Get Ready For The Event Season Ahead
Winter is the perfect time to plan your fitness programme for your horse to ensure they are fit and ready for those early spring competitions. We asked our sponsored rider and top event rider, Anthony Clark, for tips and advice on preparing your horse for their first event of the season!
Our event horses don’t really have time off over the winter months. They will have a quiet month off after their last competition. Still, in my experience, it is better to keep the horses ticking over with some low-level schooling and hacking rather than stop completely and start working up again. We will keep their work easy and relaxed, then start building up from January onwards to get fit for the season ahead.
New Year, New Plan
We begin our fitness programme by hacking out for around forty-five minutes, incorporating walk and trot whilst hacking and some hill work. As a rule of thumb, we stick to a two-week rota, making small increases to their workload every two weeks. This allows us to monitor their performance and adjust if need be. After two weeks of hacking, we return to the school – with schooling every third day with hacking in between, interspersed with visits to the water treadmill once a week, starting in very shallow water and then building up depth over time.
Tick List
All our horses have regular physio and saddlery appointments, so these are booked in ahead of the due date so they are timed for checks around the time we start schooling work to ensure they are comfortable. These appointments are tailored for each horse depending on their requirements and needs and adjusted throughout their fitness programme. Review their diet and consider any gaps in their nutritional needs including supplements. I feed all my event horses Aloeride for its wide spectrum of benefits.
Back To School
The first two weeks back in the school are strictly flat work, and then we progress to trot poles, raised poles and small jumps. It’s nothing overly complicated, just to keep some variety and maintain those different muscle groups. We will then gradually build canter work into our hacking with short bursts between trotting and walking. Then, after around six weeks of all being well, we will begin visiting the gallops and work in a lovely open canter but not initially galloping and slowly increasing the pace and distance.
Winter Outings
We will take the horses to a few dressage competitions in winter. We may hire an arena with jumps for the less experienced horses to give them some confidence in strange environments away from home without the pressure of competing.
By the end of February, we expect the horses to be competition-fit and ready for their first run of the season, one-day events.
My Take-Away Tips:
Listen to your horse – create a fitness programme, but listen to your horse – if they are struggling, drop it back down a level. Allow for setbacks. Leave time in your planning for minor setbacks (horse having forced rest/transport fails/bad weather, etc.) to allow extra breathing space before your first event date. Get into the habit of planning your farrier/ physio/saddler appointments in between your lorry outings and lessons so you are prepared for when the competition season starts.
If the weather turns bad and you are confined to the arena, use your time to build fitness and stamina with poles, bounces, grids, riding, and lunging, and keep your work varied and interesting. If the ground is too hard to do anything more than walking whilst hacking, intersperse your hacking with opportunities to practice a little lateral work or transitions and ask your horse to work into a contact. Taking your dressage training away from the arena will help focus your horse’s attention on you and help you in future competition atmospheres.
If the roads allow travel, hire a local indoor arena to enable you both to work on some interval training and ride under cover, away from the elements!
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