Help from the foot up
Therapeutic floors are fast becoming staple pieces of kit in professional yards — whether for rehabilitation or to boost performance. They might come with a hefty price tag, but plenty of places now offer the use of their floors to the public for hire, so it might not be as out of reach as you think.
Good vibrations
If you’ve been to a gym recently, you may have noticed scores of people wobbling around on top of vibrating footplates. It looks like fun, but the premise behind it is pretty sensible. It’s thought that the vibrations of the footplate stimulate your muscles and boost circulation, improving the effectiveness of your workout. But there’s more. NASA also uses vibration therapy to help prevent bone loss and boost muscle tone in astronauts. With all this in mind, it goes to show there could be something in it for our horses. “We used a vibrating floor for my dressage horse’s rehabilitation after he
suffered a serious suspensory injury,” explains horse owner Jayne Gingell, whose husband is also a list 4 dressage judge. “Vets advised that he’d need lots of rehab if he was ever to return to competition, so we used the combi-floor to help.” The idea behind vibrating rehab plates, such as VitaFloor and Activo-Med’s combifloor, is that every vibration of the plate creates a small instability that your horse’s muscles have to compensate for. His muscles will contract and, with regular use, strengthen. It can be ideal if your horse is on box rest and doesn’t have the opportunity to wander around. Vibration therapy has also been shown to improve blood circulation, which accelerates healing. “During my horse’s rehab, he’d be on the plate to eat his morning haylage,” says Jayne. “It really worked for him. He’s now back to his best and we’re planning to compete this year. “Nowadays, we still use the plate to warm up and cool down his joints, tendons, ligaments and muscles when he works.”
Wave power
Another therapeutic plate making waves in the rehab industry is TheraPlate. Unlike conventional plates that vibrate, TheraPlate utilises a unique patent called Vortex Wave design that uses rotating motors. While the plate itself doesn’t move, the motion of the motors beneath the surface stimulates blood flow and muscle contraction in your horse while he stands on top, helping to ease swelling, stiffness and improve muscle tone. “It’s hard to imagine how it works, but if you stand on the plate you can feel it moving up through your body,” says Sara Raw, who runs Raw Equine in Spalding and owns a TheraPlate. “I’ve had mine for three months and it’s made a huge difference to my horse Evie’s way of going. “She has one foot bigger than the other and it affects the way she moves. As a result, she ends up very tight in her neck. “Even after her first time on the TheraPlate, the difference was amazing. Evie goes on it for 10 minutes every other day and she’s much happier to be ridden in a snaffle and bend.”