What Pre-Season Preparation Should My Horses be Doing? Watch to hear the answer.
What Pre-Season Preparation Should My Horses be Doing?
Transcription:
Next question, 'What pre-season preparations should I be doing with my horses?'
Okay. So, this is something we've gone over, I don't know how many times. But guys, just remember that for every month the horse has been out, it needs to walk for an hour a day, for a week, for every month. Okay.
So, if it's been out for two months, you're going to walk for two weeks only. But you, then you need to build up to, where the horse is trotting, it's doing an hour's work, but trotting for half an hour and walking for half an hour.
But with 15 minutes’ walk, remember that the synovial fluid in the joints takes a long time to actually warm up and for the horse not to injure its joints.
So, if you're doing a 15 minute walk first, that synovial fluid is, is really working well. Then you need to get into an organized canter on the horse you're riding, that the horses that you are leading, are at a reasonable trot.
Okay. And you're going to build it up from 15 minutes, 15 minutes, 15 minutes, 15 minutes being, walk-trot, walk-trot. To, you'll build up to that. Okay. From a five minute trot to start with, building up slowly, and a walk between.
And once you've got the horses fit enough to do that kind of work, that they're not really puffing. You then want to single each horse, get on it, and start the school.
And remember, you need to be going at less than a hand canter. Alright, you need to be letting the horse go. Because if you're holding onto a horse, it's going to hold onto you.
So, if you're going at that sort of fourth gear speed, and let the horse decide to slow down, you'll find that as it slows down, and you're doing this lovely, big figure of eights, getting it lateral, getting your lead changes, doing all of that kind of stuff. When you're singling to start with.
And then after that, you can put in a little bit of arena work. Where you putting a little bit of fire into that work, just to get the aerobic side of things working. But don't do that too much because you do wear your horses out like that. So, that for me is the simplest way of looking at it.
Okay. Awesome.
