How long do you ride to train?

[BuckeyeFoodie]

A friend an I were having a discussion about training, because we ride different seats (I’m Saddle Seat, she’s Dressage), and the topic of weekly training schedules and how long we ride to “work” our horses.

For example, for my Saddle Seat horse at peak fitness on a long-lining day we might do 10-15 minutes, around 15-20 minutes on a riding day, and we do three or four miles at a smart trot in the jog-cart on conditioning days (again, around 20-30 minutes). She said for dressage she might be schooling for upwards of 45 minutes to an hour+ on any given day, and that she rarely long-lines and her horse is not broke to cart so obviously no jogging days.

(For the record, we each find the other’s way of doing things bizarre.)

So I was curious for a larger sample size than just us two, so how long do you ride a horse “schooling” on a daily basis and/or what does your weekly training schedule look like?

[Foxglove]

Working now with a 15 year old OTTB to improve our dressage. Horse is thoroughly and beautifully trained; I had 5 dressage lessons in 1970s and one last month. We have our first and only show in August. 5 days a week I work with HJ an hour: 10 min lunge walk trot, 10 more trot w side reins, 10 more t/c with side reins. Three days a week I mount and do hills and trails at a trot. The other two I practice circles and transitions in the small dressage ring. So, about one hour a day for me.

[Renn_aissance]

Hunter-jumper over here, and obviously it depends on the horse and the goals. Generally speaking, when I have a fit horse who is exercising to develop strength and skill, usually 45-60 minutes a session inclusive of 10 minutes walking warm-up and cool down. I’m often training for muscular endurance, which needs to be developed by working for longer durations. I’d generally do three days in the ring with two days on the flat and one over fences, one day of flatwork in a rolling field, another day of trot, canter, or gallop sets in the field, and a long walk. My horse responded well to three days on, one day off.

On a horse whose fitness is already established and needs to be maintained, I often look for about 20-30 minutes of active work (exclusive of warmup and cooldown) a couple times a week, some kind of appropriate intervals (like trot/canter sets) outside the ring once a week, and a long hack out once.

[LSMarnell]

As you have already found out, this is completely dependent on the discipline. I do endurance/CTR and my “training”/conditioning rides are 1-5 hours long. I personally would find it very hard to even tack up if I was only going to spend 15 minutes riding.

[endlessclimb]

Agreed. On days that I don’t have time to do much but want to get their blood pumping, I just throw 'em on a line, dirty and nekkid.

[frugalannie]

IMHO it depends on several things. What are the strength and stamina needs of the discipline? How far along is the horse in its training? What is the horse’s mental fitness?

I’ve worked horses for polo (high stamina, balance), eventing (stamina, balance and strength of quarters for jumping), and now dressage (balance, strength). Obviously I’m short changing and exaggerating what each discipline asks for, but they are different. Depending on the day, it could be a short intense ride asking a lot physically (30 min or so) or it could be a longer more relaxed ride of over an hour. A longer intense ride requires physical and mental breaks for my horses

And that brings me to my main point: the mental capacity of the horse. I think that has to be developed as well as the body. It’s different for each horse, but I think they have to learn to concentrate and process all we ask of them. Bite sized pieces of information, given unambiguously, with breaks in between works best for me and my horses. I can feel when the tension is rising, so we take a break. YMMV

[findeight]

Depends on what goals I set for that particular schooling ride and how much energy and focus it requires from the horse.

For example, the Saddle Seat horse with its “brilliant’ gaits in the OP will likely use as much energy in 20 minutes as the Dressage horse in 45. Its just a different skill set. Horses that jump may be out for 45 minutes but they not jumping the whole time, more like 20 mins. actually over fences, typically not whole courses. Dressage horses don’t drill advanced moves their whole session and Reiners don’t drill the patterns, just whatever parts need polish.

