Inclined treadmill short-duration exercise for walk regularity of recreation horses

Abstract

Knowledge on horse symmetry and regularity is essential for every training/rehabilitation programs. Present studies compare biomechanical parameters for different treadmill positions, but not the effect of such exercise. The aim of the presented work was to study recreation horse movement parameters before and immediately after inclined short-duration exercise in walk. The hypothesis was that inclined short-duration exercise gave greater stride regularity and symmetry. Walk biomechanical parameters of 12 Warmblood recreation horses were monitored as temporal data using video analysis [50 frames/sec] before and after 5-minute inclined work on a treadmill at 3% incline. Control group (6 horses) consisted from earlier evaluated horses that performed on the other day the same walk exercise without incline. Analysis of variance was conducted for temporal and spatial parameters of walk (237 measurements for incline and 109 for control) using the Mixed SAS procedure. For both data sets the statistical model with the random effect of horse, fixed effects of exercise and successive stride was applied. Control group showed not differences before/after short walk exercise. The influence of inclined exercise was statistically significant for the lateral limbs sequence, regularity and standard deviation of strides regularity (p<0.05). The lateral limbs sequence and regularity increased after inclined exercise (3-5%). The standard deviation of regularity was almost 2-fold lower. Inclined treadmill exercise has a positive effect on walk regularity.