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Thursday, 26 July, 2018
Seaver's CEEFIT sensor and CEEFIT Pulse & ECG heart rate belt calculate the horse's heart rate during training. Thanks to our scientifically tested electrodes, Seaver's connected equipment gives you real-time, medically accurate analysis of your horse's heart rate. This is made possible by the Seaver application available on Smart Watch. You can also obtain reports on your horse's heart rate after each session.
At rest, ahealthy adult horse has a average heart rate of 30-45 beats per minute. It can be as high as 70 in a foal. When working, the heart rate increases with the gait and speed and can reach up to 240 beats per minute at the fastest gallop1. However, it should fall rapidly with recovery.
These data are to be modulated according to the horse and the discipline. For example, an endurance horse will naturally have a lower heart rate at rest. Several parameters can also influence the heart rate Other factors may affect the heart rate: excitement, stress, terrain, fatigue, the onset of lameness or a systemic disease.
Monitoring your horse's heart rate during each training session will give you an overview of his overall health.
The heart rate is thethe ultimate indicator of effort and intensity. Knowing the precise heart rate of your horse gives you a better idea of the intensity of the exercise required and thus allows you to work on the horse's physical condition.
By consulting the home screen of your Seaver application (available for free right here), you will be able to know your horse's heart rate at a glance, i.e. the number of beats per minute at a given moment.
After the session, you will have access to a detailed graph of the evolution of the heart rate You will be able to see the evolution of your heart rate during your last session. Different zones have been distinguished with colours to help you check that you are training your horse correctly without damaging its health.
This data will allow you to check that you are training your horse sufficiently without overtraining him. Training too intensely, too close to the horse's limit, can lead to severe pathologies which will be associated with a decrease in performance. decrease in performance. Conversely, training at too low an intensity will not improve the horse's health but may be important for recovery. A good balance is the key to success.
In addition to tracking your horse's beats per minute in the heart rate tab, Seaver gives you an easier-to-analyze version. These are the effort zones. Seaver differentiates between moments when your horse has simply burned calories (in blue and green), the moments of work when he has improved his cardio (in yellow and orange) and moments when he worked at too high intensity (in red).
The your horse's work leads to an increase in energy expenditure compared to a resting situation, primarily as a result of the movement of muscles, but also of the increased activity of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.
Knowing the horse's heart rate at all times allows us to deduce the energy expended and therefore give you the calories burned in real time.
According to studies carried out by INRA2 , a healthy adult horse moving at trotting at a speed of 18 km/h expends an average of 160 kcal/min. When galloping at a speed of 21 km/h, its energy expenditure is 210 kcal/min. These values are of course subject to change depending on your horse (age, breed, sex) and the environment.
On the home screen, you can track the number of calories number of calories burned by your horse in real timeIn other words, the number of kilo-calories consumed since the start of your session. In the more detailed tab of the application, you'll find the total number of calories burned as a result of your training, your horse's average energy expenditure in kcal/min, and its evolution over time. You'll also find a percentage. It's the application that calculates the intensity of effort during your session, based on a complete analysis of your data.
By measuring the number of calories burned by your horse over time, Seaver gives you the opportunity to adjust its diet if necessary.
During high-intensity physical activity such as a long gallop, training is said to be anaerobic. This means that the oxygen required exceeds what can be supplied by the blood. This forces the body to use glycogen as its main source of fuel. This glycogen is then transformed into lactic acid. Lactic acid is partly responsible for muscle soreness in horses, as it is in humans.
The accumulation of lactic acid (>4mmo/L) causes muscle pain and should be avoided. To improve the elimination of lactic acid from the body, it is necessary to push your horse to its limits The heart rate during this time can be increased. The heart rate during this time can rise to 200 bpm.
Each training session should consist of between 2 to 8 intense intervalsdepending on your riding condition. There should be sufficient recovery time between each interval. The heart rate should then drop to 100 bpm. It's advisable to repeat this split training onlyonce every 4 or 5 days, and slowly increase the number of intervals per workout.
During low-intensity physical activity, such as walking, trotting or cantering, the energy system aerobic providesoxygen to the muscles, giving them the energy to sustain the effort. Working the aerobic energy system improves overall cardiovascular fitness, which is very important, especially at the beginning of the competition season. This work consists of long intervals at low intensity (e.g. 4 intervals of 5 minutes exercise at a speed of 450m per minute).
We work with animals. So it's essential to take into account the fact that they may not be at their best every day. What's more, as you know, horses are prey in the wild. This means they are often preoccupied with the environment around them.
In particular, this can have repercussions when you take your horse to a show, or to an unfamiliar location. impact on his performance.
Seaver understands this, which is why we've created a stress analysis feature on our application.
Beyond your horse's environment, many other factors many other factors can stress your horse (which will have repercussions on his heart rate). For example, when you ask him to do a new exercise. This can be stressful for your horse because he doesn't understand what you're asking him to do. If your horse is emotional, then a stress peak can be detected by the CEEFIT Pulse & ECG.
The analysis of your horse's stress during a session is represented by a score out of 100. The more stressed your horse is, the higher the score. The aim is to reduce this score as much as possible over the sessions by "routinizing" your horse. In a perfect world, your horse's stress score would be 0 in all conditions, and on all exercises. The aim is to get as close as possible to this perfect score.
There's no secret to analyzing your workouts: you need to combine your sensations with concrete data. concrete data. That's why we've created CEEFIT + CEEFIT Pulse & ECG, to help you better understand your horse's effort zones.
In order to achieve your progress objectives without jeopardizing your horse's health, you must therefore control his heart rate. This is now possible thanks to the heart rate monitor, which will give you your horse's beats per minute in real time. This will help you to alternate between effort and recovery intervals.
