Horse racing, though sounds ancient, is still a prominent sport nowadays with some people claiming it as their favourite. There are some who spend money to invest for a good horse and support their maintenance. Also, some people gamble a substantial amount of money to a potential equine athlete as their wager during a tournament. In this say, horse racing is not a sport that one must undervalue.
If you are one of those enthusiasts who find horse racing interesting and plan of getting a horse of your own to be put in a race someday, better keep your heads up and read the following tips to prepare your racehorse!
Physical Conditioning
Exercising and workout routines are not only for people, but it is also applied to equine athletes. Physical habits for horses ensure optimal muscular development as well as overall body tone enhancement. If these two are achieved after the training, speed, endurance and horses’ athletic potential can be expected. Thus, claiming for a competitive racehorse.
Some physical variations that can be observed from the horses when they undergo physical training are an active respiratory system, sturdy and quality ligaments and tendons, unique muscular anatomy, stable thermoregulation, solid bones, and well-conditioned cardiovascular system. If physical training to horses is conducted successfully, you can expect a higher strength and endurance, and superior skill in jumping and reigning from them.
Proper diet, moderate food intake, and adequate protein ingestion are means to maintain good health and good condition of your racehorses. Before the race, you have to make sure that your horse is not overweight and not underweight as well. Your horse must be filled with the right nutrients to sustain it with enough energy. Its nutrients must include adequate fat, starch, fiber, and protein.
Moreover, thanks to science and technology, there are already feeds manufactured by commercial industries that are designed specifically for the equine athletes’ needs. These formulated provisions give alternative energy sources that meet the required nutrients of a racehorse. Through this, you no longer have to exhaust yourself and your resources in looking at and providing various foods to your horses. Besides, commercial feeds for racehorses are already filled with the right nutrients for them.
Tracking Progress Record
Keeping tab of your horse’s condition is a vital duty that you must regularly do. You should record even little changes from its body and write down some of its nominal progress to track its condition, whether it is ready for a race or not.
A chart of its progress is a visual report of your horse’s improvement and health status. This chart does not need to be very comprehensive. You can write down a few things like your horse’s heartbeat after a long run, its temperature after a physical workout, its breathing rate after a few exercises, and other indications of a good or mediocre condition. You can check your horse with an interval of minutes or hours to days most especially if the race is nearly approaching.
Anaerobic Conditioning
After establishing routinary exercises and minimal workouts, your racehorse can already upgrade to anaerobic exercise where intensified training programs are carefully introduced along with short workout duration. Anaerobic exercises are a bit heavier than the preliminary and routinary training because the muscles are forced to work harder and faster. However, this exercise solely aims in conditioning the horse for an actual race.
Anaerobic conditioning is also called a high-powered workout because horses are already doing heavy physical activities like racing. By doing this, at first, you can accelerate the speed in a short distance but adds a little range from time to time. Another way of doing anaerobic exercise is maximizing and setting full distance and gradually accelerate its speed. Either way works as long as your racehorse is conditioned to heftier physical activities.
Takeaway
After following the above guidelines on preparing your horse, assess and evaluate it if it’s ready for an actual race. If you think that your stallion can already give an excellent performance and can run for the trophy, then it’s time for you to register it to real tournaments like the pegasus world cup that’s held regularly.
If you’ve trained and prepared your horse right, there’s nothing that should worry you. Instead, all you need to do is sit back in the bleacher, enjoy the loud festivity around, and wait for your trophy and cash- thanks to your well-conditioned equine athlete.
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