Dressage riders - How many times do you school a week?

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Friesianfoal1999

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Hiya,
I know ive been active on here and asking lots of questions! Sorry!
This isnt a particular question for me but more curious of everyones different routines.
How many times do you school your horse a week?
How many times do you school in sitting trot?
How often do you compete? Train the day before?
I have my routine but curious what everyone elses is!
 
Not as much as I'd like! I work full time so only ride twice a week, and my sharer jumps my pony, so neither of us get much practice. I don't do a huge amount of sitting trot because we only compete at prelim and novice. I compete about once a month. So in summary our progress is slow!
 
Heinze171 said:
Hiya,
I know ive been active on here and asking lots of questions! Sorry!
This isnt a particular question for me but more curious of everyones different routines.
How many times do you school your horse a week?
How many times do you school in sitting trot?
How often do you compete? Train the day before?
I have my routine but curious what everyone elses is!
Click to expand...

I school 2-3 times a week, but not all in the school. I usually do 1 session in the manège and the others in one of the fields for variety and to work on a different surface. The field sessions are generally shorter because I tend to then go for a hack around the land afterwards.
I don’t really do any sitting trot at the moment, she competes at prelim but works at Novice/elem at home.
We try to compete once a fortnight through the summer. Generally the day before she has a day off, or a hack. I struggle to stay motivated to compete in the winter, so generally don’t.
 
I generally school 3 times a week, and then hack or lunge on the other days.

What we work on in a session will depend on both what our goals are at the time and how we're feeling on the day as sometimes I'll go in planning to work on one thing and then find actually we end up needing to work on something else if for example he's more spooky than usual. At the moment we're working on learning our walk piris so I'm focusing on suppleness and keeping relaxation in our lateral work to help with that. As for sitting trot, I'll often do a bit with resistance bands on during a session to help strengthen my core.

Recently competing has taken a back seat to general life, but usually I'll be out every other weekend, sometimes more depending on schedules. I'll sometimes hack the day before, but often will just give him the day off as I find he goes better than if I school the day before.
 
When I was doing dressage with a degree of seriousness, I generally schooled properly twice a week. Most of my actual work - other than warming up / cooling down / specific training bits - was done sitting as I prefer it and so does that horse. We were competing medium at his highest point (before we got bored and decided to play at other games). He also hacked, jumped or did other stuff 4/5 times a week, and obviously elements of schooling happened during those too.
 
Co
FestiveFuzz said:
I generally school 3 times a week, and then hack or lunge on the other days.

What we work on in a session will depend on both what our goals are at the time and how we're feeling on the day as sometimes I'll go in planning to work on one thing and then find actually we end up needing to work on something else if for example he's more spooky than usual. At the moment we're working on learning our walk piris so I'm focusing on suppleness and keeping relaxation in our lateral work to help with that. As for sitting trot, I'll often do a bit with resistance bands on during a session to help strengthen my core.

Recently competing has taken a back seat to general life, but usually I'll be out every other weekend, sometimes more depending on schedules. I'll sometimes hack the day before, but often will just give him the day off as I find he goes better than if I school the day before.
Click to expand...

We’ve just cracked walk piris, I have to stay I really enjoy doing them!
But the left rein isn’t as good as a whole so have to work on that!
Competitions always tack a back seat at some point aha
 
I always wonder because top Horses like velegro are 4 times a week schooling. Seems a lot if it’s hard schooling? What’s your opinion
 
depends how you go about it.

some riders are very demanding, and go on and on. some do it for the horse, to train it to be fitter, educated etc
 
Generally school 4 days a week, hack once, lunge or long rein once and then one day off. The intensity isn't the same though, I'll do one day of harder work and then the next will be easier stuff. I also only do 45 mins unless we're having real problems, once we've done what I wanted to achieve then that's enough for the day.

Sitting trot I do a bit every time I ride but only after we've properly warmed up and his back is swinging. Better to do it little and often and build it up slowly rather than all in one session where you end up tired and tensing up I think.

He's always worse after a day off so I take it easy the next day and don't ask much of him, I try and give him a day off 3 days before a competition and then he'll have the day after off as well. Day before the comp I'd work him like normal or if I have time a light schooling session in the morning and then an hours hack in the evening but he's a hot buzzy horse with plenty of go, he's always better if he's warmed up twice at a comp so I don't have to worry about conserving energy. I try and go out twice a month but have a couple of months break from competing over winter. It's more for my sake than his, if I'm competing regularly my nerves aren't so bad. He has a few week long holidays throughout the year and a week off after a championship or similar where he's worked hard in the run up to it.
 
When I was doing dressage semi seriously I generally schooled 4 days a week and would do it in a 2 day school, 1 day off pattern. The day off might be completely off or a hack.

I generally found my horse came out better on day 2, so yes I would school the day before a competition.

Sitting trot would completely depend on the horse. For mine, she was reasonably established, I would do spells of sitting during most schooling sessions - particularly in the more collected work or sideways.

Frequency of competing - I wasn’t massively driven by competing, I did less than some. I’d pick a couple of bigger comps that I was aiming for and do whatever needed to prepare. In general I might do maybe 10 shows a year, I preferred going away training.
 
Usually school 4 times a week, lunge one and the other day off. It I don’t lunge then it will most likely be 5 days schooling 👍 I don’t ever really do a whole schooling session in sitting trot, will just be parts of it usually in lateral work etc. Compete most weekends ! Occasionally during the week but the weekend is much easier 🙂 I always train the day before a comp x
 
Mine is at a low level of work because of his asthma so I’ll base it on when he was competing elementary BD regularly before all the problems! I would school once a week by myself for 40 minutes, largely rising trot but with sitting for lateral work. Once a week a 45 minute lesson where we would work harder! Then two hacks, one longer mainly in walk, one faster going around the fields for fitness. Then once a week either a quick lunge, or a stretching session depending on what I had time for! So only actually ‘schooling’ twice a week. I think variety is important both for their brains, and to prevent injury through repetition.
 
Depends on the horse. My 4yr old is schooled twice a week for about 25mins, and he hacks twice a week, he lives out 24/7. My seven yr old schools three times a week, hacks three times a week, she prefers to work on alternate days, she also lives out. My GP horse schools four times a week, hacks twice a week, but when I say schools four times a week, they are not all intensive sessions, one session a week is solely stretching, another session may well incorporate poles etc, it doesnt mean he is drilled through the GP work four times a week.
 
We are blagging it at BD ele. School on average twice a week and hack twice a week but both vary. I work FT and horse is on DIY livery and doesn’t have the best facilities so our progress is quite slow (or stagnant at the moment). I try to compete once a month and have 1 lesson a month but that’s dependent on funds. I desperately wish I could do more but it’s sadly impossible.
 
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