Road to Tevis #36: Benefits of using a heart rate monitor

Yesterday Fantazia and I came back earlier than planned from the Cuyama Oaks xpride. There are so many things to write about, and I will definitely do a post about my experience. But first, I want to cover the benefits of using a heart rate monitor (HRM). More specifically, I want to outline a benefit I had not considered: it is a pain detector.

Jump to:

The benefits of using a heart rate monitor
List of resources on heart rate in horses
Shopping

A brief summary of the relevant parts of the ride story

I’ll need to tell some of the ride story first. On the whole, things had improved. Fantazia was eating better than at our first (no eating) and second (small improvement) rides. She was calmer at the trailer. But, she was fitter, and very excitable on the trail. She was more reactive than ever when horses approached from behind.

Day 2 of the ride, first 50 for us.

On our first 50, I tried to ride with people the entire time. I managed to start her off with people ahead and behind successfully. Oh she was excitable, but manageable. Unfortunately, she got worse as the first loop progressed. I, foolishly, decided to make her go slowly. That made things worse.

At the end of the first 20 miles, I made her turn in circles when she wanted to canter sideways down the trail. I got dizzy, so I got off and made her turn in circles around me from the ground. Only when everyone in sight and gone back to camp did I get on and ride in at a walk.

For the entire first loop, her heart rate did not go above 184 bpm. Average was 127 bpm. Ten minutes after coming in, her pulse was at 54 bpm.

Average speed, 6.8 mph. Max 12.3 mph. Over 3000 feet total elevation gain. She had superficial wounds on her legs from dancing sideways through the chamise and rocks, but was otherwise in perfect shape.

A slow second loop

I went out alone on the second loop, and we had a leisurely and very agreeable ride. Alone. I came in over an hour after everyone else, even though I had left only about 15 minutes after they did (I had come in 10 minutes later on loop one, due to going in circles). Yes, she was capable of doing a normal loop, but I wasn’t. I wanted to relax. And I wanted to do another 50 the next day, and 100 in two weeks.

Average heart rate = 96 bpm (yes, we did a lot of walking!). High = 150. Pulsed down before I took the bridle off.

Sound, but!! For the first time ever, her topline was sore. (This from the first loop. I didn’t take the saddle off in between.) I figured it was just sore muscles from wasting so much energy trying to go faster than I wanted. We do more elevation gain, at faster speeds, at home. But she’s calm.

Day 3 of the ride, which was supposed to be our second 50

Fantazia started off very calmly, on a loose rein. This made me happy, but it was mainly just sore muscles, because as soon as she’d warmed up, she was back to wanting to be ahead all the time. I didn’t let her, but I did find a nice space between riders, so we could ride alone. That worked very well, except I kept going off course. Three times total, in fact. And each time, I’d have to go back to the trail and would end up behind everyone else.

Now, Fantazia hates horses coming up behind her more than anything, but she also can’t stand being behind slow horses. And, thanks to our conditioning on steep hills at home, she is really good at climbing. Other horses can out-trot her (at least, they go too fast for my comfort at this stage in our career). But none can out-climb her.

That was the problem. Not quite 4 miles into the ride, we found ourselves behind several horses that were climbing a steep slope much too slowly for Fantazia’s comfort. It was the second steep grade of the day, short (maybe a tenth of a mile), but around 20% (how to calculate grade). About a mile earlier, we’d had a longer (0.3 miles), steeper slope (up to nearly 30%).

During the first steep slope, her heart rate peaked at 145 bpm. It then went down to hover between 130 and 140 as it usually does when we are trotting and going up and down.

During the second, shorter and not-quite so steep slope, because we were stuck behind horses, Fantazia cantered sideways up. Her heart rate shot up to 165 bpm.

The scary thing was that her heart rate kept climbing even after we had gone over the peak and started going down (on average). It went up over 200bpm, the highest it had ever been, and it hung there, even though I brought her down to a walk. Even going downhill, it stayed over 190 bpm. Finally, when we were in a strong breeze, it went down, but it went back up. I thought, maybe she’s having trouble cooling. I thought, maybe yesterday was far harder on her than I thought…

All that, and I did not think she was injured, because she was trotting soundly.

Then I got off at a water trough to e-lyte her, round mile 12.

Her heart rate plummeted to the 70s (still higher than usual for Fantazia). After a few minutes, I got back on. She put her head down to graze, and stumbled. Her heart rate shot up (at a stop), and she had a pain reaction. When I asked her to trot a few minutes later, she was head-bobbing lame.

I got off and walked a mile. I got on and walked some more. Lots of people passed us–I told them that she was lame. I didn’t have anyone watch her trot, more’s the pity. After a few miles of walking, she volunteered a trot and was not-lame. Not 100%, but no consistent pattern of offness.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I stopped at the LD. (Of course, she pulsed down in less than a minute, but remember we’d been walking most of the way.)

She might have just had a “slight hitch in her giddy-up” when I came in, but she wasn’t ok. Sure enough, after standing at the trailer for two hours while I sponged her off, sweat her legs, and packed up, she was–in my eyes–dead lame when I trotted her before loading.

