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You know how it is. Life happens and sometimes our passions get pushed to the side. I’ve been out of the show pen for a while. Other priorities took over. It’s time. Time to get my horse (and myself) back in shape for the show ring!
So, what is the best way to get back into condition for competition? Our weekend trail rides are probably not going to be enough to get the job done. I’m going to need a plan.
Here are 7 Tips on How to Get Your Horse Back into Condition and Back into Competition.
Tip 1 – Get Prepared
Just like any fitness program for yourself, you want to be sure your horse is healthy and sound before you start your conditioning program. Take care of any overdue horse maintenance.
Is your horse due for a dental visit? Get this done. You don’t want to have teeth problems be the cause of any frustration in the show pen.
Is he shod or trimmed appropriately? Hooves that have grown a little long will put additional stress on his tendons and ligaments.
Do you have a current Coggins certificate?
If you’ve been on a break because of an injury to your horse, be sure to get veterinarian clearance before starting your conditioning program.
Tip 2 – Set an Intention
Start your conditioning program with the end in mind. In other words, what are you conditioning for? What is the goal? Is it a horse show in a couple months that you want to participate in? Is it a 25 mile endurance race?
My “why” is to be able to compete in the monthly cutting events that begin in September. I need to be able to ride my horse in two 2 ½ minute runs with the flexibility of a lot of big, low turns on her hind end.
A bigger goal for me could include competing in the Eastern Nationals which are held in March of every year in another state.
Obviously, your goal needs to make sense for you and your horse.
Tip 3 – Create a Plan
In order to get fit for competition, trail riding or any riding activity, your horse needs to be “legged up”. This involves preparing your horse to withstand a certain amount of impact, speed, and duration of work.
Any equine fitness program will start slowly with walking and trotting, then gradually increase either in distance or speed. But not at the same time.
As I researched different plans, I decided that the best plan for me and my horse was to put her on a conditioning program that focuses on cardiovascular fitness and endurance. I also wanted to ensure muscle strength, suppleness and balance.
Make a Conditioning Schedule
I’ve learned that initially, workouts should focus on basic conditioning rather than teaching specific skills and maneuvers. Rides should remain less than 50 minutes and aim to deliver a low to moderate amount of cardiovascular stress, while also emphasizing exercises to engage the horse’s muscles.
The specific times that are spent at each gait and the rate that you increase it will need to be customized to each horse and the discipline you are training for. Pick a plan that is manageable for your schedule and makes sense for your horse and the discipline you ride in.
The plans below were created with 5-6 rides per week in mind. If you are not able to ride that often, you will want to increase the number of weeks. Make sure you intersperse walking/trotting/loping with breaks in between and finish with a cool down at the end of the session.
Also, it’s a good idea to give your horse has a day or two off each week and to vary your activities to include trail riding, arena riding, and riding over cavalettis or poles if available.
I plan on incorporating rides down our gravel road. It’s a good way to gauge how far we are going. If you can’t go down a road, a good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that it takes a horse roughly 7 – 7.5 minutes to trot a mile.
As you are getting him back to work, it’s a good idea to use protective leg wraps (splint boots, sports boots or polo wraps) and overreach boots whenever you are exercising or riding him. This extra protection can go a long way in helping to prevent injuries.
I use and love the Iconoclast Orthopedic Sport Boot for support and protection. You can get them using the link below or search for any type of sport boot that is appropriate for your discipline.
Sample Conditioning Plan 1 (from CRK Training)
Week One – Start off easy, focusing on loosening up and noticing any stiffness
20 min riding sessions – 10 min walk/10 min trot
Week Two – Increase length of trot plus add in exercises to build strength (circles, transitions, simple lateral work, riding on hills)
25 minute riding sessions – 10 min walk/15 minute trot – incorporate several 3 minute intervals of more strenuous work (canter or lope, cavalettis or poles.)
Week Three – Length of trot work continues to increase for stamina. Slightly longer periods of strenuous work.
10 min walk/25 min trot/incorporate several 5-6 min intervals of more strenuous work (canter or lope, cavalettis or poles.)
Week Four – Increase the length and intensity of the sessions
50 min sessions – 10 min walk/30 min trot/ 10 min strenuous cantering or loping.
