Researchers Discover How to Increase Metabolic Oxygen Intake of Polo Horses

One thing polo players, and especially polo horse owners want to know is, How to improve a horses performance? As with most things there are lots of advice but not always well thought out advice or advice based more in science. If you want to improve your horses performance consider regimens of low and higher intensity practice.  

You may want to read about a study on which type of exercises lead to increased oxygen metabolic health and overall performance in Game play a crucial element in fitness regime of polo ponies, research suggests. The authors indicate that playing at low to moderate intensity and then engaging in higher intensity in match polo play increased the horses conditioning. I took the following quotes from the article:

"Among all exercise training subsets, only the low to moderate intensity training plus match play polo exercise period {vs. low to moderate intensity alone} caused an increase in the number of oxidative fibers, along with increases in properties related to oxygen-related metabolism, including high capillary density, intramuscular lipid content, and expression of two genes relating to energy production."

The researchers conclude.....  

“To improve muscle performance and minimize injury risk, starting exercise training further in advance of competition, as well as incorporating more intensity and longer duration sessions may be useful for the improvement of muscle performance.”    right out of the horses mouth so to speak. 😏