How long do you ride to train?

[Janet]

Primarily an eventer, but also dressage and H/J.
I always start and end with 10 minutes at a walk, so that is 20 minutes right there,

If I am doing conditions (interval training) that might take 20-30 minutes, so a total of 49-50 minutes.

But for working in the ring (flat or fences), or riding on trails (but not interval training), it is usually 30 - 50 minutes in addition to the walk warm up and cool down, so a total of 50 - 70 minutes.

Unless I am starting a green horse, or rehabbing for an injury, I don’t think I am ever on a horse less than 30 min.

I try to ride a minimum of 3 days a week, but typically 5 or 6 days a week.

[outerbanks77]

Dressage rider. I don’t time my rides per se, but I do video myself frequently, so I get a good sense of my pattern. Total ride tends to be around 45 minutes. That usually includes 10 minutes of walk work, 5 minutes of trot warmup, then maybe 20-25 minutes of “real work” usually in 5-6 minute segments with a couple minute walk breaks in between. This has been pretty consistent for my 2nd level mare, and is about where I’ve landed with my younger horse (she’s six, not a baby, but just starting to be more rideable and getting babied less). We don’t really have places to hack out near my barn, but I try to do a bit of jumping once a week or so with my more advanced horse. Lunging/long lining is more situational - if conditions or time constraints don’t make riding practical but I don’t want them to have a full day off.

[Ajierene]

I used to ride for a shorter time, except conditioning days but I moved my horse to a place with more trails and now we hit the trails just about every day.

Dressage days are about 30 min, plus a cool out trail ride - duration varies depending on what my other life schedule is.

Jumping is about 15 min, followed by a trail ride.

Conditioning days are marked in miles - started last fall with about 1.5 miles and we are at about 2.5 miles now, about 25 min trotting around the trails or a mix of trot/canter or about 40 min of walking (my horse would go longer and we have to have discussions about my need to earn money to keep her in the lifestyle to which she has become accustomed).

Neither my horse nor myself are good at lunging, nor do we like it, so we don’t do it.

[RedHorses]

My ideal is 40-45min ring work immediately followed by 30-60min (usually 40-45min) trail riding. Without the trail option that’s 50-60min in the ring (because the cool down happens in the ring instead of on the trail).

Older horse rarely does ring work because he has heaves and the rings are too often dusty. We mostly trail ride and usually 60+min. 90min - 2 hours if we trailer out somewhere. If his heaves are bad I’ll do a short 15-25min ride to help his airways open up.

Younger llama… I mean horse often gets 10min on the lunge followed by 30-45min ridden ring work with a 10-20min walk cool on the trails. On trail days he gets 10min in the ring to check his brain position (sometimes 5-10min longe prior to the ride if I suspect it’s necessary) followed by 40-60 min on the trail. I do longe him some days I don’t ride but it’s not any kind of fixed schedule. Some drama llama days I just can’t deal with him, so I don’t.

When he was younger my older horse thrived on 6-7 days a week of the 40-45min ring/40-45min hack routine with one jumping lesson and one purely trail day each week. Younger horse does better with 2-3 days on followed by 1-2 days off regardless of what we do on work days. His brain starts to fall out if work days drop below 3 days per week. Even 15min of very focused ground work can keep his brain in place.

[Kyrabee]

Me…I just ride my horse. Well, I dabble in dressage but this old lady (me-66, not the horse-20) has some physical issues that can limit my time in the saddle. I usually do a long warm up (15min) and we may only do 10 minutes of ‘training’. I always try to finish with a hack around the property unless I don’t have time. My showing days are most likely over, so I am just riding to develop some skill sets and fitness for the mare.

I do long rein her on non-riding days….or just lunge her naked and dirty as someone posted above. At 20, she doesn’t need a whole lot of lunging but we do work on rhythm, tempo and carriage even if we have no side reins or long reins. It is possible to do that .

I don’t usually care what other disciplines are doing…they have training for their skill set and I don’t know that that is.

[tabula_rashah]

Endurance rider-
2-3 hours a couple times a week, sometimes more, sometimes less
My young guys that I’m just starting get around 30 mins to an hour of work
15 mins is less than what I do for a warm up lol

[BuckeyeFoodie]

Thank you everyone for your responses. It’s interesting to see the process other seats use!

I guess I should have clarified my “bizarre” comment - I find it strange just how much repetition she does in a ride on a single skill on a given day. I was brought up in the school of “once you have taught/practiced the skill, quit on a good note before you borrow trouble, and reinforce tomorrow” (ie if I’m working on teaching canter transitions, I might do it two or three times in a row correctly, give lots of praise and move on, not 20 times in a row) rather than “I’m going to do this one thing over and over and over”. And maybe that’s because of different breed temperaments, or differing rider skills, or this horse is just smarter than that horse, etc etc.

On a fun note, she does want me to teach her warmblood to drive! She likes the low-impact conditioning you can achieve from jogging.

[cnm161]

Dressage is about training both the response and also training muscles. For the first, ending on a good note is a great way to reinforce the right behaviors. For the second, well, repetition builds muscles. And you need to build those muscles in order to build the right behaviors for the next level (i.e. can’t do pirouettes if you can’t collect the canter first). And transitions are a much lower-impact way to access collection than staying in super-collected gaits for a long time, as an example.

Also I’m a dressage rider. My horse is usually under saddle for 45 - 70 min/d 4-5x/week, with easily 10-15 min of warm up and cool down bracketing 20 - 40 min of actual schooling.

