Publication details
Physiological Aspects of Recreational Horse Riding
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The aim of this study was to monitor the level of load during recreational riding in various kinds of gaits and to find out the differences between two groups of beginners and advanced recreational riders. Eighteen horse-riders were monitored in a field research (14 women, 4 men) during three kinds of horse gaits: step, trot and canter. The average age was 26 (15 – 60 years). The horse-riders were divided into two groups (beginners and advanced horse-riders) according to their level of skills which were evaluated by two experts. The subjects were monitored during step, light trot and work canter. The average speed for step was 5.2 kph, for trot 10.2 kph and for canter 14.9 kph for both groups. The test consists of 5-minute riding in step, 5-minute rest, 5 minutes in trot, 5 minutes of rest and 5 minutes in canter. Sporttester Polar 800 with modul G3 was used for monitoring dependent variable: heart rate and independent variable horse speed. For all kind of horse gaits, higher values of HRmean for beginners were found out. We noticed the tendency of decreasing difference in HRmean between both groups with an increasing speed of the horse movement. The highest difference between groups was found out for step (29.6 %), for trot 14.2 %, for canter only 3 %. The value of HRmean for step reached 56.5 % of HRmax for advanced horse-riders, which corresponds to fast walk on the flat, and for beginners it reached 72.2 % of HRmax, which corresponds to slow run. During the fastest gait canter, the difference of both groups was insignificant; the beginners reached 86.4 % of HRmax and the advanced 84.8 %. We found out higher HR for two slower horse gaits was reached by the group of beginners in consequence of a lower level of skills and a higher level of emotion. During all the horse gaits, sufficient load for maintaining or developing condition, mainly aerobic endurance was reached. The highest difference of HR was found out between step and trot for both groups. |