It is possible, by observing the heartbeat of his horse, to see his progress.
Perform the same exercise 4 weeks apart with exactly the same characteristics (speed, duration, recovery time, number of sets and repetitions, etc.), and compare your horse's heart rate for the exercise. If your horse's heart rate during exercise one month later has dropped by around ten bpm, then you can consider that the training carried out over the 4 weeks has been effective, as your horse is more economical for the same exercise, and has therefore progressed.
Let's take the concrete example of an amateur show jumping rider. When leaving the track after a run, the rider decides to look at his horse's heart rate after 2 min of walking. It is 110 bpm. 3 weeks later, on another competition but on a course of the same difficulty, the rider notes that his horse's heart rate after 2 minutes of walking is 100 bpm. The rider can therefore consider that his horse has improved 1) his physical condition, and 2) his cardiac recovery capacity.
Please note that temperature and environment (stress...) can disrupt/influence heart rate responses. For more information on how heat can affect heart rate and performance in horses, read our article on the subject.
We've talked a lot about analyzing a horse's heart rate during exercise. But what about cardio at rest ?
There's a different way of examining a horse's heart when it's at rest. This is the the electrocardiogram. It's usually performed by vets, but with the CEEFIT Pulse & ECG heart rate belt, you can perform it yourself on your horse.
Martine Antys, a horse veterinary surgeon qualified in 1999, gives her opinion on the usefulness of heart belts and electrocardiograms.
After graduation I went straight to work in a clinic in Germany. After a few years, I came back to Belgium where I worked in the field of equine sports medicine and did a master's degree where we worked on a system that allowed the analysis of oxygen consumption during exercise. Everything related to sports medicine and effort speaks to me!
From there I went back to Germany and worked in this specialization. I also obtained a title as a veterinarian specialising in equine medicine in Germany.
Since 2013 I have been offering my services to veterinary surgeons in the field for respiratory system examinations and sports medicine type examinations. In particular, everything related to the cardiovascular system.
An ECG is short for electrocardiogram. It is a tracing that represents the electrical activity of the heart. The heart muscle, like all muscles, contracts as a result of electrical stimulation and this forms a wave that propagates through the heart and results in a heart contraction.
An ECG is a record of the electrical activity of the heart and its contractions.
I was talking earlier about an electrical wave in the cardiac tissue, and well, this tracing obtained during an ECG represents this famous wave and more particularly the conduction of the electrical wave in the cardiac tissue.
The result is a succession of peaks that represent a specific part of the cardiac conduction cycle. For example we have the P wave which is the polarisation of the atrium, the T wave which is the repolarisation of the ventricles etc.
This visual representation allows the electrical activity of the heart to be analysed.
The veterinarian will carry out an ECG as soon as he suspects a cardiac pathology, i.e. in case of irregularity of the rhythm, in case of abnormal increase of the cardiac frequency, or when he will have, during the auscultation, detected an abnormal noise.
An ECG is recommended in all sports checks (in stress tests) or when the horse shows stress intolerance, i.e. when it does not perform to the expected ability.
For me, it is not really the type of discipline that will be decisive but rather the type of effort. Let me explain. I am thinking above all about the safety of the rider. The risk increases with speed. A fall of the horse can have serious consequences for the rider because he will fall with it.
So if you are only riding your horse, I think it is important to monitor the heart activity because during a ride you will certainly ask your horse to do big fast gallops or to climb very steep hills, and therefore to make very very violent efforts with a high risk of accidents.
And all the more so as touring horses are generally only taken out once a week, i.e. at weekends, so their training isn't optimal. So it's not really linked to a discipline, but to the type of effort involved.
So ECG analysis must be absolutely methodical and rigorous. You can get a lot of information out of it, but you really have to follow a certain procedure. AND above all, you need a quality ECG, with a regular, artifact-free trace. The baseline must be very stable and the contact must be very good, with the horse at rest and not moving, so as not to cause any movement in the cables.
The Seaver must be applied in the correct way as suggested by the producer. But also ensure a certain amount of gel to ensure a good contact. The strap must be well supported to avoid rubbing areas or movements, which will prevent you from having a good diagnosis.
If your system detects an arrhythmia or a problem, it is imperative that you talk to your vet. He is the only person who can interpret your ECG. It should always be accompanied by a general examination which includes auscultation, heart sounds and examination of the mucous membranes.
The ECG is not a single test. It should be included and seen in combination with other examinations. The clinical examination, with the result of a blood test or, if necessary, an ultrasound scan
This is a difficult question to answer. If you have a pet with a heart condition that may or may not have been treated, then I think you would need to have an ECG at least every week, or maybe every month.
A horse in a normal situation does not need to have them at such a frequency. You can increase the frequency if you suspect or see something abnormal and that abnormality is repeated in a casual way, i.e. you can't reproduce the problem or it doesn't happen all the time. So by the time you want to present the abnormality to your vet, the horse does not get into the situation presented.
I can illustrate this explanation with a personal example. My horse sometimes had a tendency to move under the hindquarters, so put all his weight on the hindquarters when I was grooming him, and he would drop down to the hindquarters as if he was having a fit. Every time I put on my medical diagnostic ECG, every time I girth him, he of course doesn't do it.
The time it took me to set up the whole system was really a heavy investment. Then I acquired the Seaver and as soon as he presented the symptom, in two clicks I could make an ECG recording. So it's not a big investment.
The Seaver Team
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1 Martin-Rosset William (2012) Nutrition and feeding of horses. Quae éditions, Versailles, 620
2 INRA (1984) Le cheval: reproduction, selection, feeding, exploitation (Jarrige R, Martin-Rosset W, eds). INRA, Versailles, 687