[tabula_rashah]

Curious when we say you’re working them 15-20 mins, does that include warm up and cool down time?

[Janet]

@BuckeyeFoodie

(ie if I’m working on teaching canter transitions, I might do it two or three times in a row correctly, give lots of praise and move on, not 20 times in a row) rather than “I’m going to do this one thing over and over and over”. And maybe that’s because of different breed temperaments, or differing rider skills, or this horse is just smarter than that horse, etc etc.

Or maybe because canter transitions are judged very differently in dressage, in comparison to hunters, and, I assume, saddle seat.

In hunters (and, I assume, saddle seat), all that matters is that you have a clean. prompt transition to the correct lead. It doesn’t matter if the horse raises its head slightly, or falls on the forehand, or moves its hindquarters slightly to the inside, or moves it head slightly to the outside.

But in dressage, any one of those things will cost you points.

So your threshold for “three times in a row correctly” may be much lower than the dressage rider’s threshold for “three times in a row correctly”.

[foursocks]

Great response cnm161! My jumper takes a while to get supple and working well over his back, and only after that can he start to do collected work. Transitions and a lot of lateral work are our everyday go-to to get to where we can do a collected canter, voltes, tempi changes. So, someone just randomly watching us might wonder why we were doing five strides canter to five steps walk to five strides canter, etc., etc., etc., and that is the answer.

But every horse is different, at a different point in its training, intended for different uses. Before I retired my TB, who evented, his warm up was a very forward walk with his nose on the ground, then a stretchy trot with nose on the ground, and then he could start to go in a higher, and then a more collected frame. That worked great for him- it was how he warmed up best to really begin working over his back. If I did that with my jumper he’d never get supple enough in any given ride to do collected work. He just will not go with his nose on the ground AND use his back (versus poking out his nose and falling on his forehand) until I do lateral work and stretch him out that way. We often end with a stretchy trot and THAT is when he is able to really go low.

[BuckeyeFoodie]

Generally yes. At home, depending which horse I’m on, there really isn’t a “warm up”. Most of the horses we have in my family are very VERY game (we like what we like, lol), and doing a slow warm up just frustrates them and can start a ride off on a bad note. We usually hit the ring trotting, and then move on to whatever the game plan is for the day once we’ve done a few laps, whether that be the show-ring-special, or circles and bending to shake things up. Most of our fine bridle work is done in the lines, and fitness is done in the cart, so riding at home on a finished horse is more of a way to fine-tune if needed.

At a show we will have a brief warm-up time before we hit the ring to get those muscles warm, but typically we want them very fresh going in. I have had a few horses that needed more warm-up, but others that are best if you get on and just go.

Cool-down is done after the ride, usually with some nice hand-grazing time.

[eponacelt]

@BuckeyeFoodie

I find it strange just how much repetition she does in a ride on a single skill on a given day.

I think you’ll find most dressage riders don’t drill things over, and over, and over again. But also remember that we’re not just schooling for perfection of the movement…there is muscle to be built and the only way to do that is repetitions.

I typically am ON for 45-50 minutes, and as others have said, a good bit of that is walking. But I know when my mare is getting fatigued and usually try to get one more rep in (whether its the 3rd or 10th shoulder-in) to help build that capacity for more.

If I had time, I’d ride my horse twice a day. Once as a schooling session, and once just walking hills to build fitness. This is what my trainer does with her Grand Prix horse and its been amazing. Sadly, I don’t have this kind of time in my life.

[blue_heron]

@cnm161

For the first, ending on a good note is a great way to reinforce the right behaviors.

Ending on a good note is more for you than your horse. If things are not going well in my ride and we are having a serious off day, I would rather end the ride than have a fight and show my horse a bad experience when one could have been avoided entirely. The time to work through big issues and “ride it out” is with my trainer on the ground.

To answer the question, also as a dressage rider: my older horses schooling more advanced work get about 20 min warm up, 20 mins of “real” work, and 15-20 mins of cool down. Warming up and cooling down is not just walking laps, though that is probably five minutes on either end. 4/5 days a week, plus one on the trail.

Young horses 45 mins max. 15 min longe and 30 min ride. In the field or in the ring depends on the day.

[outerbanks77]

@BuckeyeFoodie

I find it strange just how much repetition she does in a ride on a single skill on a given day. I was brought up in the school of “once you have taught/practiced the skill, quit on a good note before you borrow trouble, and reinforce tomorrow” (ie if I’m working on teaching canter transitions, I might do it two or three times in a row correctly, give lots of praise and move on, not 20 times in a row) rather than “I’m going to do this one thing over and over and over”.

Once a dressage horse has a few “buttons” installed, I actually find it hard to squeeze as much as I want into a ride. The warmup is progressive to get the horse loose in the ribcage, stepping through and working over the back, then some collection is built, and at the end I get a few minutes of the horse’s more advanced work, which is definitely not drilled. In our case, I might do 1-2 half passes in each direction at the end of the ride. Last night my horse probably did about 30 T/C transitions, and maybe 6 W/C transitions, which might seem repetitive to an observer who thought it was about the transitions, but really it was about getting her through over her back and not hesitating to go forward. In between we are leg yielding in all gaits, shoulder in, haunches in, counter canter, serpentines, changes of frame and transitions within the gait. It should definitely not be repetitive, but rather progressive and addressing the issues the horse (and rider) have on that specific day.