Interval training advice

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Hi
Can anyone share any tips or schedules on interval training for a horse competing at be100 and rc stuff. He's not a youngster and vet suggested this after diagnosing 'slight' copd after a cloudy scope. I normally ride between 4-5 times a week. 1 sj, 2 flat 1 plod out, 1 canter ride. Is this enough? He's a mw type m 14yrs.

Many thanks
Pip
 
Hi. I used interval training and found it brilliant. The exact details I took were from one of Lucinda Green's books but essentially you need to do interval training every third or fourth day. My initial programme for a horse with a basic level fitness would be 3 minute canter/3 minute stand/3 minute canter/3 minute stand/3 minute canter. The heart rate should be almost but not fully recovered in the stand period. If they are recovering easily within the time reduce the stand time to 2 minutes. Once you have the stand times down to 1 minute then up the canter time to 4 minutes/stand/3 minutes/stand/3 minutes. If your horse is a middle weight I would make the canter a fast one. If your canter circuit can include a hill section that is even better. Essentially you just tailor it to suit the horse's type and competition level.

In my day we started at Pre Novice and the simple 3 minute canters with 1 minute stand programme was sufficient for that level but I was definitely a short route rider. Just use your own common sense and trial and error to work out what works for you and your horse. I do recommend reading all the Lucinda Green books. There is a full interval training programme in one of them but basically great fun to read if you're into eventing with lots of useful information thrown in.

Hope that helps.
 
^^^ this is good advice except I don't know anyone who stands for the recovery phase, it's usual to keep the horse walking as far as I know.
also, if you are using a flat gallop, i would make the recovery times shorter. ditto if it's a cool day. on a hot day and uphill gallop and doing sharpish times, i'd do 3 min recovery phases. i've used a heart monitor but find it easier to count respirations to determine how fast the horse is recovering. i usually do the first canter at a steady canter, the next one or two) canter sets at a hand gallop kind of thing, and if a fourth one (not usually for N or lower!), do that sharper, maybe even incl a 100m or so sprint. all depends on the horse really, and the terrain.
 
I was going to query the standing to recover. I have always walked in between reps. Same as a human athelete would do - it helps stop lactic acid build up in muscles and therefore stiffness.
 
Where do people go to do all this cantering? Round the edge of a field? Am hard-pressed to find places where I can canter for 3 minutes continuously without tripping over a pram or a loose dog! :confused:

I guess I really do have to get over this big-field fear, soonish! :o
 
We are lucky and have grass strips round all the fields on the farm. You can do the canter work in the school though if you have to, or hire some gallops every now and then.
 
usually gallops, or certain bridleways can be suitable, I used to use one that was perfect, but as you say, you need quite a distance to do 3 or 3 min 30 canters... for higher levels the canters get longer obv. if you can find a field or gallops with a decent hill you can get more fitness from less time galloping, which is good for avoiding wear and tear...
 
We have a forest track here that's called "the gallops", because you used to be able to canter pretty much the whole 3-km loop. That would have been ideal, except that it hasn't been maintained, and is now too dodgy in many places for even us slightly mad endurance types to canter for long stretches. I will have to make do with fields, I suspect. I hate fields! Will go investigate the main candidate this week, hopefully...

A few more questions! If every 3--4 days, does the interval training constitute the main part of exercise for that day? And how does the build-up fit into the general pre-comp fittening programme?
 
I do mine in a 2 acre bit of set aside. Very boring going round and round, but doea the job. There is a 2nd bit which I can nip into the the last pull up a hill, and usually do that on the last rep.

I do it twice a week, with a short hack (2 miles odd) as warm up. Then walking until he cools down at the end. This is if he is eventing. If not, then I still like to one or so a week, just to keep him fitter. Bet there can't be too many dressagey types doing interval training!

I used to go to the beach, but its really easy for them to lop along without putting too much effort in. I do go the beach for a spin out though ;)
 
If you use steep hills does it matter if the canter is shorter? We have a brilliant hill for cantering but its about 1:4 and takes just under a minute to go up at a xc canter and 3 mins to walk down.
 
spookypony said:
Where do people go to do all this cantering? Round the edge of a field?
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I use the arena but I guess I'm lucky that we have a 60m arena which is probably about 25m wide. I just push on for a few quick-ish gallop strides on the long sides and collect a little for the corners/short edges - it can get a bit hairy motor-biking around the corners if I'm not careful! But yes, very boring and dizzying so I tend to only to 3 or 4 sessions of 2 or 3 minutes at a time, changing the direction for each session.

buckaroo said:
Sorry, didn't think I'd need to say not to stand exactly still! Will be more precise if I post again.
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You gave really good advice (not just because I have the same book I think you were referring to:)) please don't be put off from posting because of a misunderstanding.
 
