is your horse fit ?

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Megibo

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as title really.
and how many times a week would you say riding is needed to maintain fitness...
i was hoping to hack my mare minimum 3 days a week in the winter to improve her fitness and keep her ticking over and come summer holiday from college ride her everyday and make this a pattern (for the seasons, if that makes sense...)
is 3 times hacking a week enough to keep a horse relatively fit ?
 
If your hacking out at a good pace in walk, trot and canter, then yes I guess if your horse keeps its fitness ok then I guess you will be ok.
B is fit, he is worked hard - one hour schooling 2 times a week, and jumped/evented once a week. He normally has a day off, but if not a quiet hack.
 
These days fitness is really only an interpretation of what you want the horse to do...

No your horse wont be 'Fit' enough for Badminton on 3 hacks a week.

Yes if your horse is hacking 3 times a week, then after 3 or 4 weeks if they are not sweating heavily each time, then your horse is 'Fit' for your needs.
 
Yes I spose I'd want her hacking fit for winter, however took her out on a 45 minute walkie hack the other day. she's only been freeschooled total 10 mins walk 5 mins trot and she jogged a bit as she was fresh. wasn't sweaty at all at the end, so i can't really judge her fitness on how much she sweats. Same goes for a young horse on the yard, she never sweats even if you ride her a while.

Come summer she'll be at a friends yard so we can make use of their school and that would be work everyday (or 6 out of 7) with trot and canter. I'd like her fit enough for local jumping if the oppurtunity arises and want the hacking over winter to maintain her 'competition' fitness.
 
If your horse is fit going into the winter,when work is then reduced to 3 hacks a week,she should maintain a reasonable level and be able to do the odd SJ day.

If she is going into this regime unfit 3 days hacking is not likely to be enough.

Sweating during work is only one guide to how fit your horse is,respiration and recovery are a more reliable way to gauge fitness.
 
be positive said:
If your horse is fit going into the winter,when work is then reduced to 3 hacks a week,she should maintain a reasonable level and be able to do the odd SJ day.

If she is going into this regime unfit 3 days hacking is not likely to be enough.

Sweating during work is only one guide to how fit your horse is,respiration and recovery are a more reliable way to gauge fitness.
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currently she's freeschooled regularly so not totally unfit, and her free schooling time will be increased before ridden work begins
 
At the moment mine aren't fit at all. Couch potatoes, the lot of 'em (but then one is 30+, one is 25 and one is 2).

As to whether a horse can be kept fit on 3 days a week - even at the height of Harry's endurance career he only ever did 4 days a week work to get and keep 50 miles fit, less if he'd competed the previous weekend. And that was mostly hacking as I don't have a school.

It depends on what you do on those 3 or 4 days a week, and also how the horse is managed. Ours live out full time so they do a lot of walking around - if they were stabled for all or most of the time, I would have to put some additional work in to replace the movement that they wouldn't be getting from turnout.

Even if you do drop right back on the work over winter (I often do - I go into winter with good intentions and end up thinking 'sod it'), if they've been fit the previous year they do tend to 'bounce back' quite quickly, fitter and stronger, in the spring.
 
To keep your horse fit enough to do a show/show jumping day/ODE or Hunter Trial you need to be doing about 1hrs steady trotting daily for at least 5 days a week. Many people these days feed too much and don't work enough.

Mine is about to find out about getting fit - we have finally got the weight off by restricting her food intake and she is now at a safe level to work. I am ashamed of her overweight state but had no means of restricting her grazing sufficiently to control her waistline.
 
It depends what you mean by fit? Do you mean endurace/jumping/hunting/hacking/dressage fit?

Personally I think you can get to hung up on so called fitness. If a horse is stabled all day and dragged out for an hours dressage schooling twice a day, could he then do a 50 mile endurance ride? Equally could the endurance horse hold himself through a strenuous dressage test without sweating up?

Horse for courses means and just that. You get your horse to the fitness you want for what you want to do with it, in comfort and without being OTT about it. Some horses such as tb's can get fit just looking over the door, others such as summered out cobs would take a little longer.

You should be able to tell wether your horse is fit enough and alter the work level accordingly.
 
