It’s that time of year when lots of our customers are setting their competitive goals for the season ahead and bringing their horses back into work after a winter holiday. Building up fitness gradually will help lower the risk of them injuring themselves and ensure you’re set for a successful competition season or an enjoyable summer of hacking and fun rides.
Thorpe Farm’s founders and head honchos Amy and Tommy are both experts in getting horses fit thanks to their backgrounds managing racing and eventing yards. We asked them to devise a fitness plan to get horses from post-holiday lack of fitness to ready to start competition-specific training that we could share with you in this blog – so they did! You’ll need a little longer to get a horse from low fitness to ready to compete in a one-day event or hunter trial, but this is a useful six-week fitness plan to get you on the pathway to success and ready for harder work and more intense training! Of course, this programme should be tweaked for every individual horse, taking into account its age, current fitness level and any previous injuries. Let’s take a closer look:
Week One
Start out with around 20 minutes of walking under saddle four days a week. Ideally, this walking should be done out hacking or on a gallop track to reduce the strain on the horse’s limbs from constantly turning corners in the school! Of course, not everyone can hack every time they ride, so if you do have to be in the school be mindful of changing the rein frequently and not trotting or cantering in circles for long.
Week Two
Increase your horse’s workload to 30 minutes of ridden work (20 minutes of walking plus two five-minute trotting sessions) four times a week and consider adding a short lunging and long-reining session twice a week on days when you’re not riding. Make sure that you’re keeping an eye on your horse’s legs as their workload increases and book a visit from your saddle fitter as they will start to change shape as their fitness improves.
Week Three
Increase the workload to 45 minutes (25 minutes of walking interspersed with two ten-minute trotting sessions), again ideally out hacking. Keep up the lunging and/or long reining to help build up fitness, but don’t ask for trot or canter on a small circle for long as it will put strain on their legs and feet.
This is also the perfect time to plan in a water treadmill session if you have access to one. Water treadmills are ideal for building up cardiovascular fitness in horses (thanks to the resistance of the water) but without the weight of a rider and any addition impact on their limbs
Week Four
Increase workload again, so that you are doing five ridden sessions a week of at least an hour each, including plenty of trotting and transitions. Some people split these into two rides, so a hack for 30 minutes and then a gentle schooling session for 30 minutes. You can also introduce simple pole work exercises at this point to help your horse build up core muscle and engage its hindquarters.
Week Five
By week five you can increase the time in the school if you’ve already been riding there, or if you’ve been hacking until now then start schooling sessions. Ideally you want the horse to be ridden for five to six days, with one or two days rest a week. Build up to some gentle straight line canter work if you’re able to when you’re out hacking or on the gallops, or at least ensure the trotting sessions are long enough to push their fitness along.
Week Six
In the final week of our back to fitness programme you can build up the time in trot and a steady hack canter in straight lines. By now your horse should be hacking for an hour a day and you can add a 30-minute schooling session into the mix too. We love mixing in water treadmill sessions, lunging, long reining, loose schooling and pole work to keep things interesting.
Our gallops are also very useful for building up fitness as they offer perfect ground and lots of straight-line (or gently curved) work instead of lots of loops of the school. You always have sole use for your horse plus up to three friends, and it’s a nice change from the mud at this time of year. Plus, if you come for a gallops session you can also book in for a water treadmill session afterwards for the ultimate fitness-boosting day!