Walking is entirely how I kept a whole string of Fox Hunters injury free for all 3 years I worked there. Walking, especially up big hills, can do more than galloping with far less concussion. Now it’s best in conjunction with regular work in all the gaits but add in lateral work and varied gaits ( Lengthen/shorten) on hills and life gets better.
Cudo does a ton of walking and we do a walking lateral work session about once every 9 days or so. Lateral work is much harder when you have to stay slow and correct in the walk and make smoother transitions.
Every schooling ride I take I start with 10-15 min walking. First on a long rein, then at a more workmanlike pace where we start to bend and do lateral work. The gelding is 17 and we consider him a miracle horse due to his full recovery from a fractured hock. I’m 43 and have wrangled with Lyme disease. We both need time to break up the “fuzz” fascia off our muscles.
Did you know that a real, tactile “fuzz” builds up between the layers of muscle overnight? And that if you don’t make it a habit to stretch and break it apart it starts to strengthen and eventually will hinder your ease of movement? Battle the FUZZ!! Walk!
Your best defense against soft tissue injuries are a nice long walk before and AFTER your ride. 10-15 minutes to warm up and cool down each.
That being said, I also think a lot of people don’t spend enough time riding the walk. To spend that much time walking the horse for weeks could never be a bad thing! Especially in the summer!
Another plus for walking the horse in the summertime.
If you get your horse into a decent free striding walk (3.5-4.5 MPH) there is a breeze, a slight breeze to be sure, but since we riders do not have to move our whole bodies as much at the walk we sweat less.
This mild breeze works pretty decently with getting the technical fabric summer fabrics to work like they should in spite of the humidity. In the heat of the summer I feel cooler walking the horse than when we stand still or do faster gaits. It did not work as well with the old type fabrics, to get the effect you have to have the technical fabric summer wear and walk your horse.
Know Better to Do Better: Mistakes I Made with Horses so You Don’t Have To, it’s out in hardcover only right now. There is another thread here on horse books that has a few more suggestions.
I think walk is totally overlooked; that being said, I wouldn’t go back to just walking for a month if your horse is in a reasonable amount of work already. If it’s coming off layup, that’s one thing, but I think it’s important for our approach to be practical. One lesson I’ve learned is that we can easily become too focused on one small area that doesn’t help us meet the end goal of jumping courses. IE if you walk for a month and practice nothing else, the jumping won’t have magically transformed.
What I would do is incorporate it into your daily or weekly work. Either incorporate longer periods into your daily rides or dedicate a day/week (perhaps out of the ring with some hill work if available). The key is making sure it’s useful, marching, working walk with variations in stride and collection, lateral work, hill work, etc.
Also, in my experience, transitions at the canter (walk-canter-walk or trot-canter-trot) or within the canter are more strength-building than long stretches of canter.
I totally agree the walk is under-appreciated. I do a minimum of 15 minutes to start. The first 5 or so minutes is trying to get a forward walk that swings enough that I feel it from the saddle. In addition to lateral work, we practice our squares. Every time I do the squares, I have a better ride, no question.
I also think the cool down is underappreciated. Not just the walking, but I really like to end with a relaxing long-rein trot to bring the heart rate down gradually.
I remember watching Scott Brash come out of the arena after a blazing fast speed round and canter his horse in the warm up, then trot a good bit, then a long walk. His cool down probably took well over 20 minutes, but I have to think such a meticulous cool down helps the horse.
Not a H/J rider (but used to be). I have a rule of thumb as I start my endurance horses- 100 miles of walk on the trail before they start trotting out there. I also do at least one 5-7 mile walk ride with my guys per week and for the other work outs- the first and last mile at least are always walk.
And on another note, I love Denny’s book. It is currently being passed around among my students
I’ve always had a long walk warm up and my horses are moving around a lot (turn out all night, in a dry lot+stall in the day). That said, I really think walk work is underutilized, especially in the h/j world. These days I pay a lot more attention to it than I used to and have even added a one hour “walk day” after the day off and I apply this to either driven days or riding (dressage) days.
I think this has a couple benefits; usually the last day before a day off is either a fitness or hard work day, so day off+walk day is extra time for recovery from expected micromuscle tears/stress from that work (this is more important when we are actively fitting up for CDEs). Walk day also gives me a lot of time to feel how he has come out of that fitness day, and finally, it gives me a lot of of time to work on walk/lengthen walk, W-H transitions, leg yields, shoulder in to renvers and so on, so it is a ton of training. Walk day is not an easy day. I like to think of it as the equine equivalent of an extended session of stretching. The only exception to this is when walk day is a trail ride (especially important if we need a mental break). But our trail rides involve walking up and down the foothills of the Appalachians and we go for 6-8 miles, so less lateral work, but overall a lot more work and a healthy dose of good old fashioned “road work” with hard footing and variable terrain.
