As a result, your horse will have a higher than normal heart rate even during “little effort” such as just working on the flat or doing dressage. During groundwork, HR and SDNN were significantly higher and the RMSSD was significantly lower compared to baseline conditions as expected, with a large effect size for HR and RMSSD and a moderate effect size for SDNN.

Similar to the HR data, the recording methods also did not differ significantly and had a zero or nearly zero effect respectively for the SDNN (B: df = 27, t = −1.

Follow your horse’s heart rate with any Bluetooth-compatible Polar sports watch or on your phone with the free Polar Equine App (available from Google Play). Horses were taken to the groundwork exercise with novel objects within 10 minutes after the baseline recordings.

Measuring heart rate variability in horses to investigate the autonomic nervous system activity: pros and cons of different methods. Horses have a pronounced T-wave which may be mistaken for an R-wave, therefore artifact correction of HRV originating from HRM data is needed ( 5).Improves endurance at higher speeds and increases the capacity of muscles to burn energy without oxygen. In endurance rides, the goal is to keep the horse exercising at this level throughout, allowing the miles to be covered efficiently. Behaviors that did not occur or rarely occurred (rearing, bucking, head shaking, pawing, defecating, urinating, screaming, yawning, flehmen response) were excluded from the analysis. What's more, this study enables you to obtain a consequent number of functionalities and, consequently, ever more precise and accomplished health and performance monitoring.

Baseline recordings in the stable lasted for 5 minutes and were performed in the horses' own stables while standing still and being haltered. This means that measurements of the HRM system, both during baseline measurements and during groundwork are within the limits of agreement for both HR and time domain HRV parameters. The ECG measurement from 1 gelding could not be used due to bad recording and was therefore discarded from the dataset, leaving 28 horses to be analyzed.

With Polar Equine Healthcheck, the control of rest and recovery heart rate of your Horse easier than ever.