EstherYoung said:
At the moment mine aren't fit at all. Couch potatoes, the lot of 'em (but then one is 30+, one is 25 and one is 2).

As to whether a horse can be kept fit on 3 days a week - even at the height of Harry's endurance career he only ever did 4 days a week work to get and keep 50 miles fit, less if he'd competed the previous weekend. And that was mostly hacking as I don't have a school.

It depends on what you do on those 3 or 4 days a week, and also how the horse is managed. Ours live out full time so they do a lot of walking around - if they were stabled for all or most of the time, I would have to put some additional work in to replace the movement that they wouldn't be getting from turnout.

Even if you do drop right back on the work over winter (I often do - I go into winter with good intentions and end up thinking 'sod it'), if they've been fit the previous year they do tend to 'bounce back' quite quickly, fitter and stronger, in the spring.
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Ah okay. She lives out 24/7 so far but at some point this winter she'll live in during the day. Fed on a bit of chaff since she has been on a strict diet and is now a great weight now just need to get her fit enough for the odd local show.
by june she'll need to be fit enough to compete locally, and after she moves to her summer yard she'll need to be fit enough to hack 5 miles to the show, compete and then hack 5 miles back.
 
elsbells said:
It depends what you mean by fit? Do you mean endurace/jumping/hunting/hacking/dressage fit?

Personally I think you can get to hung up on so called fitness. If a horse is stabled all day and dragged out for an hours dressage schooling twice a day, could he then do a 50 mile endurance ride? Equally could the endurance horse hold himself through a strenuous dressage test without sweating up?

Horse for courses means and just that. You get your horse to the fitness you want for what you want to do with it, in comfort and without being OTT about it. Some horses such as tb's can get fit just looking over the door, others such as summered out cobs would take a little longer.

You should be able to tell wether your horse is fit enough and alter the work level accordingly.
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agree with this totally. when i got my tb after he'd spent 6 months in the field doing nothing, after a few weeks taking it easy he could have easily gone out for a 2 hour hack with trotting and cantering without tiring and hardly even sweating, but 15 minutes in the school when we were starting his schooling would have him on his knees. so on the face of it he seemed quite fit but i was shocked to get off after our first schooling session to find him really sweaty when i thought he was so full of beans.
 
As others have said, fitness would be determined by what you are aiming at, if its dressage you'd require a different type of fitness to an 80k endurance horse. hacking 3-4 times a week on flat ground in walk will not create the same amount of fitening as hacking 3-4 times a week on hilly ground...

Mine is certainly not fit anymore, but then again she's semi-retired so ridden 2-3 times a week, either plodding around the fields (or pi**ing off with me as she did last week) or a bit of schooling.

Oh, and I dont think how 'sweaty' the horse is, is a reflection of fitness personally...
 
My boy is quite fit atm but he won't reach peak fitness until we have started hunting properly. I don't hunt him more than a couple of times a month anyway but I always like to get him as fit as possible.

Last winter he was very fit. He was ridden 5-6 times per week which was nearly all hacking varying from anywhere between 1 and 3 hours! We did lots of trot and canter work (e.g a mile of trot and a mile of canter) and when he could do this without being out of breathe, I knew he was fit. We also did a lot of hill work.

I agree that a lot of people tend to feed too much these days when they're horses aren't very fit but there is no better way than regular exercise. My boy is proof that horses don't need to be fed loads of concentrates to perform well. He is a good doer and would get overweight really easily if I fed him the correct amount of hard feed for his body weight so I feed him 2 cups of Bailey's Lo-Cal Balancer and 1/2 scoop of chaff over the winter and we hunted last winter with him being fed this and he was one of the fittest on the field! I did start adding 1/2 scoop of pony cubes on the days he was ridden towards the end of the season though as I didn't want him to lose anymore weight. Once your horse is fit, it is pretty easy to keep them fit even if you ride them one or two times less per week.
 
My horse is VERY fit but she is the type of horse who can keep fit very easily.

If anyone would like to try and tire my horse out they are more than welcome, I have never known her physically tired since she was a 4yo :rolleyes:

She's currently ridden 6 days a week mainly hacking.
 
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