Staying healthy is always a good priority especially if you plan to stay active with your horses for a long time to come. And there is no better time than the present to set new goals for the coming year. Exercise is a very big part of staying healthy. With busy lifestyles of managing a career, child rearing, home care and all of the other duties we place on ourselves our days can be overwhelming leaving us unenthused about exercise. Who has time to go the gym AND the barn?
Don’t despair, I would suggest you go the barn and implement some exercises there that can integrate well with time spent with your horse. This will leave you feeling empowered on multiple levels and may even get you motivated to go to the next level in your exercise program in the future.
In fact there are many things you can do with your horse that constitute both a legitimate aerobic and isometric exercise program for you, AND good training for your horse. Below I will outline just a few exercises that will benefit both your health and your horse’s training.
Walk,Jog/Leading beside: Likely your horse leads beside you at least at the walk, but will it jog with you consistently for a period of time and through both left and right turns? Every horse should know how to do this but you would be surprised how few do. Jogging is a very good aerobic exercise and can be the segue to improving your heart health and overall fitness. Teach your horse this exercise and then spend 10 minutes of your warm up time with it on a hike around the property. Start initially by walking and intersperse 30-60 second intervals of the jog followed again by 60 second walk intervals. Do this for a period of 5 minutes the first week and build up to 10 minutes over the next few days or weeks until you replace more of your walk intervals with jogging. When you are jogging with your horse for 10 minutes straight, you can work to increase that interval or move to other aerobic exercises around your horse such as in the next example.
Jumping Jacks, Jump Rope/Desensitizing: Desensitizing your horse to obstacles, movement and sound are key elements of any solid training program. When I think of the well trained horse, I think of one that looks to me for how to respond in a given situation and I can train the horse to do this by implementing specific desensitizing exercises into his program. Performing jumping jacks or jumping rope around your horse is one of the ways you can begin to desensitize him to these things and also improve your physical fitness through aerobic exercise. To get started, put your horse on a long lead rope about 14′ in length or tie it safely in a place where you can work around it. Begin jumping jacks/jump rope with low to medium intensity and at a distance from the horse where it can move/react without putting you in harms way. If your horse reacts, lower your intensity a bit and keep jumping about. When the horse stops reacting, stop jumping. This will reward the horse for being non-reactive to the stimulus of you jumping. Progress in this exercise increasing the intensity level and the duration of jumping until you can get to 5 then 10 minutes of jumping. Every time the horse reacts, back down in the intensity of the jumping to a point where the horse is comfortable and does not OVER react but don’t stop jumping if you can help it until the horse becomes quiet. In this way you will teach the horse to tolerate higher levels of “pressure” (jumping) and in doing so will desensitize him to distractions of movement and sound around him.
Lunges, squats, box jumps/Pedestal training/Desensitizing: Keeping you lower body strong is extremely important for riding. Mounting, proper balance in the saddle, and just keeping up with barn chores all require good lower body strength. If your barn has a mounting block, pedestal, hay bale or other solidly safe elevated surface, you can do step ups, lunges, box squats and box jumps while working with your horse. I like to use a pedestal for many reasons. The pedestal is a great way to teach your horse confidence stepping up onto a surface – a fantastic segue to trailer loading. When you initially train the horse to step on the pedestal, they usually want to step up and over, pushing through your hand in the process of getting to the other side. Pedestal training teaches your horse to stay soft in your hand as you use it to balance their weight from rushing and pushing off. Also, while on the pedestal you can teach them to yield their hindquarters – ie isolate the movement of one part of the horse while maintaining softness and control in hand. This training exercise is a wonderful tool to work on both the mind and the body of the horse. And, while you teach the horse to wait patiently on the pedestal, you can work on step ups, reverse lunges and box squats on it as well. While doing so the training goal for your horse will be to have it remain on the pedestal while you go through a number of repetitions in a set of these exercises. If the horse is bothered by your movement, you will want to repeat a set with specific repetitions until he will remain on the block until you are done. If you are feeling really ambitious, you can use the pedestal to add in a few box jumps too! In this case I would ask the horse to get off of the pedestal while you desensitize him as you do the big movements of this exercise.
Core strength, adductor and abductor muscle conditioning/Bareback riding: Bareback riding is not only fun but a fantastic way to condition your lower abdominal muscles (your core) and your abductor and adductor muscles. These are the muscles responsible for moving your legs to and from your midline; perhaps better recognized as the ones that get sore AFTER riding bareback and struggling to stay on! You can condition these muscles with bareback riding at all three gaits and by working on transitions between those gaits. Obviously upward and downward transitions are good training exercises for your horse too, so by thoughtful sessions focusing on well executed transitions, you strengthen both you and your horse. Add in a few sit ups and crunches as your horse stands quietly by laying back onto the hindquarters and isolating the abdominal muscles through the exercises for a specific number of repetitions.
Shoulder Exercises/Desensitize with Stick and String: The importance of upper body strength when working with horses is likely recognized by all and there are specific exercises that you can do at the barn that will help in this area of training too. One way to strengthen the deltoid muscle is by desensitizing your horse to the stick and string or lunge whip. Hold the horse on a lead line as you rotate the whip in a circular motion in a windmill type fashion from front to back. As you bring the whip from behind rotate it overhead to the front of your body and let it make strong contact with the ground beside the horse. At first you will want to begin at a distance from your horse and with medium “pressure” of the ground contact to where your horse can tolerate the pressure of the noise and movement. Continue the exercise on both sides of the horse using both arms. Advance the exercise by increasing the pressure on the horse incrementally until he develops confidence at higher pressure of the whip’s contact with the ground and with the whip closer to him. Vary the exercise each day working the whip in different configurations overhead that still work your upper arm deltoid muscle. Other arm muscles can be worked through desensitizing exercises as you raise and lower a brush bag for example as you might a dumbell in a bicep curl or overhead press.
There are many more examples of ways to exercise at the barn while spending time with and training your horse. Use your imagination as you spend time with your horse or work on barn chores and vary your routine daily or weekly.
Remember, we are in no way encouraging you to forgo the gym or your current exercise routine. Rather, we are enticing you to think out of the box for those days that you may want to skip the gym altogether in lieu of going to the barn. Those days you can still reap the benefits of the gym by modifying some of your exercises and do them with your horse.
This will benefit you both by maintaining the regularity of your fitness program AND adding to the desensitizing and responsiveness of your horse both on the ground and under saddle. And for those of you who currently don’t have an exercise plan, these suggestions may just get you started on the right track to improve your health for longevity in the saddle.
For more information or clarity on the specific exercises described above, contact us at your convenience. For more information on our training program click here.
Image is of the horse Cribnote; formerly in training with Next Level Horsemanship — now retired in Florida.