With the winter weather acting up, I haven’t been able to hit the trails for a while. One particular challenge for me is that while I might be having a great, sunny day at approx. 300ft elevation, my trailheads at 1800ft elevation have vastly different weather and the 3 miles in between can be treacherous so… no trails. Luckily, we’ve been able to maintain regular riding thanks to access to a local indoor arena, especially since I rely on giving horse lessons to make ends meet.
Generally speaking, we hit up the arena 2-3 times per week. Most of my younger students ride Vinnie with close supervision, while my older students have grown to love Zorro and ride fairly independently. Both horses have pretty light walk/trot work during the 1-2 lessons that they give on a particular night as most of my students are working on having quiet hands and proper balance. Afterward, I hop on Vinnie and sometimes Zorro in order to make sure we’re reinforcing fundamental skills.
In all honesty, I only ride for about a half hour (or an hour if I ride both horses) and my GPS usually reads about 1-1.5 miles for one horse. However, during that half hour, I’m asking my horse to really stretch themselves physically and mentally. It feels like ballet, where we’re bringing sharp focus to specific movements and isolating specific movements to do them with perfection and strengthen specific muscles. There is only so much they (and I) can do before overtaxing them mentally and physically. Given the amount of time and exertion they typically do on a conditioning ride, it can be hard to reconcile the short arena spurts as being conditioning – but, the proof is there. My horses are stronger than ever and using their bodies more efficiently, but we are managing to avoid the mental and emotional monotony that can easily come from overdoing it in the arena.
Last summer, I started taking dressage lessons on Vinnie to strengthen his body, especially after he injured his suspensory tendon and I wanted to rehabilitate him carefully and completely before returning to endurance. In addition to improving my general equitation, my goals were to help us improve our communication, strengthen his body, and to move in a more balanced and correct way – thus enabling him to correctly and efficiently carry me through an endurance ride (and in general) and better avoid future injury.
Vinnie can be particularly emotional (read, spicy with literal kicks!) about doing “hard” things, so a lot of our lessons were helping me better use my body to communicate with and reward him for new skills. Then, we used those skills to build his topline, use his core, and engage his hind end – all things I needed to learn to feel for as well. Once we had these skills down, we also had a good repertoire of exercises to continue reinforcing correct movement. We got to a point where we could surely continue to add more skills, but also to what end? I felt fairly satisfied with where we had gotten so between “reaching” our goals and some other life circumstances for both my trainer and me, we decided to take some time off from lessons. However, I continue to build Vinnie’s strength and skills using what we learned, especially during the winter when we are confined to primarily arena riding. Moreover, I am now working through teaching Zorro those same skills so he can start competing with the foundations (both mentally and physically) that I learned and developed with Vinnie.
Here is our menu of exercises – Keep in mind that every one of these exercises merits their own post (or better, their own lesson with your trainer) on how to train and execute correctly, and doing them incorrectly could have a negative effect rather than positive.
Groundwork
- Walk, stop, back up a few steps, immediately walk off (I stay facing forward this whole time) – This is all done in fairly quick succession. In addition to teaching great ground manners, this rolls horses back on their haunches and encourages them to engage and push off their hind end when walking off again
- Haunch Turns – again, rolling horses back to engage their hind end. We started with only 1-2 correct steps, then worked up to a full circle.
- Forehand turns – stepping under and over with their hind end, encouraging them to lift and engage their core. Again, we started small with lots of rewards, then worked up to full circles.
- Sidepassing, particularly over a pole – more lateral work stepping under themselves and great for their brains!
- “Yoga” – there are a variety of stretches and bends to get horses to release their poll, lift their core, and release tension in various areas, but that’s a whole other topic to write about!
- Lunging – I mainly use lunging to get horses brains in gear and make sure they’re ready for riding. I also lunge over poles (sometimes singles or sometimes in sets of two, which I’ll write about in a moment with riding) to get them to think about their feet and lift their core while encouraging them to lower their heads and move “long and low”. I do not use special equipment to get them into a particular headset, however. There are certain tools like long reins that are flexible and helpful, though I’m pretty basic with my own lunging. I will also ask my horse to move its haunches out and away from me so that he has to step under himself with the inside rear leg and the foot falls either in the track of the outside front leg or even steps to the outside of it – though I’ll only do that for a few steps at a time, relax, and then repeat (I’m sure this has some fancy name like “shoulder in” but hey, I’m not a dressage rider; I just take dressage lessons!)
In the Saddle
Once they’ve mastered the backing, turn on the forehand, and haunch turns from the ground, I make sure to reinforce them from the saddle. These come in to play later with more complex lateral work, but we can’t do those until we’ve installed the basic buttons!
Fundamental to getting horses to using their core, they need to learn to drop their head and travel long and low. However, just dropping the head isn’t enough – they need to reach forward and simultaneously engage their hind end, which was a particular challenge for Vinnie. As a Saddlebred, Zorro has taken a minute to understand what I’m asking for, but with consistency he’s coming along!
Once my horses have learned to drop their head on cue and lift their back, we added in transitions. A great one is to do a downward transition immediately followed by an upward transition, go 5-10 steps, and repeat. We did this with trot-walk-trot quite a bit; once he was able to do some of the other exercises below and showed he had the strength to do this at a canter, we’ve worked in canter-trot-canter transitions as well. It’s important that their heads are low and they’re not hollowing out their back or tensing up during these transitions. When done correctly, my horses promptly begin stretching out with their head toward the ground and slowing down their gait, thinking deliberately about what they’re doing rather than just going WHEEEE!!! when they’re asked to do an upward transition. Vinnie is now to the point where he will reach out low with his head and then reach under with his hind whenever I ask for an upward transition.
Poles are just the most useful things! For me, they add variety and structure, while for my horses it encourages to lift their core. I purchased an entire library of pole exercises online to play with. However, one of my favorite exercises is to use two poles about one yard apart (bigger for Zorro) and ask my horses to walk and trot through them – the goal is to have them lengthen their stride and lift their core so as to only step once between the poles. Lately, I’ve noticed that while my horses will enter a set of poles with their head low, they like to pop it up as they travel over the poles, so now we’re working on maintaining a lifted core rather than head and a consistent position all the way over the poles.
Here’s where the groundwork and turns on the forehand/haunches really pay off – bends and counter bends have been a particular challenge, but were fundamental to helping Vinnie become more balanced. I also had to become a better rider in order to help him do so correctly. However, this kind of lateral work has made a world of difference in his movement and strength, including addressing his reluctance to canter in the arena. Likewise, movements like shoulder in and haunches in ask him to reach under, lift his core, and travel in a strong, collected manner.
These activities have been a game-changer for us, and I hope they give you some ideas for how flatwork and arena work can contribute to a healthier, stronger horse for endurance. In addition, practicing these exercises with another horse in the arena, especially if you’re passing one another often, can be super helpful for combating “race brain”! If you have additional exercises you recommend, I’d love to hear about it! Happy riding!