Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Sweden is the third biggest country in the world today when it comes to the population of Icelandic horses. There are mainly two kinds of competitions where anyone can participate. The only demand is a membership in an Icelandic horse association which makes competitions in general easy accessed.

There are only very few studies regarding the exercise levels for leisure riders. An ordinary Icelandic horse competition consists of one preliminary round per class followed by finals. Therefore, it can be quite a physical challenge for the rider to participate. The aim of this study was to find out if there actually are any physiological differences between the exercise level that the rider is being exposed to during competition and training. The question was if competing affect the heartrate of the rider differently than the training towards the competition. The hypothesis of this study was that because of different elements the heartrate was to be higher during competition than during training.

Four Icelandic horse riders was equipped with a Polar heartrate monitor during two ridden exercise tests and two competitions in an indoor arena. The result showed no significant difference (p <0,14) between the heart rate of the rider measured during competition than during training. Walk was the only gait out of four that showed significantly higher HR during competition 150±SE than during training 122±SE.

The conclusion according to this study was that the exercise level of the rider does not differ between competition and training but the need of further studies in the matter are substantial.