within my view as I was being held. :( ) It came out afterwards that he wouldn't stay sound if they put enough galloping into him to get him fit, so they'd done a lot of his "fast work" swimming. Maybe now, in this day and age, with easy access to ultrasounds and the like, they would have been able to monitor his condition more closely but there was a lot of discussion at the time to the effect that he either shouldn't have being doing the job if he couldn't stand the prep, or, if he had been doing the prep, early signs of trouble would have shown up and saved the unhappy ending.

Especially in sport horses, galloping is not just about the actual miles, it's about educating the horse how to gallop effectively and feeling what's happening underneath you. These aspects contribute towards increasing longevity which, to be blunt, is perhaps not such a consideration with race horses. (Now all the racing people are going to jump on me but you have to admit being an event horse is a much more complex skill and few racehorses are still winning into their teens.) Perhaps for an older horse, already well prepared but just needing to lessen the effects of impact, it's just the ticket. And it's clearly great rehab, and even an adjunctive fittening activity, but I don't think it's the best substitute for galloping.
 
Totally agree with TS about horses having to learn how to gallop. I interval train team chase horses and started one of them as a four year old... he is now 9 and it's been fascinating to feel how much stronger his canter/gallop has become. Each season he would come out feeing more powerful and you could feel him developing over the years. If swimming had been used for fast work then he would not have learned how to use himself effectively.
 
like everything I think its something to have in the toolbox and use as appropriate. Have a horse recovering from a tendon, he can now canter and do flat work but swimming once a week over the last month (5 months into recovery with scans showing significant healing) the swimming has been a great tool to start building back muscle and drop fat from all that time just walking or standing in a box. I too worried about the impact on water XC as he literally dived in the first time swimming and went straight under so will take that advice and get him out walking/cantering into shallow water for schooling
 
I used to train for triathlons and swimming fitness is very different from running fitness. your lung and breathing action is very different. I wouldn't see it as a replacement for gallop work but rather a different kind of cross training
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top