Hi all
I have a tb/belgium gelding, 8 years old. Good grief- how to keep that boy fit- I think I need to be cloned as I just can’t ride him enough. Any tips- all suggestions welcomed! Trot sets- canter sets- how many how long? Hill work- don’t have much in the way of hills here in southern Jersey. What’s your secret? thanks for the replies!
Trot, trot, trot, trot, trot… did I mention trot?
Just get out and trot along at a good clip for as long as the terrain/your horse warrants. The way my trot area works out it is about 4 minutes of steady trotting and two minutes of a marching walk. I rotate in some hill work but I think the absolute best thing is that continuous trotting. Try to be very careful with the galloping because you want to decrease the pounding on their feet as much as possible and the trotting gets their heart-rate and breathing up (I have heart monitor results to support that claim) but reducing the pounding.
Good luck!
We do a lot of trot work on hills to keep ours fit to hunt. Can’t say enough for the trot work. :yes:
Seems like we can trot a lot, but then when we go to do a course of 8 fences he seems to run out of gas.
Wal for ten mins. at a good clip. Trot 2 miles nice and forward, walk for another ten. Keep repeating this and build up your distance.
Well, first lets define “a lot”. A lot of trotting for my horses would be 4-6 miles, plus another 1.5ish of galloping/cantering. I think people’s definition changes radically.
So approximately how fast does a horse trot? thanks
I recommend reading “Conditioning Sport Horses” by Hilary Clayton. It contains a wealth of information. It also goes into why some breeds are easier to achieve a desired level of fitness in. You can order it through Amazon.
Thanks Home Girl, that was my next question!
Workinggirl - you should talk to Asterix. She’s on the eventing board most frequently, but has two big guys she has successfully conditioned for upper levels.
I second the ‘what is ‘a lot’?’ for you? For example, once my guys are in full training mode (and realize this takes quite a while to build up to) we are doing 25 minute trot sets. That means 25 minutes of solid trotting, on terrain. No walk breaks, not just ‘trottin around.’
Both Jimmy Wofford and Lucinda Green said that, for the more cold blooded horse, “more canter and less trot”.
Assuming they are already muscle fit, it is wind/heart fitness you need. And you get that by cantering.
Lucinda said to end every session (dressage, jumping, whatever) with at least a short sprint, preferably uphill.
Chief definitely got fitter after I started doing more canter and less trot.
Average speed on a horse:
Walk- 4 miles per hour
Regular trot- 7 miles per hour
Canter- 10 miles per hour
I understand the statement about reducing the pounding on the horse by doing more trot work…but…what type of work are you going to expect them to do in the field? If your hunt mostly requires him to canter to keep up, then I would think you would need to condition for that. It requires different muscle movement and causes stress at different points in the bone and tendon/ligament structures. If all you do is trot and then take him hunting and do mostly cantering, you are going to cause stress at points that have not been built up through conditioning.
Trotting is great, but it’s not the only answer.
From Conditioning Sport Horses - “It is recommended that horses be conditioned primarily at the gait and speed of the competition to stimulate the appropriate metabolic pathways for energy production, and to teach the horse to make use of its built in energy-conservation mechanisms.”
Isn’t trotting harder work than cantering?
My western-trained-now-hunt-seat QH sure thinks so. I could canter him all day long, but trot seems a lot more work for him.
Just going by what he tells me, though. Anyone know for sure?
I’m not a pro but have done some endurance, LD’s and CTR’s along with my fox hunting. The horse’s air/wind has to be fitted up but so does the body- the ligaments and tendons- so a horse needs interval training. I will do two long trot rides to one sprint ride. Each week if the conditioning is going well increase the distance of the trot set and sprint. I use a heart rate monitor to help keep track of each weeks progress. It let’s me see how easily my horse pulses down to a resting heart rate. Use your terrian to help in your conditoning programs adding hills AFTER the legs are hardened up. Because I don’t show or event the other rides are just plain fun trail rides to keep the horse relaxed and happy. 
I just bought an out of shape 12/13 year old draft cross. I don’t want him toooo fit when he meets the hounds next month during roading nor during cub hunting. So I will do trot sets with him for what’s left of June and through July/Aug- enough to make him comfortable and safe from injury//strains. I don’t want his running stamina in tip top shape until I’m convinced he’ll keep his wits about him in the active hunt field.
I read (almost 20 years ago) that they did a study on race horses. They used two training methods: 1. Mainly trot to get cardio up 2. Trot and gallop sessions.
In the study they looked at x-rays of the lower leg and found that the horses built up extra bone in very different locations due to the different stresses of each exercise program.
The conclusion of the study was that trot does improve cardio, but that it also led to the break down of the horse if it was used as the sole training method, because of the lack of bone development where it was needed.
We conditioned all of our hunt horses (all draft crosses) by doing loads of conditioning and hill work. They were ridden 6 days/week and their schedule looked something like this:
Monday - Off
Tuesday - Trot sets (we did like 3-4 loops around a 50 acre HILLY, HILLY field)
Wednesday - hack and hop, the property was like 600 acres with coops and stone walls, so we would do a mini-hunt
Thursday - Trot sets - gravel road/concrete
Friday - jump school in the ring
Saturday - Gallop (1-2 trot loops, 2-3 gallops)
Sunday - Trot sets
None of my horses were ever lame or had soundness issues. Clean legs, no suspensories. I am a firm believer you need to condition on different surfaces to strengthen ligaments and bones. When hunting, you sometimes canter on the road!! I tried to simulate as many different senerios as possible to get the horses in top shape.
During hunt season, we hunted Saturdays–so we tried to keep that the most strenuous day in regards to their work out. If they hunted Saturday, they got Sunday and Monday off.
we swim ours as part of our cross-training.
I actually like interval work for keeping the big 'uns fit. You can tweak it to be exactly what you need, and there’s not so much stress on the legs. Plus, consistent work- not going flat out for two days then giving the horse a week off. More moderate work every day is better.
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