Equine fitness expert Jec Aristotle Ballou's new book, 33 Strength and Fitness Workouts for Horses, takes the guesswork out of fitness gains for your horse. It clarifies how long and how frequently to do given exercises, and in which combinations they are best performed to maximize your horse's athleticism. Read on to learn a bit about strength exercises and try a workout.
Strength Routines (Short but Serious)
Due to the concentration of workload, strength-based workouts are relatively short. When stimulus is applied in consolidated efforts, the necessary load to create adaptations is usually accomplished by 10 to 20 minutes of cumulative work.
Unlike with human athletes, gains are often unrealized by taking horses to the point of total fatigue during strength sessions. Instead, accumulated stress of connective tissues can lead to dysfunction. Rather than making positive gains, the horse accumulates wear and tear. Ligaments are especially susceptible to strain and overload once muscles reach fatigue. The goal is to tax the horse nearly to the point of fatigue but not push past the line of diminishing returns.
For this reason be mindful about the duration of strength workouts and follow prescribed exercises such as the one that follows. Unless you are working with a coach to modify workouts to meet specific requirements, do not extend the length of reps. This can be tempting if you and your horse enjoy a particular routine, or you want to spend several minutes refining a certain aspect of the overall performance. Remember, workout days are not for nit-picking or schooling new skills.
First Off…Did You Warm Up?
Prior to workouts, you will need to warm up. Remember, this means at least 10 minutes of brisk walking, followed by 5 to 10 minutes of livelier gaits. Just be sure to prime the horse's body before starting the clock on a workout.
"Hard" Workout Days: Why and When?
Once a fitness foundation is in place, hard efforts do wonders for a horse's body. In this case, "hard" does not mean that the effort is mentally stressful or painful, or that you are teaching the horse a complex new skill. It means you are helping the horse's body reach its full athletic capacity in small repeatable bouts that lie outside the normal e orts of everyday schooling and training. Beyond improving the strength of muscles, it improves their function. Hard e orts require more from the metabolic system and leave it better able to " re" and fuel all muscle fiber types; they improve muscles' ability to fully activate, to generate power, and to shuttle away acidic waste byproducts of forceful contractions. Workouts like the one that follows make the body not only stronger but more efficient, metabolically
and physically.
Aside from these mechanical benefits, hard efforts improve the connections between muscles and the nerves that control them. They sharpen communication between muscles and their sensory and motor nerves. You can think of this as ensuring all the "electrical wiring" is hooked up and working well. This is especially crucial in cases where horses have done a lot of repetitive schooling. When a horse is ridden in an arena daily, for example, at the same energy levels, performing similar tasks, neuromuscular connections weaken. In our electricity analogy, the wires become corroded or loose. They need to be retightened and cleaned so the lights come on brightly as opposed to flickering.
Another value of hard intensity efforts is their brevity. Because they occur within a relatively short duration, they produce conditioning results while minimizing repetitive stress on the horse's body.
The productivity of hard workouts becomes negligible unless they are performed on a regular basis. This consistency is what allows adaptations to stack up on each other week by week and lead to measurable physiological gains. Aim to do a hard workout every 6 to 10 days. Many riders find it helps to have the same designated day weekly, while others allow it to float around within 10-day windows.
Agile Athlete
Duration: Approximately 30 minutes
Benefits: This workout combines numerous effective components-transitions, cavalletti, and energetic gaits. The great Olympian Ingrid Klimke has demonstrated the centerpiece of this workout in numerous clinics as benefitting horses across all disciplines. Here, we combine the exercise with active rest periods on straight lines to challenge the horse to recover without full cessation of activity. Set up the Agile Athlete pattern on a 30-meter circle ahead of time.
How-To:
For 12 minutes: Warm up.
For 3 minutes: Canter speed changes (slow to very fast every 20 strides) around the perimeter of the arena.
Do 10 reps of the Agile Athlete pattern on the left lead.
For 2 minutes: Trot perimeter of arena.
Do 10 reps of the Agile Athlete pattern on the right lead.
For 2 minutes: Canter speed changes around the perimeter of the arena.
Finish by trotting easy for 5 minutes and then walking on a loose rein for 10 minutes.
Agile Athlete
On one side of a 30-meter circle, set up four parallel poles that measure 9 feet apart at their centers. Position the inside end slightly closer and outside ends slightly wider. This allows you to choose a line of travel over the poles that best accommodates your horse's canter stride length. Raise poles to a height of 6 to 8 inches.
On the opposite side of the circle, set up four parallel poles that measure 4 feet apart at their centers and slightly wider at their outer edges. These poles can either be raised or lying flat on the ground.
It also helps to place cones at the other two sides of your circle as shown in diagram.
The objective is to ride your horse at a canter over the first set of poles. You want to land neatly in the middle of each set of poles and immediately bound over the next pole without losing the rhythm of the canter.
Approaching the first cone, transition downward to trot and proceed over the second set of poles.
Approaching the second cone, resume cantering and continue over the four canter poles.
