11/14/2025
💁♀️ Let's Talk.... Corrective Exercise for the EPM Horse
We all worry about relapse with our EPM horses, but one of the biggest mistakes I see owners making is that they don't go back to the basics and rebuild the muscle that was lost because of EPM. It's a muscle wasting disease. It's a neurologic disease. The most basic symptoms are poor body condition, muscle loss/weakness, coordination and balance issues.... So WHY would you treat with medication and then just go back to riding normally or even worse.... Competition?!?! I can't stress enough... Your horse has lost normal muscle function. Even if you don't SEE a big change in body condition, your horse's body is trying to heal nerve pathways and reaction times to restore healthy function.
So here is where we see the relapse happens. Vets prescribe medications to kill the protozoa and tell you not to ride for 30 to 90 days. As the horse sits during treatment, more muscle wasting happens. (Even a perfectly healthy horse will lose muscle condition when not being worked. Instead of couch potato, you now have a paddock potato!)
You can't just pick up where you left off because your horse needs corrective exercise to rebuild the stabilizing muscles that support the skeletal system. If you don't have a solid foundation of fitness, the stress of work can cause another EPM flare, relapse, or injury.
I see it all the time in our rehab facility. A horse that has been dragging their hind feet goes back to work, but the condition isn't there so the body relies on adrenaline and compensation patterns to do the job that's asked. Fast forward a few months and the horse has developed chronic stifle pain, SI pain, and back pain from compensation... probably ulcers too due to the stress of work which depletes the immune system... Maybe there's also hoof changes and front end soreness from overloading the extra weight.... So you end up back at your vet needing a ton of injections done.
➡️ GUESS WHAT?? You just created the PERFECT environment for relapse.... The protozoa will find the slightest area of weakness and sneak back in like a clingy ex girlfriend. I hear people say all the time, " My horse was Fine and still got EPM. My horse is Perfect. I don't know how he got EPM."
I look at hundreds of horses in my facility... I promise you that a trained eye can always fine areas of weakness. It happens to even the highest level of human athletes that can communicate to trainers verbally. It is no insult to your ability or relationship with your horse. Most injuries are a slow build over time and so are inflammatory and immune diseases.
So I get calls Daily asking what corrective exercises we do at Superior Therapy LLC that makes our program so successful at rehabbing these horses.
(I'm just going to talk corrective exercise and things you can do at home in this passage, I'll explain our full program in detail a bit later)
I bought Jec Aristotle Ballou 's book and loved it so much it's required reading for our Learn Equine Therapy courses. The biggest factor to my success is setting realistic goals and having the patience to recognize how long it takes to heal damage to the body. These exercises are great. The explanation in is this book is incredible. But if you decide to only walk to exercises for 2 days then saddle up and go lope circles... this is not going to work. You have to understand how much body control it takes for a horse to work on an incline or engage their core to walk over poles. That compensation pattern didn't happen overnight and neither will the correction. Your horse has spent 3 months dragging his right hind, so you're looking at a similar time frame to retrain the body to pick that leg up normally. If you don't, you're going to eventually end up with a stifle injury during a barrel run. Slow and In Control is what will bring your horse back. You can rehab your horse at home using the exercises in this book. We have a ton of videos on our page too that show some of my modifications and varied ways of doing them. You'll find a system that works for you. Buying this book is the best $20 you'll spend towards getting your horse back. Start now. Start today. Start rehabbing while your horse is on treatment.
Now let's talk about what we do in our facility that helps speed up the healing process to get you back competing. We are equipped to cut your rehab time in half. I prefer to get horses in right after the diagnosis and while they are on treatment because I can do low impact exercise and halt the progression of nerve damage and muscle loss by starting very simple mobilization exercises. Just as a stroke patient wouldn't wait 6 months to start physical therapy, your horse shouldn't wait either. I'm finding areas of weakness, tracking progress, and documenting changes that the average eye can't see. We have a complete program using PEMF, Theraplate, AquaPacer, and our stretches and corrective exercises that will give your horse the best chance and returning to desired performance.
To date, I have not had a horse that didn't improve with our program... Now we have had some that were not able to go back to performance, which I discussed ahead of time when we set our goals at the beginning of the stay, but they still showed great improvement... You have to set realistic goals and then be willing to also do the aftercare work when your horse goes back home. We also part with Dr. Sam Crosby, one of the leading researchers of EPM and its variants.
I know how scary dealing with EPM can be. I saw my first death from EPM when I was in high school. I rehabbed my own horse back to performance 7 years ago and saw 2 more die from it that year. This is what fuels my passion to educate and to try to help others. You can do rehab at home. You can send your horse to a facility. Both are great options, I just encourage you not to turn the horse out and do nothing. When nothing is done, the compensation patterns become so difficult to correct and the battle ends up being a really tough one for everyone involved.
Love & Knowledge
💜SNT💜
