Surprisingly, I often find myself prescribing students more calisthenics exercises than gymnastic exercises to improve their horses’ overall fitness. The reason for this is that, without proper activation of postural muscles, the horse’s locomotion muscles are not able to play their role fully. Calisthenics target postural muscles, not movement muscles. But let’s get clear— what are calisthenics? I define them broadly as slow-moving exercises requiring fine motor control and precision of body alignment. Many re-hab and pre-hab maneuvers fall under this definition. The well known “carrot stretches” or walking over ground poles are examples.