I’d like to start getting ideas on getting one of my horses racing fit. So, I figured I’d ask some of ya’ll what kind of schedules and exercises you have your horses on.
I hope to leave this pretty open ended, so please include anything you believe helps or makes a difference! Do ya’ll like to do more extended or collected work? Feed, breed, age, ground you have to work on, equipment (or none?:D), etc!
How old is the horse? Breed? First time starter? Maiden w/some experience? Older? War horse? It isn’t a one size fits all
Is this a race horse or a riding horse? I see from your previous posts that you are also asking about stretching on the western forum, and about giving kids lessons. So I am going to assume that you are not racing your horse, and that what you want are guidelines on legging up an out of work riding horse. Indeed, the point about collected work suggests you aren’t talking about racing.
The people that are experts on this are the endurance riders and the eventing riders, both of whom go at speed across open country.
In general, they will recommend lots of big walk and then trot sets for distances on trails, with lowered stretched neck, until the horse is fit, and then canter sets. Obviously taking care not to injure feet or tendons in the process.
Collected work is good for teaching collection, but horse has to be ready for that, otherwise you are just pulling on his face and making him go inverted.
Race horse racing fit is an entirely other thing, and there you have a horse primed to go off like a firecracker at maximum speed. This is not what you want in a riding horse, and certainly not in a lesson horse.
I exercise racehorses. We started with unfit, fat older horses coming off a 3 month break. Horses are ridden 5 days a week, mostly in wide open fields with hills, but they might go to the training track once a week. The barn is about half mile from training fields, we jog out and back.
2 weeks jogging, starting at 1 mile working up to over 2 miles.
1 week jog 1 mile, slow gallop 1 mile.
1 week jog 1 mile, slow gallop 1.5 miles.
3 weeks gallop 2 miles, increasing speed gradually.
3 weeks galloping 2 miles, start slow and sprint at the end. Sprint distance increases from 1 furlong to about 4. Once or twice we will go 3 miles.
This is pretty unusual for race horse training, but that’s just how this trainer does it. The horses are very fit by the end, though some soundness issues may crop up with certain individuals; most of them are bottom level runners with existing problems, and they are managed carefully but it’s tough on them. They race on synthetic so that’s why most of our training is better on turf than the deep dirt training track.
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