Equine sports massage/muscle therapy

• Helps enhance performance
• Prevents injuries
• Increased range of movement
• Relaxes stressed muscles
• Helps prevent muscle strain
• Increased rate of healing
• Relaxes muscle spasms
• Stimulates blood flow/Cardiovascular system (Circulation)
• Stimulates the Lymphatic system (releases lactic acid & excess lymphatic fluid from muscle tissues)
• Increases muscle elasticity
• Increases flexibility and joint movement

Massage can help with healing and shorten the recovery period by preventing joint stiffness and maintaining suppleness and tone.  Especially beneficial to horses on box rest. 

Does your horse do any of the following..........

• Put his ears back, nip, kick when you approach with the saddle (especially when girthing up)
• Hollow/cold backed when mounted
• Stumble alot, drag his toes, not track up properly
• Poke his nose out, resist a soft contact and does not feel rounded
• Shows lateral stiffness
• Reluctance to canter on one lead leg
• Head shaking/tilting
• Holding tail to one side
• Shows lack of poll flexion and bend
• Prefers one rein

Your horse may be showing signs of soreness somewhere in his body. 

Massage keeps muscles healthy, maintains strength and supleness and prevents atrophy (wasting)

After exertion, massage minimises stiffness and speeds recovery to tissue that is damaged as a result of physical stress and fatigue. 

Stretches helps to keep/restore joints and muscles to full working capacity and helps to re-educate the muscle spindles previously safe limits,  promoting flexion and range of movement. 

When the muscle gets tired, over worked and start's to develop stress/trigger points, compensatory muscle area's will arise within the body.  Muscle's start to not function properly, becoming tight and possibly granulated and will start to loose level's of flexion. By massaging and working on the muscle's themselves, stress point's and the myofascia of the muscle's you can help them become less inhibited. 

After the massage you can apply stretching application's, this complement's the massage very effectively by stretching out the muscle spindles (muscle spindle's recognise the safe limit of the muscle and will send a message back to the brain ordering relaxation of the muscle when it reaches it's safe limit !)  So it's easy to see how if the horse is left, the locomotion can become inhibited and range of flexion restricted.