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Broke_But_Happy said:
If you use steep hills does it matter if the canter is shorter? We have a brilliant hill for cantering but its about 1:4 and takes just under a minute to go up at a xc canter and 3 mins to walk down.
Click to expand...

If it's a sharp hill you can reduce times hugely.
When getting horses ready for 2* and then 3* LF CCI, i used to use totally flat gallops at first, and, building up, ended up doing 3 sets of 8 minutes. Think I did 3 x 10 mins once, albeit a lot at a lob-along sort of gallop. That was a LOT of wear and tear on them, I hated doing it.
Then I switched to uphill gallops. Used one that was about 1 min 30 from bottom to top, 1.15 if you really steamed along. Took about 3 mins to walk back down. I think it was 7 furlongs but really can't remember. Used to go up there 4 times, that was enough.
Final workout before 3* LF I used gallops that I was told WFP was using at the time, started with a gentle climb and then a pretty steep hill. It's a long time ago but I think it took about 1.45 to 2 mins from bottom to top and doing that 3 or 4 times was enough. I was told he went up there 4 times before 4*s... but, I have no idea of recovery times, speeds he went etc.
The interesting thing was that a few times up a hill made the horses breathe really really deeply, really filling their lungs kind of thing, whereas a LONG time cruising on the flat did not make them breathe anything like that. I always try to avoid going flat out, had the odd short sprint on a stuffy one but that was all. Speed breaks horses down imho.
Some people wait for that telling double breath and judge horse's fitness on that, whereas I counted and timed resps and recovery time and went on those.
Of course, sure I don't need to say it, but the least suspicion of heat or swelling in tendons the night before (all sorts of things show up at 10pm check that aren't there at other times imho), you don't gallop...
 
The best way to do it is with a pulse monitor.

What you're doing is pushing them above the anaerobic threshold for a bit, and then letting them come back down again. Over time this will increase fitness and actually raise the anaerobic threshold. Get an idea of how it affects your own body first, so that you know what you are trying to achieve on t'pony. Jog slowly. You can hold a conversation, right? You're comfortable? You could keep that going for a while? OK, now speed up. Speed up to the point where you can feel your heartrate getting stronger and faster. To where you can't hold a conversation. To where your legs start feeling like they are actually doing something. You've just crossed the anaerobic threshold. Keep at it for a minute. Now ease to the pace you were doing before. Think about how long it takes you to recover and feel as comfortable as you did before. Rinse and repeat.

With a horse, depending on build/fitness the anaerobic threshold is likely to be around 170-200 bpm, and if you know your horse you'll know when they've reached it. The problem is that as they get fitter, 200+ bpm is actually quite hard to reach. Just doing canter work and calling it interval training won't cut it - you need to get those pulses up for the requisite length of time. H at his fittest would be 90bpm cantering quite fast on the flat, so I had to think outside the box. The only thing I could find that would push him up anywhere near the anaerobic threshold was *walking* up a very steep hill (1 in 2) on the moors, and he'd then come back down again going down the other side. If you've got decent hills (and I mean decent), you'll get all the cardiovascular benefits of interval training without the risk of injury that fast work brings just by going up and down the hills.

If all you've got is flat areas to work in, then you'll probably find you need to push up to a reet proper gallop to get the desired effect.
 
Thanks for that, hill in question is:

IMAG0352.jpg


Slightly misleading as the horizon is actually only about 2/3 of the way up :) So would it be enough to canter up/walk down 3 or 4 times?
 
That's one of those hills that just says 'canter' isn't it ;)

It will depend on how fit your horse is as to how much it will raise the pulse. Once the horse starts being able to canter all the way up like it was nothing, you'll probably have to look to either go faster or find a steeper hill. But yes, in theory that hill looks like a very useful training tool.
 
so, is it flattish, gentle pull uphill, steeper hill, flattish again? that's what it looks like. Tbh I would probably walk back down the steep bit and then trot or steadily canter on the flat bit back to the start, then go again immediately, because that doesn't look very long or very steep. That way you keep the exertion up a bit and cut down the recovery time. Depending on horse fitness/fatness, level of comp, and the temperature/windchill/humidity on the day... these are all really important.
(fwiw the hill gallops I used were a continuous pull, the main one I used 2 x weekly was steady pull, level for about 50m, steep steep hill, level again, then steady pull, so quite a lot more effort than your hill looks.)
that looks really good though, wish i had that around here!
 
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