Reining trainer Van Luse shares how strategically encouraging your horse’s muscle recovery can improve their performance.
When training horses for a discipline like reining, there are many methods horsemen use. Van Luse has developed a mindset focused on muscle recovery that mimics how he exercises his own body. Rather than working the same maneuvers to maximum effort every day, he alternates, which allows the horse’s muscles to recover.
Why Recovery Helps
More than 20 years ago, Luse noticed his horses did better if he worked on, for example, sliding stops on a Monday, and not again until Friday, focusing on other maneuvers in-between. This method worked especially well at horse shows that lasted several days.
“I would stop one day and work on circles and spinning the next day,” Luse says. “I won over $90,000 at the [National Reining Horse Association] Futurity that year.”
Just like with humans, you want to avoid over-exerting your horse’s muscles without time to recover, Luse says.
“I don’t bench press heavy every day for a reason because the muscle is going to be shot,” Luse says. “So then, what’s going to take over? Connective tissue and joints. I would be setting myself up for injuries.”
Luse’s strategy implemented at horse shows depends on the schedule. When possible, he avoids working the same maneuvers two days in a row. If that’s not possible, he still pays close attention to how much he’s asking of the horse.
“You have to be careful of maximum effort,” Luse says. “Horses actually take twice as long for their muscles to recover as humans.”
Several studies, including one by Lacombe et al. in the August 2004 American Journal of Veterinary Research, found that horses require 48-72 hours to completely replenish muscle glycogen after intense exercise. Humans, in contrast, can recover much more quickly due to a different makeup of muscle fiber that is more efficient at replenishing glycogen.
Maximum Effort
Keeping this in mind is important when you are going to be competing with your horse.
“I think once you run the tank dry on a horse, you’re not going to be at the horse’s maximum performance potential,” Luse says. “They’re going to be flat. It’s like if I were going to do a pushup contest tomorrow, I wouldn’t do a hundred pushups tonight. If you were going to run a 5K tomorrow morning, you wouldn’t do wind sprints in your driveway tonight.”
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ride your horse the day before you show — walking around is beneficial for blood flow — but Luse avoids maximum effort the night before a competition.
He focuses on ensuring the maneuvers are there, but not performing them at the highest intensity.
“Things you can do schooling at the show, you can tune up your lead changes and the start of your spins,” Luse says. “You can do partial large, fast circles, but if you just go and do large fast circles one after the other, you’re just emptying the tank that you’re going to need tomorrow.”
This approach has transformed Luse’s program, and it’s the way he rides his horses even today.
“I think if you have that philosophy, you will get the most out of your horse,” Luse says.
Practical Application
Designing your training routine around this concept, Luse suggests starting your Monday training after a weekend off with simple tasks.
“Getting the blood flowing, trotting, loping, suppling and loosening exercises,” Luse says.
On Tuesday, you’d warm up by incorporating loping circles, as you do most days. But your maximum effort maneuver could be sliding stops. On Wednesday, you could direct the maximum effort toward large, fast circles. Thursday, that effort could go toward spins. Friday could focus on the approach to the stop, rather than a maximum stop itself. Luse incorporates slow work, such as long-trotting and slow loping, to build the horse’s endurance.
“The suppling exercises allow those body parts to stay loose and the horse to stay tuned up to your legs and hands,” Luse says. “You can also give them a conditioning workout, so the days you do go maximum effort, they don’t run out of air.”
As you’re leading up to a show, you’ll be repetitive in teaching and refining maneuvers, but Luse advises being smart about when and how intense you repeat those moves as the show date gets closer. You can still practice every move, focusing on precision over intensity, and make sure the horse has sufficient days to rest.
“If I show next Wednesday, maybe I can do maximum effort today,” Luse says. “If it’s Friday, and I’m not showing until next Wednesday, I can do maximum effort today, back off over the weekend, then ramp it back up and find a maximum effort spin on Monday. I’d make sure I got everything precise on Tuesday, and then show my horse.”
At the show, focus on suppling, slow spins, lead departures and walking, he suggests.
“You want to get them real quiet and real soft. Those little things don’t require a lot of muscle,” Luse says.
The main thing to keep in mind is that your horse cannot give his best performance if his reserves are depleted.
“Once the tank is empty, we’re done,” Luse explains. “It’s not that the horse can’t go out and run a pattern, but it won’t run a pattern to its full potential.”
Some riders overpractice before they show out of nerves. Regularly practicing maneuvers at home will help you build trust with your horse.
“I have confidence that I know when I ask that horse to do his job, it knows how to do it because we’ve been repetitive at home, and we’ve been repetitive away from home,” Luse says. “If you’re confident about what buttons you have on your horse at home and away from home, you won’t have to empty those tanks. It’s going to be there.”
Meet the Expert
Van Luse is a National Reining Horse Association Professional Horseman with more than $200,000 in NRHA lifetime earnings. He has won the NRHA Futurity Intermediate Open and Limited Open. Luse and his wife, Cathy, are both carded judges and trainers, based in Whitesboro, Texas. Cathy is an NRHA Intermediate Open Champion and Southern Methodist University’s Equestrian team reining coach.
