Leg Freeze for Your Horse

Leg Freeze Post-Workout

Leg freeze is a topical treatment that uses natural products to relax tense muscles.

If you’ve ever tried Crossfit, you know how sore muscles can get. After an especially brutal workout, people tend to turn to IcyHot or Epsom salts or heating pads for relief. Now imagine you’re a horse: you can weigh up to one ton and you regularly do everything from running races to pulling carts loaded with humans. The soreness that a human experiences after a heavy workout is nothing compared to the soreness a horse experiences after a rigorous day.  All that weight puts a tremendous amount of strain on muscles and tissues. And yet, while there are all sorts of treatments advocating the use of everything from corticosteroids to muscle relaxers for horses with muscle soreness, subjecting your horse to extreme treatments for soreness isn’t necessarily the safest or best technique. And, frankly, superficial muscle soreness doesn’t necessitate the use of extreme measures.

So how do you relieve your horse’s discomfort without turning to extreme measures?

Leg Freeze and Equine Massage

The first way is to learn equine massage. It sounds ridiculous, but the technique can provide great relief to muscle soreness. It’s free and there are videos taught online that can teach you the basics. In addition to equine massage, use a product like W.F. Valentine’s Kwik Freeze to provide immediate relief. Kwik Freeze has the additional benefit of being able to work on sore feet (if you’ve ever run a marathon, you know how painful tender feet can be), which equine massage won’t be able to alleviate.  Kwik Freeze is a temporary solution, but is fast-acting, which means your horse is able to sleep and recover quickly without being agitated by muscle pain. The only downside to this treatment is that it can’t be used on open wounds (obviously), but a combination of massage and muscle soreness treatment will provide your horse much-needed relief after especially strenuous exercise.