Outdoor Workouts for Horses: Boost Your Fitness Routine & Build Resilience
Outdoor workouts are a great break from the arena and ideal for our horses minds. Another benefit, arguably just as important, is building up the tolerance for concussion and impact throughout the whole body. Conditioning for impact is a major requirement for competitive sport.
In southern Alberta, we are contending with extremely hard dry footing and ground conditions the majority of the time. Building our horses’ tolerance to this is a vital factor when gearing up for the outdoor season.
You will have different considerations for training in a climate with the opposite conditions. I have provided my variation if I was training in a climate with heavy ground to work in or more consistently wet elements.
3 Things I Incorporate into Workouts When Getting Out of the Indoor Arena:
Long active walks on hard ground: Regardless of your regular training conditions - wet or dry - this is an age old rule of thought for building up fitness and coming back from soft tissue injury. I usually take advantage of the roads when headed out to a field for a cardio workout. I purposely walk the horses on the paved road (if safe to do so) as this is a great way to gradually build their tolerance for concussion and impact on unpredictable surfaces. I like to incorporate this into the warmup and cool down from arena work as well. Bonus: a long walk is a great way to get better in tune with your horse.
Equi-Tape: The equine version of KT-Tape! Check out my product review released on the blog this month. You will find a method specific to taping for hard ground workouts vs. deep footing workouts. As a barrel racer, this is frequent in southern Alberta. Most often we have to warmup on hard ground and then make a run in deep footing. You will find an advantage to tape for both 😊
Through brush and uneven terrain - Use the natural terrain around you to build the tolerance level within your horse’s body up to unpredictable knocks and missteps, getting your horse to think on their feet before entering into intense competition
Happy riding!
Michaela
Outdoor workouts in southern Alberta for your horse
“The most important factor while bringing the horses back into peak performance shape is to build the long-term fitness regime with a GRADUAL increase in strain or exertion all while keeping the workouts FREQUENT and CONSISTENT.”