A Holistic Approach to Bringing your Horses back into Work

As the echo of school bells reverberates through academic halls, a different kind of semester begins for equestrians. 

After a blissful 5-week holiday, it's time to guide our four-legged companions back into the rhythm of work. The return to the arena demands a thoughtful approach to conditioning, ensuring our horses' well-being and optimum performance. In this journey back to the saddle, let's delve into the intricacies of reviving the equestrian spirit.

1. Preamble of Health:

It is important to recognise that some behaviours are a communication of underlying pain and illness. Working with our industry professionals such as vets, chiros, farriers and bodyworkers set our horses up for success. Optimising our horses' health is key to elevating our training through training obstacles. Our horses are athletes, even if all you do is trail. They still carry us and sometimes move at speed!! More than I can say I can do! This proactive measure sets the stage for a seamless transition, mitigating the risk of any unforeseen health impediments.

2. Gradual Reintroduction of exercises:

Bringing our horses back into work should be gentle and we can’t assume our horses will be where we left them before their holiday. A general rule of thumb is that the horses maintain their muscle mass for 2 weeks off, and then lose it every week thereafter. 

Bringing our horses back into high concussive work like jumping, road riding, hard surfaces and more than 5 - 10 minutes of cantering or half hour of trotting without adequate conditioning can put our horses at risk of splints and other concussion injuries. If you are listening to your horses you will hear the breaks they need.

It doesn’t take long to reach their pre holiday condition. For our horses having 5 weeks off, 3 weeks of 3 - 4 rides a week has seen them back to where they were before their holiday. Commence with light exercises and shorter sessions, allowing their muscles and joints to reawaken without undue strain. This gradual return ensures a harmonious transition, reducing the likelihood of injuries and ensuring a positive experience for both horse and rider.

3. Check their diet:

Sometimes when our horses’ training plateaus, the thing we have missed is their nutritional intake. As we re-enter work, a check in of their diet could be in order. Adjust their nutritional intake to align with their current workload. Especially as our horses age and/or increase their workload, we need to adjust calorie and protein intake. Ensuring a rich and balanced diet will mean the horses have the nutritional reserves for the increase in the workload and optimising performance.

4. The Fitness regime:

Different horses respond to different exercises differently. 

Hunter is our people pleaser with a more anxious nervous system and needs to do lots of slow, relaxed work to prevent tight muscles. Rabbit, as a heavier horse, needs short bursts of effort with periods of walk in between. He is the muscle builder of the family and building endurance with him takes longer and is not natural for him. 

Phoenix is more of a prime athlete adapting to work quickly and enjoying effort. We are careful to make sure his straightness training is on point because he tends to collapse the hip to the right and as a result, stride short through the left shoulder when left to his own devices. 

While they may be doing the same overall exercises in the same class, the riders focus on and adapt how to use them to ensure they are developed for soundness, longevity and optimised athletic performance. 

5. Cross-Training Choreography

To inject a bit of flair into the routine, consider the art of cross-training. 

Hacking out and trails, combined with hill work, poles, grids and lateral exercises in their flatwork provide dynamic stress to the horses body improving their overall athletic development. We can think of hacking out as cardio developing their endurance and aerobic fitness, poles and grids as their gymnastic and push up efforts (when done with the thoracic sling online) and lateral work as suppling. Bursts off effort, long stretches of effort and stretching offer a well rounded exercise program for your horse.

Not only does this improve their topline development and working frame but it also keeps them mentally engaged and prevents them from going arena sour.

6. Consistency and Patience:

I often see riding 1 - 2 times a week as adequate conditioning for the horse for entry level work such as poles, trails and intro dressage. As the demands on the body increase, so does the regularity of work; up to 4 - 5 days a week when working towards collection, jumping over 80 cm and cantering for more than 10 minutes at a time. It is important we are patient with how the horses adapt to the exercise stress. Going too hard, too fast will result in extended periods of our horses being off work with injuries.

Understanding your horse's body type and not comparing your draught’s athleticism to a thoroughbreds and vice versa is important to developing an appropriate fitness and conditioning program to suit the individual horse.

Committing to a regular training schedule (with adequate breaks), combined with a patient understanding of each horse's unique pace of adaptation, fosters a trusting and cooperative partnership. Consistent positive reinforcement becomes the tapestry that binds horse and rider on this journey.

As the gates to the arena swing open, a thoughtful and nuanced approach to conditioning after a 5-week holiday sets the stage for a profound equestrian experience. This is more than a return to work; it is the resurrection of the Holistic Equestrian spirit, with each stride echoing the partnership and dedication that defines our journey in the saddle. Through the careful orchestration of health, gradual re-entry, nutritional balance, fitness awareness, cross-training, and the threads of consistency and patience, we sculpt not just athletes but companions, ready to dance in harmony with us in the equestrian ballet of life.