Wellness & Rehab
About aqua training
Our state-of-the-art facilities enable us to offer wellness and rehabilitation services.
Aqua training is an extremely popular training method that can be used for all horse breeds, both for rehabilitation and maintenance as well as for muscle building. The water treadmill is the gentlest training method and is also the most effective. The resistance of the water forces the horse to walk in a straight line, and the buoyancy of the water reduces the horse’s own weight by up to 50%, which puts minimal strain on tendons and joints.
When the horse walks in water, the treatment is particularly gentle. This gives us full control over the horse’s movements. During training/treatment, the joints are strengthened as the horse carries its full weight. At the same time, the water helps to massage the horse’s tendons and increases blood circulation.
We can regulate the speed, incline, training time and water volume. This, of course, allows us to tailor an individual training programme specifically for your horse.
Spa wellness
If your horse needs treatment for, e.g., arthritis, hoof abscesses, acute swelling, lameness, etc., our saltwater spa is the perfect cure for your horse.
Our cold saltwater spa is 2-4 degrees. The reason the water temperature is so low in a saltwater spa is that it can remove heat and inflammation. When the horse enters a cold saltwater spa, it provides non-pharmacological pain treatment that helps inhibit enzyme degeneration of tendon injuries.
Furthermore, the bubbles have a massaging effect on the horse’s legs and can help draw heat away from the injury.
In addition to the saltwater spa, the water treadmill can also be used as a good preventive measure or at the end of, for example, a competition weekend, which can give the horse the best possible conditions for recovery.
Facilities
Hesselhoej offers top-class facilities. This includes our drained paddocks with wooden fences, which make it possible to keep the horses in the paddock all year round without them getting muddy.
Sick paddocks measuring 8*10m for horses that have an injury or that means they cannot move around as much during their rehabilitation/injury period.
Furthermore, we have the option of using our horse walker. Horses’ joints and muscles are naturally designed to move many kilometres a day in their natural search for food and shelter.
In today’s horse husbandry, there is often not enough time and space to support the need for exercise and offer plenty of time in the paddock. Therefore, horse walkers are a good supplement to the daily training and movement of horses.
Our solarium at Hesselhoej consists of 25 large red lamps with infrared (IR) rays. These heat rays penetrate the horse’s muscles and help to increase blood circulation, thereby increasing muscle elasticity. One of the effects of this is that it shortens the healing time after injuries.
