Many "performance" supplements have hit the market. What exactly is a "performance" supplement? In the broadest sense, it should be something that will help your horse perform better. Turns out, though, that manufacturers have some widely differing ideas about what ingredients are necessary to accomplish that.
Common sense alone will tell you that if something is beneficial for the performance of a racehorse, it might not be what you're looking for to support an endurance horse.
Because this category of products contains such a wide variety, we have to recommend that you look at them product by product. The products we included are by no means the only ones advertised as "performance supplements," but they are examples of common categories, including:
Put It To Use
- Optimize your horse's regular diet.
- General vitamin and mineral products labeled as "performance." Dietary deficiencies can certainly have a negative impact on how the horse handles the physical stress of performance, but should be approached by correctly balancing the diet appropriate to his level of work. There's no evidence that megadosing vitamins or minerals will make the horse perform better.
- Antioxidants: Exercise does increase antioxidant requirements. You'll want to make sure the horse is getting at least 2000 IU/day of vitamin E, 2 to 4 mg of selenium and could add a little vitamin C, 1 to 3 grams/day. Horses under particularly heavy stresses may also benefit from some the plant-based antioxidants.
- Muscle builders/protectors: We covered muscle-building problems in depth in January 2006. Some of the best products in that category, including glycogen-loaders and branched-chain-amino-acid (BCAAs) products, are included again here. Working muscle do require high levels of branched chain amino acids, which are broken down as energy sources during work and must be replaced to prevent muscle loss and build more muscle tissue. Decreasing levels of BCAAs in the blood during prolonged/endurance exercise may also lead to higher concentrations of tryptophan in the brain, causing fatigue.
Energy boosters: Energy basically means calories. When it comes to hard working muscles, this means fats, carbohydrates (the premier fuel) and branched chain amino acids. Fat can only be efficiently utilized for slow work, since it is metabolized too slowly to meet the energy demands of moderately high and high speed. Hard-working horses having trouble maintaining their weight on adequate grain and hay rations may benefit from the inclusion of small amounts of fat in their diet, to spare other energy sources when they're not working hard, but feeding too much, or substituting too much fat for carbohydrate, may negatively impact performance. Burning fat also requires intermediates that are derived from carbohydrate metabolism. Fat has its place, but carbohydrate is the king of exercise fuels.