You school until you meet that days schooling goal. When you meet that goal, quit while you are ahead, don’t keep drilling to meet a preset notion on the clock. Loose rein walk does not count timewise.

Never found other people’s schooling schedule “ bizarre”, just different. Never know, understanding them might help you develop what works best for you and your horse. Learning never stops.

[beowulf]

As others have said this is very discipline and horse specific.

My main motto is, I work with the horse I have that day – and then I set goals based on what horse shows up to work, and based on what our goals are that season. I do lower level eventing, hunter pacing, and the occasional dressage show.

My 14 y/o has been in my program for 8 years so I have a good feel for what days he’s got his A game and what days we’re better off trail riding for an hour. He’s ridden 4-5x a week and usually gets Mondays off. On Tuesdays we’re usually hacking for an hour, and I usually pony the 5 y/o off of him. The rest of the week we alternate dressage schooling days with interval training OR trail riding days, never schooling the same thing back to back. On schooling days he is ridden 30m to over an hour, depending on our goals that day. My main thing with him is I need to work more at the canter. The EquiApp has been very good for me: it revealed some habits in my training I could improve. I take too many walk breaks and don’t canter enough. So my goal this season is to incorporate more canter work and stop emphasizing the trot work so much. We don’t usually jump but if we are schooling XC it is usually an hour + in the tack. Most of it is spent walking, even with the EquiApp on during XC schooling, it tends to come out to something like 50m walk, 10m trot, 8m canter for a total ride time of 1 hr 8m as an example.

My 5 y/o I keep a light schedule so she enjoys work. Dressage days I try to keep under 35m. She does trot sets 1-2x a week and on those days I’m on her back a total of ~30m with 3 reps of 2m trot and 3 reps of 1m canter. The rest of the week she is either being ponied off of the 14 y/o during hacks or hacked out herself; usually I’m only on her back 3 times a week.

Very discipline specific, with goals setting the course. I don’t find other schedules bizarre or strange - it is simply different workouts for different disciplines.

[Highflyer1]

I’ve primarily evented but also dabbled in straight and western dressage, hunters, polocrosse and ridden racehorses. I would say pretty much across all disciplines actual schooling is almost always 20-25 minutes at most. Obviously conditioning/ hacking/ warmup/ cooldown/ waiting while other people jump or fences are adjusted etc. is much more time consuming. But I think generally that if you can’t accomplish the actual schooling part in 20 minutes-ish, you aren’t going to accomplish it. Horses only have so much energy and mental capacity so asking them to do something physically and mentally challenging uses it up quickly.

[Bogie]

I am a proponent of long and slow for conditioning, so the days that we hack out, I’m probably riding for an hour or two. Days that I’m training, I do a 10-minute walk to warm up, 20-30 minutes of work (depending on the intensity) and another 10-minute walk at the end. There certainly are days when I only have 15-20 minutes to ride, so I try to make those count – not by riding hard, but by doing lots of transitions/lateral work.

[mmeqcenter]

When my mare was schooling Third level dressage, debuted a show at Second:
Six days per week, 60-80 minute rides. One ride per week strictly walking. Minimum 20 minutes of walking in all other rides.

[anon40672407]

@LSMarnell

As you have already found out, this is completely dependent on the discipline.

And horse.

I ride mostly old schoolies right now. They absolutely know their business, but have been “de-trained” by hundreds of beginner riders so they are frequently dull or on automatic pilot. My rides consist of about 15-30 minutes at the walk first, but if anybody thinks I’m not re-training at the walk, think again.

Old horses need the walk to loosen up, get their blood and fluids going, stretching and suppling. I fine tune lateral movements, isolations, and extension/collection at the walk, all before moving up to “my” part of the ride which then lasts about 20-30 minute.

[sweetsalute]

My older horse, if it’s a ride where we’re just going through the paces, I’ll get that done in 20mins. If I want to focus on things more and work on stuff, it’s more like 45-60mins. She does better if we get straight to work, she takes a bit of time to settle in and too much time spent walking just annoys her and causes tension. Trail riding, she’ll happily wander for a couple hours.

