THEORY. How To Condition For Endurance?!

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horseless jorge!

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Ok, so I have an assignment for college to do, and mine's conditioning an 8 year old TBx gelding for a 25 mile endurance ride.

I have 12 weeks to do it in, and so far I only have week on and two.


Week One ; Horse will be brought in from the field and introduced again to the saddle and bridle.
Bearing in mind they have had a lot of time off, they will not be ridden immediately.
They will be lunged with a saddle and bridle on, in walk on both reins for 15 minutes, including trot on day two.
On day three they will be introduced to a rider again and they will be ridden on the flat in walk for 25 minutes, using roadwork also for variation.
This work in walk will be increased from 25 to 45 minutes by the end of the week.

Week Two ; The horse will be introduced to trot work in the school on day one and two under controlled conditions.
If needed, the horse will be lunged for ten minutes before being ridden.
Large circles will be used, but no smaller than 20m as the horse will not be accustomed to them.
Day three and four the horse will be hacked on the road again in walk, with trotting on straight flat parts, a maximum of five minutes trotting.
By day five, the horse will be able to do trotting on the flat and up hills, and by the end of the week should be trotting up to 20 minutes.

I know I have up to four weeks to get him fit, then I have to start with the endurance.
So how would I begin REALLY starting him on endurance riding? I've never done anything about endurance before, so can anyone helpp?
 
Forget the school work and just hack. Not sure if you mean you have 12 weeks to do the assignment, or 12 weeks to get the horse fit? If it is 12 weeks to get a horse fit, then I would spend the first 3 in walk, introducing hill work at the end of the second week, then trot work at the end of the 3rd. This ensures that the horse has a base level of fitness and hardens the tendons up before any fast work is introduced. But I think you mean that the horse has to be fit in 4 weeks, which I think is too short a time personally, but maybe I am old fashioned!!
 
lhotse; I have 12 weeks to get the horse fit hehe. My lecturer said that when conditioning a horse for anything (hunting, showing, endurance), the first four weeks are always the same? I'm not entirely sure, but I also think four weeks is too short haha!
 
Feeding will play a very important part in this - has your lecturer forgotten about feeding, or does he/she know nothing about feeding endurance horses???????
 
Happytohack ; Nope, course she hasn't haha. But me being me, tired and grumpy with this assignment, I've just missed it out. She never actually mentined putting in feeding rules, but for an endurance horse I wouldn't know anyway!!
 
Me personally, I do something like this:

At least 3 weeks walking. If the horse has a history of soft tissue injury, double it. I don't ride every day, more like about 4 times a week. Horse has as much turnout as possible, 24/7 if available, as I want it to be moving around when I'm not there, too.

Each week usually comprise of two 'longer' rides and two 'shorter' rides. The longer rides will be slower, and once we're out of walk the shorter rides will be faster. One or both of the 'shorter ride' days may be a schooling or lunging session. Schooling is important for the distance horse as they've got to remain balanced in order to move efficiently. I like to lunge or loose school at least once a fortnight as it means I can really watch the horse move from the ground.

So, what have we got?
Weeks 1-3 walking. By week 3, I'd expect the horse to be doing 1-1 1/2 hours' walking on the 'long ride' days and 1/2-1 hour's hill work or walk schooling on the 'short ride' days. 3 rest days a week.
Weeks 4-5 introduce trotting. By week 5 I'd expect the horse to be doing 2 hrs at 'scouts pace' (bit of walk, bit of steady trot, bit of walk, bit of steady trot) on the 'long ride' days and up to an hour's more active trot work (longer periods of trot, some hills in trot, some schooling in trot, lunging in trot) on the 'short ride' days.

At the end of Week 5 I'd take the horse to a local 15 mile (25km) pleasure ride if there was one, and ride it steadily at 'scouts pace', taking the full 3 hours. A couple of days off afterwards, monitor legs/recovery/stiffness and take longer over remainder of fitness programme if any concerns.

Week 6, introduce canter (if it didn't introduce itself at the pleasure ride LOL). Long rides still 2 hrs scouts pace, shorter rides still up to an hour but now include some canter. Still 3 days off a week.
Week 7, long rides up to 10-12 miles scouts pace, short rides more sustained canter.
Week 8, probably no 'long' rides, just a couple of short cantery rides early in the week and then a couple of mosey on a long rein leg stretches in the latter part of the week.

Pony should then be fit enough for a flattish 40km ridden at novice speed.

ps If I'm doing this properly, on the days the pony has off each week I'll take myself off jogging or sommat - human fitness is important too.

pps You don't need to ride for miles and miles and miles in training - quality not quantity of training is important. Even when H was 60 miles fit, I never rode more than 20 miles in one go at home.
 
