Quad X Equine Strength and Conditioning
Certified through The Animal Rehabilitation and Health Academy. This Academy provides high quality advanced professional development courses for veterinary nurses, canine therapists, equine therapists and coaches. These courses are focused around physiotherapy, rehabilitation and physical health for horses and dogs.
The Quad X Equine Strength and Conditioning method provides correct strengthening to horses with targeted exercises to reduce injury and increase performance.
Now certified in Equine Strength and Conditioning, Kristi will be offering these services as part of her practice.
The Strength and Conditioning exercises are relatively easy to carry out. Many people are now using them in rehabilitation or to help with balanced muscle growth, better proprioception and strength for their horses. But what is missing is a method which helps to make decisions about what exercises to use and how to progress them in a particular way for the individual, horse, and circumstance.
It is very important that the horse is evaluated along the way to identify their individual weakness and inaccuracies in their movement patterns.
When it comes to training movement, whether in daily schooling or after injury, there is no, “one size fits all” set of exercises. They need to be carried out under expert supervision so that they improve your horse and not worsen the condition. The Quad X method comprises a multitude of frameworks and tests so that your coach can guide your horse through his own strength progression journey.
Kristi is now a professional coach, and therapist who has trained in the Quad X method to provide tailored strength and conditioning programs for your horses.
What will they do?
Your Quad X Strength and Conditioning Coach will work with you to identify where your horse has areas of weakness or/and movement imbalances and guide you through a tailored program which will help him to develop in the correct way. This will not only improve his ability to carry you, his way of movement and performance but will also reduce the chance of injury. Using a Quad X Strength and Conditioning Coach will help you to develop a strong, flexible and happy horse.
By training, balance, stability and flexibility, your horse is able to build on that foundation to increase strength and endurance, with correct posture, physiology and kinematics.
Increasing power and strength from a correct mobility aspect, enhances performance in any Equine discipline.
Quad X Case Study: Blue
For this Case Study we chose Blue. A 22 year old grade mare that has been used at the Cathedral home in Laramie, Wy for troubled kids. My Company, Triggerpoint LLC did multiple therapy session previously on this horse so we knew her condition of strength, behavior and issues. She had been assessed by me, Kristi Coulthard, for body work purposes. Each Visit took between one and half, to two hours. With each session and each visit we saw improvement as long as there was consistency from both therapist (me) and owner/barn manager. Here is Blue on her first day of assessment and pictures of different angles. Blue’s back hallows. Barn manger made the statement “Blue’s back looks as if you could pour water on her back and it would hold it”.
Blue suffered from severe anxiety that caused her to paw constantly when tied. She was buddy sour, couldn’t stand square, rode with no collection, high head, pushy, and wouldn’t back up with hard hand let alone soft encouragement. Due to poor hoof care, Blue had atrophied glutes and hypertrophy hamstrings, extremely weak back, and favored the back left due to a possible stifle issue in the right stifle. This was not addressed yet, but compensation was occurring. We thought Blue would really benefit from this program.
Before:
After:
Strengthening and conditioning these joints to encourage certain tendencies allows larger movement and heavier load on the joint. Thus, making movement natural when reaching higher goals without injury
Correct proprioception, activates motor control and aids the body in correct placement of foot to ground response for correct joint placement without compensation. If we can target the brain and its responses through the 300 billion receptors in the horse’s body, we can train the body to perform correctly. Therefore, providing the horse with a solid foundation, we can increase intensity during conditioning and not be fearful of injury.
From strong isometric contraction to increasing eccentric muscle contraction to then build faster concentric flexion contraction, we create a strength and conditioning program that enables your horse to exceed any level of discipline.