Sample Conditioning Plan 2
Week One – 20 minute ride – 15 min walking/ with 5 minutes trotting
Week Two – 30 minute ride – 20 min walking/ with 10 minutes trotting
Week Three – 30 minute ride – 15 min walking/ with 15 minutes trotting
Week Four – 40 minute ride – 15 min walking/ with 20 minutes trotting and 5 minutes loping
Week Five – 40 minutes – 10 min walking/ with 20 minutes trotting and 10 minutes cantering or loping
Week Six – 40 minutes – 5 min walking/ with 20 minutes trotting and 15 minutes cantering or loping
Sample Conditioning Plan 3
Week One – 20 minutes walking
Week Two – 20 minutes walking plus 10 minutes trotting
Week Three – 30 minutes walking mixed with 10 minutes trotting and 5 minutes cantering or loping
Week Four – 40 minutes of walking mixed with 15 minutes trotting and 10 minutes cantering or loping
Week Five – 40 minutes of walking mixed with 20 minutes trotting and 10 minutes cantering or loping
Sample Conditioning Plan 4
Week One – 30 minutes per ride with 5 minutes trotting
Week Two – 30 minutes per ride with 10 minutes trotting
Week Three – 40 minutes per ride with 15 minutes trotting
Week Four – 40 minutes per ride with 20 minutes trotting and 5 minutes cantering or loping
Week Five – 40 minutes per ride with 20 minutes trotting and 10 minutes cantering or loping
For those of you who are 3 Day Eventers, one cross-country trainer stated that “your horse is probably fit enough for Novice and Training competitions if you can slow canter twice the distance (or a little more) of your cross-country course.”
“If you are aiming at a cross-country test that will take five minutes, build up your horse gradually until he can slow canter a total of 10-12 minutes. Once you have asked him for this amount of work, he should tolerate it easily. His temperature should be almost normal, and his pulse and respiration should return to near his personal baseline within seven minutes.”
More Tips on Conditioning
Modulate Intensity Levels
After four weeks on a conditioning plan, consider varying the difficulty or intensity of each ride in order to avoid consecutive days of working at the same effort level. This allows muscles and other tissues time to recover and rebuild from harder workouts. Consider following a day-to-day pattern of Easy-Moderate-Hard-Repeat.
Vary Your Surfaces
Riding your horse on a variety of surfaces helps his muscles develop in a balanced way. If the bulk of your riding happens in an arena, spend at least one other day riding somewhere else — the grass paddock or a firm dirt road. Conversely, if you ride on trails most of the time, spend a day each week working in a sandy arena.
Follow Workout Ratios
In a balanced training and conditioning program, the warm-up and cool down each day should combine for 20 percent of your total riding time.
Another ratio to keep in mind is that sport-specific training should form only 30 percent of your total riding time. If you ride for an hour, that means you will spend only about 20 minutes practicing maneuvers or exercises for your given sport.
The remainder of your time after accounting for warmup and schooling should be spent on basic cardio work, flexibility routines, and strength training.
Strength and Flexibility Exercises
The purpose of flexibility exercises is to get your horse working in a synchronized way that develops suppleness and flexibility throughout the body.
These exercises can be accomplished by either riding or walking the horse in hand. These include making turns, circles, serpentines, doing lateral work, making transitions forward and backward, and leg yielding.
As the horse becomes accustomed to these exercises, include smaller circles and add more difficult lateral movements.
Here are some ideas you may want to incorporate into your riding sessions:
- Backing up mounted or unmounted 60 steps
- Walking slowly over high raised poles (mounted or unmounted)
- Pelvic tucks and/or belly lifts
- Walking and bending around a ten-meter circle with a very low stretched neck position (mounted or unmounted)
- Tight serpentines mounted or unmounted
- Hill work – walking, trotting and even backing up and down hills
- Walking and trotting briskly over ground poles placed randomly around an area of varying surfaces, i.e., grass, sand, gravel.
- Carrot Stretches: While keeping your horse’s feet immobile, use a carrot or treat to entice his head/neck to the following positions:
-The middle of the chest (chin to chest)
-Between the knees
-Between the front fetlocks
-The girth
-The flank/hip region (holding the treat approximately two feet outward from the flank)
-Toward the hind fetlock
Sport Specific Strength Exercises
Dressage: Exercises such as shoulder-in (on straight lines and circles), travers, transitions between gaits progressing to half steps and half pass, and collected movements with periods of stretchy trot as rest.
Jumping: Jumpers that are schooled in low level dressage and schooled over cavaletti exercises are less likely to suffer muscle strain and will be more easily guided through a complicated course. Explosive speed/strength is also required. Use interval training and hill work will help develop this skill.
Endurance: Just as marathon runners benefit from yoga and strength training, endurance horses benefit from flexibility and the correct development of muscles to help reduced risk of injury during competition when fatigue sets in.
Eventing: . A series of uphill steps is an excellent exercise to develop strength and power.