My 5yo goes best with a 15mins or so of walking first, and then we usually do 10-15mins of “work”. I expect this will start to increase as she gets further along.

[eightpondfarm]

my four year old hauls in for a lesson once / wk. And on the other days i ride him just around the house, gradually tackling hills. He is pretty good going up, not so much coming down. Yet.
We are done riding in 5 or 10 mins. I spend a lot of time tacking, mounting as he needs that every bit as much as riding right now.

Mare, oh, once a week is all she gets. 2 hr lesson that i have another horse along too. I ride her probably 45 mins? maybe an hour…but i break it up…switching horses the middle of the lesson. So i go 5 or 10 mins on ‘other horse’, then her, then otherhorse for another 15 then her for a half hour then other horse for another few minutes. Sort of an ADD lesson lol

[173north]

Mine just turned 6 and has maybe 20 rides on him at this point. A big flat day is 10 - 15 min of walk exercises followed by another 10-ish minutes of trot and canter — it’s probably even less than that — and then we cool down. I do that 2x per week, with 2 even more chill hack days, plus a lunge day and 2 days off. He’s a lovely, easy little guy, I want him to enjoy his job and we’ll ramp it up slowly.

[foursocks]

My AO jumper is a bit of a fattypants right now because he has been in and out of work for the last 2.5 years due to various issues caused by being dumb in his field (aka sticking his hind leg through a gate). He’s always a tube, so getting and keeping him fit is a consistent effort, regardless!

The last few weeks I’ve been riding him in our jumping field every day, 6 days a week. This is more of a workout than in the ring, so on my flat days I usually keep it to 45-50 minutes, including the walk. We generally end with a good gallop both ways. If I’m in the ring instead of on grass the total ride is probably closer to 60+ minutes.

He’s a big, heavy WB, and while the TBs and other WB/TBx event horses at the barn are used to going on grass and terrain year-round, my guy isn’t, and it’s become an important part of our conditioning. We aren’t out there doing things like timed gallop sets the way they are, because we don’t need to and he would probably die, but I’ve adopted a lot of their conditioning for my guy and it’s been really helpful.

[endlessclimb]

Ok. This app looks really cool.

Does it work in a thigh pocket? Or does it have to be strapped to your arm?

[beowulf]

It works wherever as long as it is on the horse in some way. I’ve put it in my arm, my thigh pocket, and even on my saddle-pad that had a pocket.

It is mostly accurate in terms of trot and canter duration, but it measures speed per distance, so it might not be accurate if you have a horse with a huge stride. It can’t disseminate pacing from cantering, if that is something important to you. It relies on service to be functionally accurate. I love it for hunter paces, you can see a Google Map of where you’ve ridden.

[joiedevie99]

Dressage rider with mature horses (over 6 years). 4-5 training rides per week (not necessarily the same work/focus each day) vary from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. 1-2 relaxing hack days per week vary from 20 minutes to an hour.

[Arelle]

Me personally? Roughly two hours.

My horse? Depends on the day.

I show the All Around at breed shows. He has to be conditioned to show all day. Granted, we take LOTS of breaks and I keep him on deep shavings as much as possible at shows. But this past weekend, just on Sunday we showed the Halter at 8 am, two pleasure classes around noon, the horsemanship around 3, and the western riding around 5.

I travel a lot for work so he’s in a full time program to stay in top shape - riding wise, he maybe only gets 20-30 minutes a few times a week to work on specific things. However, he’s on the eurocizer five days a week to keep his fitness levels up. When I’m there we spend the first 30 - 45 minutes working in hand on my showmanship (it’s for my fitness too!) and then usually ride about an hour, with some of that being watching other students do their pattern while we rest (similar to a group over fences lesson where each goes individually and then waits their turn).