A Barrel Racer’s Guide to Understanding and Creating Impulsion
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IMPULSION.
Next to collection, it could very possibly be one of the most misunderstood and often missing, but critical pieces to any performance endeavor with horses.
I went in-depth to cover the subject of collection in another post (see link below), but make no mistake, these two go hand in hand. Although they are equally important when it comes to developing a winning barrel horse, impulsion is at the top of the priority list.
One definition I came across states that impulsion is the “the powerful thrust from the hindquarters that propels the horse forward. Impulsion is the surge that occurs when the horse’s hindquarters push off the ground.”
Another describes impulsion as the “pushing power (thrust) of a horse, which comes from his desire to move powerfully forward with energy.”
However, there is one similarity and one difference in the above definitions that I would like to call attention to.
A balanced diet is one where all the nutrients are more than adequate to avoid deficiencies and the amount of each of the minerals avoids competition with another. One example is copper and zinc, too much zinc in the diet has been found to interfere with the intake of copper. Another is calcium and phosphorus; too much calcium can interfere with phosphorus and vice versa. There are many other examples.