Western Events (timed and performance): Long slow distance and aerobic capacity training will benefit western horses. In addition, they require rapid response to minimal aids (transitions within gaits as well as lateral movement) and explosive power. Cross training out of the arena in fields as well as use of lateral movements (leg yield, spiral circles, roll back) as the foundation will give the horse a better experience inside the performance arena.
Monitor Their Condition
A good way to monitor your horse’s fitness level is by learning to take his pulse and check his hydration status, Monitoring your horse’s heart rate on an ongoing basis gives you valuable feedback on his fatigue levels day to day, fitness gains, and tells you how he is tolerating the work.
If you don’t know how to take your horse’s pulse, you can learn to do this by checking out this video here.
Normal Vital Signs (for an adult horse >2 years)
- Heart rate – 30-40 beats per minute
- Temperature – 98.96°F – 100.94°F (37.2°C – 38.3°C)
- Respiratory rate – 10-20 breaths per minute
- Mucus membranes – Rose petal or salmon pink, moist
- Capillary refill time – < 2 seconds
- Skin tent -< 2 seconds (pinch the skin on your horse’s point of shoulder. It should snap back immediately in a normally hydrated horse. If your horse is dehydrated, the skin tent will return more slowly or, in severe cases, stay tented.
During the basic cardio sessions, your horse’s heart rate in the trot and canter should be between 120 to 150 beats per minute. During short, harder intervals of work in the later stages of the program, it will be between 160 to 180 beats per minute.
You do not want the beats per minute to exceed 180 for any period of time longer than several seconds. On the other hand, when the beats per minute drop below 100 (even when walking), he is not making any fitness gains.
To reach a training effect that taps into anaerobic fuel sources, the horse’s heart rate must exceed 165 bpm for at least two minutes.
Recovery Times
After working, a horse’s heart rate should return to normal within 15 minutes. If his pulse is still elevated after 45 minutes, then the workout was too much for him, and you’ll need to scale back.
Body soreness, pinned ears and other signs of pain or resistance may also point toward a horse who’s working too hard.
Don’t rely on sweatiness or how hard he is breathing to gage his fitness level. Respiration and sweating are a means of shedding heat. These systems are influenced by a number of outside factors including extra body weight, humidity, thick hair coat, stress, or tension.
Many riders inaccurately judge their horse’s fitness by how much he huffs and puffs during a ride, which gives a very incomplete — and sometimes plain wrong — assessment.
Keep track of your rides by recording workout times and keeping notes on heart rates and other observations of the ride. Make each ride count. Even the slow work can build muscle for your horse.
Heart Monitor
A heart monitor will give you the most accurate means of measuring your horse’s cardiovascular effort. Making a weekly routine of riding with a heart monitor will help you learn to keep your horse in the right zone to improve his fitness.
It will eliminate the exaggerations and guesswork we often apply to different stages of our horse’s fitness. Equine heart monitors fit easily under the saddle/girth, and are simple to use.
Tip 4 – Your Fitness Goals
As the rider, what are your fitness goals? Are you ready for the 25 mile endurance race? Or the cross country course? Be sure to give your own fitness the same priority to adapt and strengthen that you do for your horse.
You will naturally become more fit as you work your conditioning plan, but perhaps you have additional goals you’d like to achieve.
I have a great article on goal setting that you can read about here. Take the little mini-course! It will help you clarify and prioritize your fitness goals as well as everything you wish to achieve.
I also have a great article on Strengthening Your Core that will give you great tips for getting your core into shape.
Tip 5 – Clean and Condition Tack
If you are one of those people who are religious about cleaning your tack after every ride, then you are way ahead of schedule. If, on the other hand, you are like me, and cleaning tack is a chore left for another day, you will want to get to it!
Whether you ride in an English or Western saddle, cleaning tack is a very important thing to do. Not only does it keep it clean, but it also helps it last longer and stop it from squeaking when you use it.
Tip 6 – Annual Trailer Maintenance
What trailer maintenance needs to take place? You should go over your trailer at least annually for any items that need to be repaired or replaced. This article on How to Maintain Your Horse Trailer will give you several tips on maintaining this important piece of equipment. You can also download a free checklist that you can use to go over your trailer yourself, or review with your mechanic.
Tip 7 – Work the Plan
You’ve got a great plan! You’ve set some goals. You have some ideas about events or competitions you want to attend during the year. You’ve picked a fitness plan that you want to use over the next couple of months.
But…. creating a great fitness plan for you and your horse is no good if you don’t implement it!
You’ve got to take steps toward the goal. You’ve just got to start!
I can help you clarify what it is you really want. What do you want to accomplish with your riding? I invite you to take the little mini-course below. It will help you determine exactly what you want in your riding and in your life in general. It will even help you set some time lines for accomplishing everything it is you want!
Enjoy the Ride!