I gave my horse the winter off this year, and I"ll be getting back in the saddle probably within the week (once he’s completely sound after that abscess). I’ve never given him, or any other horse, that much time off. Since I started riding as a child, I’ve never gone that long without riding! So I’m just looking for a basic plan for bringing back to work. Horse is out 24/7, 12 years old. I was thinking first couple of rides 15-20min of walking should be plenty, with maybe up to 5 minutes of trotting. A week on that schedule and then 10-15min of trotting and a bit of cantering. The most we ever do is 30-45min of walk/trot with maybe a lap or two around at a canter. I am thinking it shouldn’t take more than 3 weeks to get back to that point. What are your thoughts on this?
I combined both of these and do what work best for my horse. Lots of walking with a purpose as first. I don’t Event but I’ve never had an injury or issues with my pony following the combo schedules.
http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/features/eventing-fitness-plan-607381
http://useventing.com/news/conditioning-event-horse-novice-and-training-levels
Your starting point, and time to ramp up, largely depends on what his turnout has been like for the past 5 months.
If he’s been out in a small, flat paddock, that’s different from a large hilly pasture.
In general, 3 months off and most all condition is gone. More is gone if the horse is a slug, less is gone if he’s a very active pastured horse.
After 5 months, I’d start with 2 weeks of walking. Really walking. It’s so underrated and undervalued, but is SO valuable. Muscle will gain condition before tendons before ligaments, so you have to train to the strength of ligaments. as the days of those 2 weeks go on, gradually add in light lateral work so that he’s getting laterally supple/conditioned, as well as longitudinally.
I would double all your timelines. 3 weeks is nothing compared to 5 months of no work. He’s in forced work AND carrying your weight.
Just start off with walking… Make sure he is walking- tracking up, on the bit, going a nice speed… Start adding in 5 min trot sets. I have never had a horse off for so long, so when I start doing hill and distance work I’d do as follows…
Week One: 15 mins trot. No breaks.
Week Two: 25 mins trot. No breaks.
Week Three: 30 mins trot. 5 min walk. 3 min canter. 5 min walk. 3 min canter. Walk out.
Week Four: 30 mins trot. 3 min walk. 5 min canter. 3 min walk. 5 min canter. 3 min walk. 5 min canter. Walk out.
Build up in gradual increments. Do flat work outside of the arena half of the time and avoid small circles/serpentines. I do speed work/sprints 1-2 times a week after a flat ride. Ride 4-5 times a week at first and work your way to 6 as he improves.
I typically ice my horses or put liniment on them after hill/distance work as it’s hard. I also like to put boots on.
that really is a lot for a horse that has had five months off… especially if from injury or if it is a horse that is not kept on 24/7 turnout. could you run 15 minutes with no break?
to me, that type of exercise schedule might fit a very young horse but IMHO not that good for a horse with mileage or little TB blood.
every year my guys get the winter off. every year, i bring them back into work. they usually get dec-feb entirely off with the occasional weekend warrior walk hack around the property in late nov and late feb. so every year around march, they get put back into work. they are out 24/7 so I start with a 6 week conditioning plan with the first week being long slow distance hacks only. most of mine are 100% TB and I could probably introduce cantering earlier, but I find while they fit up easily, it’s the tendons you have to slowly condition via limb-load. I prefer to do that on roads and hacks but that’s a subject for another thread.
JB has the right idea, it depends on the horse’s turnout. if they are out 24/7, you can start with a more generous fitness level. JB is also right that iMHO the most important step of bringing back a horse is getting it out and walking, active, forward marching pace, on the trails – before you introduce ring work and circles. 2 weeks is best.
the best thing you can do is lots and lots of hacking, on terrain - this conditions the limbs slowly and appropriately (if done at a marching walk only with occasional trots) and hills will immensely help their topline.
I have several posts on this forum about bringing back horses from winters or layup - consult your vet first, but this older thread has some information on the fitness schedule i follow:
https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…-purp-etc-help
additionally, look into interval training on the trails. IMHO, avoid ring work and repetitive circles (especially if the horse was not on 24/7 turnout) until the 3rd/4th week.
a more recent thread:
https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/f…oning-schedule
It takes 6-8 weeks to ramp back up to 45 minutes of flatwork.
Start with 1-2 weeks of walking. Add trotting 5 minutes per week. When you get to 20 minutes of trot, start adding a few minutes of canter.
15 minutes straight trotting, no breaks, in Week 1, for a horse with 5 months off, even at full turnout:
Sure, a horse could probably do it, but I guarantee he can’t do it well, and after probably half that time, will invert and trail his hocks.
Quality over quantity.
Even if a horse is used to being ridden for 2 hours at a time, but allowed to do his own thing, if he’s brought in to “proper” work, he can probably only work properly for 20 minutes, after 10 minutes of a good warmup, and with breaks.
Always always always work in quality, and build quantity from there. You’ll get “there” much faster.
Ok I will lengthen the timeframe, thank you for all your input.
He would have maintained some fitness walking through the very deep snow all winter. I don’t have any great rush to get back, not going to show or anything like that, so I can take as much time as he needs.
