Exercises needed!

A

Ashleigh_

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I think its fair to say lovely Ron came to me with a fairy substantial belly...

Now, despite the fact he is a Cob, and will always have a bit of chunk i really am keen to tone him up and drop some pounds before spring grass arrives and he balloons like the other aunt in harry potter!
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I'm happy with what he's being fed, he's lost a little tiny bit of weight all ready just from living out so i'm reluctant to decrease his feed anymore!
Now, anyone know some good ways to fight away this blubber belly thing Ronnie's got going on?
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Which gait is best? Up hills or on the flat etc?
For those of you struck with horror at the thought of a piebald hippo going hell for leather across the south downs do not fear, in true Ron style, we will take it slowly!
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Thanks all!
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Hi when I bought my previous horse so was positively obese and I got the weight off her by doing lots of hacking mainly at walk but I did insist that she would walk out. We would hack three or four times a week for at least an hour and a half and we would school two or three times a week for forty five mins to an hour.
 
something I read somewhere is walk work to build muscle,trot work to harden tendons and canter work to build heart rate/fitness. Obviously a fat horse will not have much in the way of muscle or tendon strength and certainly won't be fit so I would build it up gradually working for a good few weeks at building up before moving up a gear.The longer you spend doing walk work the better the overall result will be.
 
Look on the world horse welfare website at the 'right weight campaign' for lots of tips on slimming. I'm sure i remember reading about brisk walking being the best pace to burn the fat, also less strain on overweight limbs and organs. Good Luck
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do a 12 week fitness regime! first 4 weeks stomping walk for an hour a day 6/7. nrxt 3 weeks introduce trot, including walk.5/7 introduce canter, next 2 weeks build on what you have and the ground available to you! feed accordingly. on the lesser side if a good doer! then you are ready for most things!!!!
 
Scooby came to me very fat and unfit, and my instructors, who are very experienced, told me to do lots of brisk walking at first to get him used to being worked again (he'd barely been ridden in months) then lots of trot work, doing plenty of circles and shapes to encourage him to get his inside hind under him because he dragged himself along by his front end like a train! I'm still building up to more canter work, but he's ready for it now - he finds canter very difficult though, he's very unbalanced and my instructors have told me to treat him like a baby who's just learning to canter under saddle. This would be useful if I had EVER worked with a youngster before.
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He's got someone else, a better rider than me, doing some canter with him now... this will be good for him because I'm such a novice that I can't really help balance him and I don't want to make things harder for him.

Okay, that was much longer than I intended. Hope there was something of some use in there!
 
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