Canter work

[Abbeygale]

How often do you do canter / fast work, and what do your canter work sessions entail?

I have done a couple of 10 mile EGB pleasure rides earlier in the year, but dressage /going to camp / life got in the way and I've not done any recently.

I'm not intending to make my girly into a full on endurance horse - but it's something fun and different to do - to mix with dressage and SJ.

My fast work before this year would have been based on interval training, so 2min canters,2min walks, (just an example) and do repetitions. But I started training with a friend who does do endurance proper, and it was more long trot, long canter, long trot, Long canter, with a few minutes walk in between. We were on a beach which is about 2.5-3 miles long, and would do a full length in trot and full length in canter. (Horses had previously done fittening road work, not entirely unfit).

Does this sound reasonable? It seemed to do my mare the world of good, but I do struggle keeping her keen enough when we're on our own

Thoughts / opinions /ideas?

 

[DabDab]

The idea of interval training is to only let them recover partially. So generally for fitness you would do shorter stints of walk in comparison to the other paces. If you know your horse can do 2 min stints of canter without over exerting herself then start with that but only do 1 min of walk before trotting or cantering again. Then you can gradually build up the long stints. Hope that helps

 

[Abbeygale]

Thank you