I mentioned that I wouldn’t do that immediately for something just coming back… That’s what we do after bringing back into shape through flatwork.
@PlanB are you involved in any fitness activities yourself? Can you remember a time when you might have been pretty active in daily life stuff, then for whatever reason, had a few months off, doing just bare minimum movement? If so, try to remember how you felt when you started resuming your normal level of activity. If you were pretty young, it might not have been so difficult and might not have taken you long to get back into the swing of things. Youth allows for that 
But if you were older - and by that I mean into your 30’s or so - it’s harder and takes longer to come back to the previous level of activity.
At 12, your horse isn’t OLD, but he’s not 5 or 8 either, and he’s at that age where it starts to take a little longer to warm up, to come back to a previous level of fitness, etc.
haha, I’m mid-30’s so I’ll probably be a bit sore to start back in the saddle anyways!
Good point to consider that he’s “older” now. It’s amazing how time flies. I bought him as a 2 year old, could 10 years have really gone by already?
It’s a time warp. They’re all over the place. One minute you still have the “baby horse” who’s going to do great things, and the next blink, he’s “aged” 
My horses always have the winter off, with 24/7 turnout with room to move around, and I go by thus guideline as well.
Isn’t there an old rule of thumb that for every month off, it takes that many months to get back to where you were before the time off?
I’m in a similar situation to the OP, except my horse is much older and so am I. It was my illness that resulted in the time off, and horse has been on 24/7 freedom.
It’s been a while since I’ve read all the articles/books about bringing horses back to work. When it comes to fitness lost, isn’t it also true that horses that were very fit and sound for a long time will come back quicker than a horse that didn’t have much fitness to begin with? My horse has never had any downtime for injury and was very fit when given the time off.
I started out with walking for 30 minutes and long/loose rein. I only did that for a few days before I ask for a small bit of trot, just like one long side of the arena before transition back to walk. Mainly I wanted to see if he felt sound. As days went by, I trotted a little bit longer, but still I do very very short spurts (like 2 minutes or less) and then back to walk on a long rein for a minute or so. I’ve got 16 rides in so far, and I don’t plan on cantering for quite a while yet. Also, I didn’t do any circles (even at the walk) until my last two rides and only one or two circles.
Do you guys give any days off when bringing them back?
No way that my 9 yr old pony … who has been off work since December…could do 15 minutes of trotting in the first week.
Yikes!
We’ve been …sort of…back to ‘work’ for 3 weeks now and he can only manage 2-3 minutes trot. No canter at all. We just walk and walk and then trot for 2 minutes, then walk. Rinse and repeat a couple of times.
We are have scheduled a lesson with our trainer for May 14th, at which time we MAY be able to get 30 minutes ‘work’ done.
I have been joining in with my 10 yr old Granddaughters weekly lessons…riding a 12.2 pony… so I am getting into riding shape, too. There is a lot of updown updown updown when riding the small ones 
When my horse had a SDFT tear, my vet gave me a great/strict schedule to bring the mare back to work, and she came back so fit, sound, and better muscled than pre-injury, it’s what I use legging all horses up now (albeit, less strict).
It was pretty much what you’re doing, but we did a month of walking, 30 mins a day, as much straight as possible, and as much on solid footing as possible…so lots of hacking around dirt roads. Then added trot sets weekly, starting with one 3 minute trot, then 2x 3 or 4 min trots, week by week until we were at 30 mins walk, and 5x 4-5min trots. All trot was on straight lines. Then I could do full laps of the ring in trot…but only a few times a ride. Then canter, but only like 2 circles at a time. So it was 4 weeks walking, 6 weeks building up trot, then another 4 weeks building up canter and circles, and another month or so getting back to lateral work etc.
To answer your question, I rode 7 days a week if I could, but didn’t stress giving her days off when I couldn’t get there…so generally 6 days a week.
So basically, I use a version of the above, as much hacking as possible, and tons of walk…granted this necessitates a horse who is safe to hack out after time off…most of the horses I’ve legged up have been fox hunters, so out and about is easy. I think I might go crazy if I had to do that whole thing in a ring.
I am 100% on Team Walk. Walk until you can walk no more. Hack endlessly for at least 2 weeks, ideally a month. Build up from a half hour to an hour and a half. Then, start adding trot.
Trot sets are great, but be easy on him. If you’ve ever tried doing the Couch to 5k program, that’s the same concept. First you do a minute of running however many times, you increase the duration of nonstop running over the weeks until eventually you’re running a 5k without stopping.
I would start with 3 x 1-minute trots for a week, then 3 x 2-minute trots, then 3 x 3-minute trots, etc. Basically the conditioning schedule outlined a few posts back.
There’s nothing more valuable than taking your time when bringing a horse back. You don’t want to burn him out or injure him!
Rode for the first time yesterday; just a 22 minute walk in the paddock. Didn’t want to go out into the trails because I was alone on the property, and it was also cold and windy. It was nice to get back into the saddle!
That seems a bit extreme! I only have about 7 months of “not winter” and it was nice giving him the winter off. I guess it also depends just how fit you are before the break. We don’t work very hard to begin with.
