WITH no shows to work towards some riders may find it difficult to stay motivated with getting or keeping their horse in shape. It may help to continue your training schedule as if these events are going ahead to ensure you don’t let your training fall by the wayside.

As many horses off-season is during the winter months many riders may have only started getting back into the swing of things in the last few weeks to get ready for spring and summer shows.

Significant swings in fitness can have a negative effect on your horse’s long-term soundness so it is important to keep a base level of fitness for your horse, unless they are recovering from injury.

Whether you are just bringing your horse back into work, or trying to maintain their fitness for when you can get back out competing, there are many steps you can take to improve your horse’s fitness, while also varying your work.

The FEI has some useful tips for riders to keep their horse in shape. Lunging or long reining You shouldn’t lunge five times a week or for longer than 20-30 minutes depending on your horse and their current fitness level, but done correctly, lunging once or twice a week can be a very useful tool in developing fitness.

If your horse is out of shape, start out with lots of walk breaks.

Lunge work can be useful for developing the muscles that go under the saddle without the weight of a rider, and you can add poles or transitions to keep the work varied and up the fitness factor.

If you are able to long rein then this is arguably an even better solution as you are not limited to circles and can do more strenuous work in terms of canter, lateral movements and so on.

Remember that lunging can be quite a strain on horses, especially if they are young or coming back into work so always build up slowly and try to do your work on a large circle. It is important to always warm up and cool down correctly.

Hacking

Going on long hacks can be a great way to build your horse’s fitness without having to drill them in the school. Depending on the base level of fitness these can be done mostly in walk with some trot, or can have quite significant amounts of trot and canter.

Hill work

If you even mention the concept of getting your horses fit and muscled, hill work will invariably be one of the first suggestions out of the mouths of showjumpers, eventers and dressage riders alike.

There is a good reason for that! Going up and down hills in varying paces works all the different areas of your horse’s body.

To improve cardiovascular fitness, your best bet is to canter up a hill and walk back down it. Repeat this a few times but do make sure that your horse is still listening to you – if you need to walk or trot up once or twice to remind him that it isn’t a case of taking off whenever he sees the bottom of the hill, then do so!

Again, if the hill is long enough, those training an eventing horse can also throw in some work in gallop. To improve muscle strength and tone, walk and trot up the hills and throw in plenty of transitions. Remember to stay light and balanced in your seat and allow the horse to reach into the contact as you work up the hill.

You can also work within the paces as your horse’s fitness and strength develops, working on collecting and lengthening the trot and canter rather than just letting your horse maintain the same pace all the way up.

Going downhill works different muscles to uphill, but its value shouldn’t be discounted. Though the cardiovascular fitness benefits are less than uphill work, the horse requires a lot of strength and balance to work correctly going downhill.

Start off with walk and a slow trot when going downhill, then build up to canter when you’re sure your horse has the necessary balance.

Interval training

Interval training is the eventer’s best friend, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be put to good use by riders in other disciplines.

The idea is to replace long, low intensity sessions with rides which are short in duration but work the horse hard by interspersing short burst of high intensity work in canter followed by a period of rest in walk.

As you progress, the rest periods shorten and the intense periods lengthen. This method of training is commonly used to get event horses ready for the season.

A good guideline for a horse who is already in work but needs to up his fitness ahead of an event is to do five minutes of canter, followed by three minutes of walk. Do that twice and end the session.

If your horse is less fit, start with slow canter intervals of three to four minutes, interspersed with walk breaks for two to three minutes depending on how quickly your horse recovers.

Polework

Even if you try to avoid leaving the ground in any way, pole work and gymnastics can be very handy for improving a horse’s fitness. You don’t have to jump big to get your horse fit, so keep the jumps low, which will help avoid strain too.

If you are very nervous then do the pole work ridden and let your horse do some free jumping over gymnastics once a week or so.

Gymnastics and pole work are useful not only for developing technique and fitness in jumping horses, but also improving the paces of dressage horses and helping to work different muscles. They also force the horse to react quickly and think about his feet, and that is handy in all disciplines!

Start off with normal poles on the ground set out to trot and canter over.

As your horse gets fitter, you can use raised poles and change the distances to ask for more collected gaits, which will work your horse harder and help him to gain fitness and muscle mass.

As for gymnastics, good exercises include small bounces, one and two stride combinations and lines of trotting poles into a grid consisting of three to four simple jumps.

Keep it nice and small, with the focus on making your horse use their body over the jumps.