How to Protect Your Horse’s Legs After a Ride

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When we go to ride our horses, we often focus on how we will challenge and connect with them psychologically, especially if we’re working on moving through the Levels. To accomplish anything on the ground or in the saddle, however, they need to engage their whole bodies. Even short rides with your horse can be a workout, and there are things you can do to help ensure that your horse recovers properly.

Protect Your Horse’s Best Asset – His Legs

Horses’ legs are super strong, but they do a lot! To prevent lameness and help your horse feel his best, there are a few simple things you can do before and after every ride to make sure his legs stay in good condition.

Warm-Up and Cool Down

Do you remember your gym teacher having you do warmups before your weekly mile-long run? It’s for good reason! Letting your muscles warm up will allow them to be more elastic and dynamic during your workout, which can not only feel better, but also prevent injury. Horses are the same way. Start out by warming up in the arena by walking a couple of laps in each direction to get his legs (and body) ready for the workout to come.

In the same manner as the warmup, letting your horse cool down after a ride will help the heat and lactic acid leave the muscles, which will reduce overall soreness not just in his legs, but his whole body. (Source)

Liniment Rub Down or Cold Hosing

To take your horse's muscle recovery to the next level, you can either hose down his legs with cold water or use a sponge to rub a water/liniment mixture onto all four of his legs, starting with the lower leg and working your way up to the shoulders and hindquarters. Be sure to only use all-natural liniments (such as Draw it Out or Sore No More), as other liniments may blister underneath the Therapeutic Smart QuickWraps.

Use Regenerative Leg Protection

To help your horse’s legs recover and feel great for the next ride, we recommend the Benefab® Therapeutic Smart QuickWraps. Their contoured fabric is infused with far-infrared emitting minerals, keeping leg muscles, tendons, and ligaments warm and relaxed after a ride. Magnets cushioned into the boots target major tendons, ligaments, and joints in the hind and front legs. Using proven techniques from Chinese medicine, these magnets draw your horse’s blood to acupuncture points in your horse’s legs to stimulate recovery.

These Smart QuickWraps are extremely breathable, so even horses in hotter climates will experience the same benefits without any added heat to their legs. QuickWraps harmonize bodily functions safely and naturally, accelerating recovery time, promoting blood circulation, increasing oxygen flow, and ultimately reducing pain and stiffness.

If you’re not treating an injury or a horse with chronic leg stiffness, you can try out Benefab’s® VersiWraps for daily exercise recovery.

Check out the full Benefab Therapeutic product line HERE (this link will automatically provide you with FREE Shipping!)

Ongoing Leg Care

You can further help your horse’s legs by routinely picking his hooves before and after every ride. Removing rocks and other debris can help prevent soreness and abscesses from forming in the hoof.

Horses can also greatly benefit from stretching on a regular basis to keep their muscles limber and to release excess lactic acid. And if your horse is standing in a stall or run throughout the day, letting him out to stretch his legs in a turnout pen or arena can keep his legs from getting stocked up, not to mention do wonders for his mental health.

As with any health routine, an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure. Even adding a couple of these habits into your weekly routine can work wonders in your horse’s long-term health.

About Benefab®

Using fabrics with minerals that emit far-infrared wavelengths that are proven to increase circulation and reduce inflammation, Benefab (aka Beneficial Fabrics) creates wearable items for horses, dogs, and people to feel their best. Benefab’s core mission is to “help heal and relieve pain and soreness with increased mobility and reduced pain in three weeks, guaranteed.”

What Pat says: “I was blown away when I was introduced to this beneficial fabric that had 30 lead-free minerals in it. It increased my circulation, reduced my inflammation, and gave me back the mobility that I had lost in my wrist. I’ve been using it on myself, my family, and my horses for the last two years, and I’ve told everybody I can about what a fabulous, natural product Benefab is for horses, humans, and dogs.”

Check out the full Benefab Therapeutic product line HERE (this link will automatically provide you with FREE Shipping!)