I'm Judith, and this is the Starline Equine Bodywork podcast. This is a podcast about all of the things that I've learned and continue to learn in my career with horses. For the better part of a decade, I've been a full time equine bodywork practitioner, educator, and author. My obsession how horses really work and how to get the most from our relationship with them in training and in sport. My passion helping horse owners and body workers and aspiring body workers get going.
Unpack the latest science, research and experiences behind what we do with horses to support their potential and optimize their performance. We all know that consistency is the key to being a top athlete when you are a human athlete, but it's not actually that different for our horses. So here are some tips to help your horse become, a more consistent athlete. So first of all, we want to look at stress management.
And this is everything from the way the horse is trained to its life and management in the stable. We want to make sure that, of course it's on a good nutrition program.
It's not left for long periods of time without food, all of these obvious things, but we want to make sure things like it likes its neighbor in the barn, in the stall next door, or that it's not feeling like it's not part of a social group when it's on turnout, that it feels very comfortable in the pecking order and not like it has to fight for resources or it's life and constantly being stressed.
It just needs, you know, or if it's more comfortable on individual turn out, that's something we need to know as well. And that sort of stable management and the management of its day to day life will help manage stresses that will help it become a more focused and happy athlete. When it goes to work, it'll make it happy to do its workout. It's not just another stressful thing that it has to cross off in its day.
Now, of course, the next thing is, when we get to that training part of the day, we want to make sure that we are training our horses properly. We need to provide varied workouts. We need to be conscious of both tissue specific and skill specific sports specific type of skills, and make sure that we are developing constantly and seeking progression, not inviting regression in their bodies, and asking questions of the body that are fair for that horse to answer at that phase in its development.
So we want to make sure then that we have a nice balance between cardiovascular fitness, between range of motion, all of these things strength. And then the horse can enjoy these workouts. Now, one of the most important things that we do with our horses in our program is we have quite strict routines. We do the same things all the time with the animals, so they know what's going to be expected of them next. They know exactly what time treat time is.
They know exactly when feed time falls and workout time as much as possible. And by creating these routines for the horses, it not only helps partially manage their stress because they know what the next expectation will be, but it allows them to feel like they're getting the same positive results every single time. Right. It's very good to gear them up when they know they're going into competition.
Of course, if they're used to doing a certain thing right before they work out or right after, they know that that expectation is over, that they have completed their day. If that's when they get their carrot at the end of the workout, they know they're like, okay, I can relax now. And so these little routines, these little cues that you can give your horse are things that help them thrive and help make their lives feel more consistent and more enjoyable. As athletes.