Fitness over winter

[Leam_Carrie]

How much work is needed to maintain reasonable fitness over winter? By reasonable I guess hack a couple of hours, a small cross country course or hack 1 hour plus an hours lesson (or the same and a dressage comp).

Horse lives out. Will be ridden at weekends and once during the week. No school or lights at home. Wondering about seeing it I can find someone who would like a horse to hack on a weekday once or twice a week.

 

[Leo Walker]

If you have them fit going into winter 3 times a week is enough to maintain that. If you have been stupid like me and let the fitness drop off the last few weeks its harder to build it back up on only 3 days work but it is possible. I'm cheating and paying someone to school mine twice a week from next week so it takes the pressure off me a bit!

 

[Leam_Carrie]

If you have them fit going into winter 3 times a week is enough to maintain that. If you have been stupid like me and let the fitness drop off the last few weeks its harder to build it back up on only 3 days work but it is possible. I'm cheating and paying someone to school mine twice a week from next week so it takes the pressure off me a bit!

Thanks - good to know we should be ok on three days a week .

Paying someone twice a week sounds a sensible option. If I had a school I’d certainly think about doing the same.

 

[Orangehorse]

The hard part about fitness is putting in the work to get them to that level, heart, legs, lungs, stamina, etc, etc. Having achieved that it is quite easy to maintain that level. They do not loose fitness overnight.

In the days when we had very snowy winters which meant no hunting for a couple of weeks, no one got too worried about the horses' fitness. They were probably being turned out and doing a bit of road work, but then they just went back hunting again.

 

[Nicnac]

A horse living out maintains a pretty good level of fitness unless they don't have grass and stand around a hay bar 24/7! Along with working 3 x a week, should be fine to do what you're asking

 

[AGray825]

My only option over the winter is hacking twice a week and asking some basic schooling during the hack (leg yielding, flexion, counter flexion, shoulder in, haunches in etc. etc.) and either asking my mum to lunge once a week or I attempt a lunge in near darkness! (with no arena and limited lights, winter work is quite difficult)
That's in-dispersed with clinics/local competitions to keep her going out and about

Then we start quite lightly as soon as the light improves and by late March-April she's usually as fit as she was when she went into winter.

Her fitness does drop off (obviously) during the winter months, but it's not drastic!

 

[Tarragon]

A horse living out in a good sized field gets a surprising amount of exercise in a day. I think people say that it takes 3 years to get a horse properly fit, and once they get to that level it only takes a few weeks to bring them back to that level of fitness after time off. I am not sure how accurate that is and I don't know how long the "time off is" but I believe it to be about right.