Spring Conditioning Your Horse

minutes two days per week can be ridden on hilly terrain. One day per week can include schooling ground poles not to exceed eight minutes. Continue calisthenics three times per week.
Weeks 1012_Moderate walk trot and canter four to five times per week for 45 minutes one of these sessions should last 7080 minutes. Include two days of calisthenics per week and one day of schooling over ground poles.
At this stage your horse will be well primed to reach his full fitness level which is still several weeks away but the above schedule gives you a good basic starting place. From here you will want to add strength and conditioning routines specific to your chosen discipline at least two days per week and you will also want to develop a variety in the duration of each workout. Most of your workouts will remain around 45 minutes but one or two per week should run quite a bit longer while one remains shorter than 35 minutes. Your goal is to work the horse at different effort levels day to day hence these varying times. This article does not have space to delve into sportspecific training but regardless of what your chosen sport might be every horse needs a welldeveloped base on which to build.
Rule 1_Modulate Intensity Levels
After week four of a conditioning plan you want to vary the difficulty or intensity of each session in order to avoid consecutive days of working at the same effort level. Neuromuscular reactions become dulled when they always perform at the same effort and conditioning effects stop happening. Also tissues cannot recover and rebuild from harder workouts if they are not given occasional easy sessions. I like to follow a daytoday pattern of EasyModerateHardRepeat.
Rule 2_ Dont Rely on Respiration
When considering your horses perceived effort level do not rely on sweatiness or how hard he is breathing. Respiration and sweating are a means of shedding heat. These are indeed partly affected by his energy expenditure but they are not accurate predictors of fitness. 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 horses fitness by how much he huffs and puffs during a ride which gives a very incomplete and sometimes plain wrong assessment.
Rule 3_Vary your Surfaces
Optimal muscle recruitment relies on optimal proprioception which is the origination of signals for
how much tone to employ given the position of each limb and joint position. When a horse works routinely on a single surface his proprioception suffers. This means the sensory system that governs his motor system becomes dull and it misfires. Horses must be schooled on a variety of surfaces. If the bulk of your riding happens in an arena spend at least one other day each week somewhere else the grass paddock a firm road treading on wood chips. Or if you ride on trails most of the time spend a day each week working in a sandy arena.