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Hopefully you will be able to read this. If not pm me with your email address & I will send you the file.
SpecimenTrainingplanEndurance.jpg
 
A sound 8 year old that has had a couple of months holiday and was presumably reasonably fit,is not going to take a lot to bring back into work. I would personaly not take the horse in a school at all.I strongly believe that hacking out, straight line work is much better from the start. Work in a school puts all sorts of strains on legs that may not be ready for it. I would be starting from wk 1 walking out and gradualy build up the duration . As this is not a youngster and has been comparatively recently in work I would be happy to do some trotting after the first week,but not much,its the hours walking that do the good. Tendons and ligaments take a lot longer than muscle to strengthen. This is a problem with youngsters .You can quickly build up enough muscle to really damage them. But this prsumably is not the case here.
The secret of training is to listen to the horse and let him tell you when he can do more. While a training plan is usefull as a rough guide ,remember that is all it is. All horses respond differently to training and any plan must be flexible. Hill work is great annd gives a good idea as to how the horse is progressing . It is the recovery rate that you are looking at,regardless of pace or stage of training. The other great advantage of hill work is that it can put the cardiovascular system under load without hammering the joints with fast work. Fast work is a mixed blessing and breaks down a lot of horses.
My idea of hill work, well when I used to pt to pt, I used a local hill .2 furlongs of grass up 150 ft rise. For an unfit horse merely a slow walk would be enough to get them blowing hard ,so one would have to be carefull . I used to take them there a couple of times a week and slowly build up the pace and number of times they did it There was a long winding path back down to the start and I judged their ability to take on more work by how long it took them to stop blowing and cool off.
Feeding , dont be tempted into giving lots of protein ,Too much actualy slow them down .They need enough for maintenance plus muscle building. More does not mean better. In fact there is evidence that too much protein makes the sweat foamy and reduces its cooling effect.
Ultimately fitness is achieved by miles and miles of steady work. There are no shortcuts.
 
Mike has some really good points about hills, and what he's describing is basically interval training - stress the cardiovascular system by taking them over the anaerobic threshold, allow them to recover, stress the cardiovascular system, allow them to recover. You can do that by using gallop work, but if you've got a decent hill then that will be far more effective without the added risks of injury that fast work brings. As an example, when I rode my lad with a heart rate monitor, a fast canter on the flat would only take his pulse to 120ish, whereas walking up a 1 in 3 hill for a mile put it up to 220. And a friend of ours got and kept her horse 100 miles fit by training round her local pennine hills in walk.

Another thing I thought of - technically in this country we don't have 25 mile endurance rides. Our endurance rides proper start at 50 miles, and anything less than that is a graded 'set speed' ride. On a graded ride, you're basically competing against yourself and you have to complete the course within a minimum and maximum average speed and bring the horse back fit enough to go again. At novice level, that minimum speed is not fast (8kph/5mph) so the level of fitness required is not huge and should be within the capabilities of most horses. If the horse is fit enough to do a 2 hour fairly active hack from home, it is more than likely fit enough to do a flattish 25 mile/40km novice ride taken steadily. 8-10 weeks to bring a healthy horse with no history of 'issues' back up to that level if they've only had a couple of months off (say over winter) should be fine, but allow extra time if the horse does have 'issues' or if your intended first 40km is a hilly one. All things being equal I'd start walking out on new years day hoping to compete in March, but the other thing to remember is that the weather can turn on you at that time of year so that can also set you back. Mike also makes another very good point which goes for any fitness 'plan' for any discipline - assess the fitness of the horse you have in front of you, not the horse that the 'plan' says you should have. Listen to the horse.

In some other countries they do run 25 mile/40km endurance rides - ie massed start, first past the post wins (as long as they pass the vet). These are more like a race, and the 25 mile endurance rides tend to be won at a faster speed (sometimes under 2 hours) unless the terrain slows them down. If you wanted to be seriously competitive at such a ride, your training regime would be similar to that of training a racehorse. The closest we have in this country to a 25 mile 'endurance ride' is the arab marathon, which is an entirely different animal to a steady novice graded ride. In fact their website lays out just how different your approach to fitness needs to be to approach such a ride: http://www.arabmarathon.co.uk/drupal/node/14 They recommend that an endurance horse entering into 26 mile speed training and aiming to be a serious contender is 80km fit first and then you put additional training on top of that.

So, in short, your fitness program is going to depend on how hilly the ride you're aiming at is, how fast you're going to want to ride it, and the veterinary history of the horse you're training.
 
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