Dead lame for me means an obvious, persistent headbob, or in this case, trailing one hind leg. The right, then, although I could have sworn she was off on the left hind when I was riding.

The next day

Today her topline is very sore, and she is clearly sore, from the top, on both sides behind, but one is worse than the other. The right, at the moment. It does seem to vary, which is probably why she didn’t seem consistently off all the time. She didn’t know which one to favor! She reacts to the slightest touch on pressure points along the hip and croup, on both sides.

I bathed and massaged her, and I am going to try to get her in with a sports medicine expert this week. She’ll be fine, but not to do 100 miles in two weeks.

Back to the benefits of using a heart rate monitor

What I learned yesterday was that a heart rate monitor can tell you if your horse is in pain.

Elevated heart rate = PAIN.

Of course I knew this. Heart rate one of the best ways to gauge the severity of colic, among other things. But I hadn’t thought about detecting pain while riding via HRM.

Because Fantazia did not seem off until I dismounted and stayed on the ground for several minutes, nearly 8 miles after when I believe the injury happened, I never would have known anything was wrong without the monitor. Even with it, I doubted. I got off and took her pulse a few times, and it was high, but not 200 (of course, I was not in the saddle!). She wasn’t tired, I knew. We had not done excessive work for her condition. On the contrary, I had forced her to go more slowly than we did at home, in more extreme terrain. I didn’t think to make her stand still for a few minutes to see if the adrenaline and heat of working muscles faded to reveal lameness.

Some other benefits of using a heart rate monitor

Gauging effort

Fantazia does not reveal her actual level of tiredness reliably. At home, or when riding alone, she acts like she’s dying when her heat rate gets up to around 140 bpm. At a ride, she gets so excited she doesn’t act tired even when sustaining a heart rate of between 160-170 (which is still not that high, all things considered).

If I went by her apparent exhaustion at home, she’d never get fit! Horses need to exercise at a certain percentage of their maximum heart rate to increase fitness. For endurance horses, this means just below the anaerobic threshold, which depends on your horse’s fitness but is generally said to be around 170 bpm. See below for some resources on heart rate in equines.

Knowing your horse

I don’t aim for any particular heart rate with Fantazia. I mainly use the HRM in order to know what her normal is. Her normal is not over 180, ever. She occasionally peaks into an anaerobic zone when cantering up (very) steep hills, but it always drops in seconds.

Reviewing your ride

My watch’s app provides a complete readout of heart rate as well as elevation, speed, and temperature.

These readouts helped me verify that my intuition about Fantazia’s incurring the injury while cantering sideways up that little steep slope. By comparing her HR readout to the elevation profile, I could see exactly what happened. You drag the cursor along and the webpage gives you simultaneous information on all four readouts. You can set it to mark time or distance, which is very useful.

Strava provides information on grade as well. I have set my watch to automatically sync with both Strava and MapMyRun, both which I have long used for running and hiking.

My heart rate monitor

I have a Hylofit heart rate monitor system. I bought it about a month ago after reading a recommendation on the AERC facebook page. Hylofit is going out of business and no longer supports their app. For some people, this might be a deterrent, because the extra something about Hylofit is that it provided separate monitors for horse and rider, and an app that showed both heart rates.

I don’t care about my own heart rate. And the Hylofit paired via Bluetooth, so I knew I could attach it to my Garmin Fenix. (It can also attach to phone apps such as Polar.) It was (and is) half-off at Equine tack and Nutritionals. $150 is cheap for a horse heart rate monitor system.

I can take the horse’s pulse with my hand and a wrist watch, unless it’s very very slow and faint (in which case I know I don’t need to worry about it). When you cannot feel it behind the elbow, you can feel it under the jaw (my preferred location.) So I’ve never worried about getting a monitor. Then a lot of people talked about them convincingly on various horse fora. I started wondering about Fantazia’s real-time heart rate. And then there is Beroni, her pasture mate, who I will eventually condition. He’s a Morgan, and would probably kill himself if asked rather than stopping when tired.

A few resources on heart rate in horses

A lot about maximum aerobic capacity and heart rate in horses on Science Direct, with links to more.

A bit about heart rate at Kentucky Equine Research.

A article on peak fitness in The Horse.

On monitoring fitness in horses with heart rate, from the OK ag extension.

The US Eventing Association advocates for using an HRM.

Heart rate zones as explained on Polar (makers of another horse HRM).

Shopping

Polar Equine Belt at Riding Warehouse (and can i say I love Riding Warehouse, fast shipping, great service! No, I am not an affiliate, though I’d love to be. But I can’t recommend them enough)

The Distance Depot has a range of products that can be used to adapt your Garmin to horses.

There’s one Hylofit left at Equine Tack & Nutritionals

You don’t need to have a heart rate monitor to know your horse, or to train it effectively. The most important moments to take your horse’s pulse is immediately after a hard workout, and several times as it cools down. I honestly got one just because I love data. But I am finding it more useful than expected!

If you have anything to add, please feel free to comment! I myself might edit this post when i have more time!