Strapping your horse (a grooming technique)

Practical Horseman magazine published a book in the seventies -- The Practical Horseman Book of Horsekeeping -- that I still have and hold dearly. The book has a section on grooming, where I read for the first time about "strapping" or what the book referred to as banging. The idea behind strapping is to lightly slap the horse's muscled areas with a wisp, cloth, or leather pad. The horse tenses and relaxes with each slap. It does not *sound* like fun, but apparently the groom gets into a rhythm and the horses relish the feeling as they would a massage. Strapping aids muscle tone, relaxation, and cleaning/polishing. Most experts advise starting with just a few slaps per muscle group and building from there.

Wanna give it a try? The info below tells you more or less what you need to know...

Laura Bechtolsheimer on grooming
from horsehero.com (uses wisp)

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Strapping a horse from Videojug (with a leather pad)


Horse Riding: How To Strap Your Horse



Tools for strapping a horse (click images to enlarge) The Practical Horseman book showed strapping with a wisp, which is made at home, from hay. Instructions for making one are hard to come by but super instructions from the book have been reproduced below.
Nowadays, it seems leather pads or tea towels are popular for strapping.

Another description of strapping

clipped from www.equine-world.co.uk

In the old days we called it strapping and it has a marvelous effect not only on the horse but on you to. Start off by giving your animal a good body brushing, remembering to scrape the brush across the curry comb regularly. Next take a strapping pad (a round leather pad with a suede face) and starting at the neck work over the whole body attacking each group of muscles by thumping them, then smoothing the pad across them in a regular thump and slide motion.

It is as well to alternate between your right and left hand otherwise after a month your muscles will be more developed on one side than another. That of course is if you have been doing it properly!

If you are unable to get a strapping pad you could try making an old fashioned wisp from hay. First twist some hay into a long string then gather the top end of the string into two loops. Wind the remaining string through the loops to form a hay pad.

Perhaps not as stylish as a leather pad but the coarse hay will help stimulate the skin