(I do trot a little on walk day but usually less than 10 min total and only after about 20 min of walking, and just a stretchy trot, also when I am driving, I have a steep hill to go up if I want to drive in the large pasture/go out for a long walk down the road, and that is best done at a trot in the carriage, so sometimes enough trot warm up to do that hill)
It depends. If i’ve just pulled them in from turnout, maybe 5-10 min. If they’ve been stalled 15 min minimum. but then usually every other day is spent walking the trails.
Yes, I do lots of walking. One thing that has not been mentioned in this thread so far about the walk is that the biomechanics of it are similar to canter (layperson’s explanation here, I can’t recall the details that I read in the book called How Your Horse Moves) so when you walk you are also conditioning the horse’s hind end for the canter, which is not true of the trot. Perhaps someone else can go into greater detail. Also, I’ve read that that it takes about 15 or 20 minutes for joint fluids to warm up, which is to me another reason that a proper walk warm up is a smart way to go, particularly for the older horse that I ride.
While I get what you’re saying here… it actually might, depending on why your jumping needs to magically transform.
If your jumping is bad because you don’t have adjustability of length of stride, either because your horse isn’t flexible, because he isn’t broke, or because you don’t know how to ask him, you can improve this at the walk.
If your jumping is bad because your horse throws his shoulder in the turn and you lose your line, and you never get it back, so you both miss and end up with your horse lying on his side over the jump… you can fix this at the walk. (Lateral work, focus on control of the limbs and their major muscle groups through shoulder in and haunches in, etc.)
If your jumping is bad because you can’t figure out how to develop a 12’ step at a working canter so you chip out of the lines, sure, you need to fix that at the canter. But you can develop awareness of the horse’s consistent length of stride at the walk.
You can get a ton of valuable practice for a lot of the things that can go wrong, without adding significant wear and tear to the joints, by addressing the fundamental components at the walk.
I have made significant improvements in my own riding and my horse’s way of going by doing nothing but patient, thoughtful flatwork at a working walk for 2-4 weeks. Presuming you aren’t sitting on a rocket, this should be good news for anyone bummed about a layup.
I do tons of marching walks on my horses. My dressage trainer recommended that I hack my horse once or twice a week at a good forward walk for at last an hour on the trails. That was probably 15 years ago. I’m lucky, my horses live on a trail system so getting out and doing hills and uneven terrain is across the street. I often ride for an hour or two at all/mostly walking.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but in my experience, a lot of times when you go back to the issue within the larger context, it will present itself again. IE you can work on the shoulder-bulging issue at the walk, and I find that when you re-introduce the jump, they will tend to revert to old habits. Thus I personally like to combine the walk work or targeted flatwork with specific jumping or pole exercises that also address the issue in practice. So in the shoulder-bulge example, I may work on that targeted through flatwork and then also work on a specific jumping exercise too - such as trotting into a jump, returning to the walk, and leg yielding towards the rail (or there’s hundreds of exercises!) in order to connect the dots.
I think this combined approach can be really helpful because you’re addressing real root issue and then connecting it to wherever it manifests.
As always, there’s exceptions to everything, and there’s many, many horses that I’ve taken back to 100% flatwork or walk work for extended periods of time. But for a horse that has smaller issues, I find it really helpful to address it in a combo method. I think it’s easy to get overly obsessive about certain things - or maybe it’s that I get overly obsessive about certain things, so I try to counteract that tendency by keeping things in motion, so to speak. Otherwise I’ll sit and obsess about the perfect walk forget that jumping the course is the true end goal. :winkgrin: I also have a horse who flats beautifully but really changes when the jumps come out, so working on only flatwork without incorporating poles and jumps doesn’t really improve the jumping the way it needs to.
@Renn/aissance indeed it does! And just when I think I’ve got an approach really figured out, I’ll meet a horse that breaks the mold! :lol:
As I’ve reflected on this today, I also think my tendency towards keeping things really practical is because a mistake I’ve tended to make is becoming too focused on certain issues. In looking back, I tend to not progress as much as I should in the jumping work because I get fixated on fixing issues on the flat. I’ve had to learn that flatwork in our sport is purposeful rather than an end goal. So I really try to balance the flatwork as a compliment to the jumping so I don’t forget that the perfect leg yield isn’t the goal while staying soft and balanced to the inside leg is (or whatever!).
Don’t miss the point about the mental benefits of walking. And in hand as well as under saddle. Today I took my horse to my trainer’s for the first time (I haul to lessons). I am almost 67 and don’t want any bad experiences.
I unloaded, and walked him in the arena for a good 15 min. Big outdoor, and we were alone in there. I listened to his breathing. Listened for some deep breaths and regular breathing. On the lead line, he can look around as much as he wants.
Took him into the barn, and tacked him up. Went into arena and walked him some more, leading him under tack. Again, he is allowed to look around all he wants. Again his breathing told me his mental state.
Got on, and by that time, he was solid as could be. Walked around some more, and by the time lesson started and we asked him to focus, he was mentally right there for me. I love walking!
To spend that much time walking the horse for weeks could never be a bad thing! Especially in the summer!
