FITNESS FREAKS

HOW TO BUILD YOUR PONY'S FITNESS

As riders, it is our job to make sure that our pony is fit enough to do all the things we have planned. Fitness is important as it reduces the risk of your pony getting injured and makes sure he has enough energy to enjoy what you are asking of him.

Whether you are bringing your pony back into work after some time off, or you are simply looking to boost his fitness for future adventures, this article is for you.

1. Plan, plan, plan

The most important step of this process is making a plan to lay out how you intend to improve your pony’s fitness. This plan needs to include what you’ll do, when you’ll do it, and the length of each planned session. You should make sure that your pony does a real variety of work from flatwork to jumping, hacking, and even groundwork. The variety will keep him interested and give him a well-rounded work-out routine.

Top tip

We’d advise keeping a diary recording what you do with your pony every time you see him. This makes sure you stick to your plan and allows you to look back and see what worked well and what didn’t!

2. Hacking

Getting out and about and riding on various surfaces is great fitness work for your pony. As surfaces are rarely even out in the big wide world, hacking improve your pony’s balance and self-carriage; he’ll need to learn to watch where he puts his feet and carry himself, and this requires a lot of energy and muscle control. As an added advantage, many ponies feel more positive and energetic out on hacks than in the arena, so use this positive energy to get them marching forward and building strength.

3. Hillwork

Riding up and down hills builds your pony’s strength and fitness and improves self-carriage and balance. When you ride up or down a slope, focus on keeping your pony forwards and straight. This will encourage him to correctly use his hindquarters and hindlegs to power himself up the hill.

While doing faster work on a hill can help improve aerobic fitness, you need to be very careful of faster work downhill as this can put strain on the joints and result in injury. We would advise that you walk, trot or canter going uphill, but only walk when coming downhill. Walking downhill is still hard work for your pony as he will need to engage his core and flex his hocks.

4. Polework

Using poles during flatwork sessions is a good way to increase the work-out your pony is getting. Moving over poles requires extra effort so helps build general cardio fitness and improve core and leg strength. Try different layouts and walk, trot and canter over poles to get the maximum impact.

5. Interval training

Interval training is quickly gaining popularity as a mechanism for improving pony fitness, as it works quickly to increase levels of aerobic fitness. With interval training, you mix separate periods of walk, trot and canter, gradually increasing the amount of time spent in the faster gaits as your pony gets fitter.

It is advised that you don’t start interval training until you’ve worked on the other four activities above, as your pony will need a base level of fitness to be able to do this work.

An example of interval training for a pony might look something like this:

15 minute warm-up in walk

3-5 minutes of trot

2 minutes of walk

3 minutes of trot

1 minute of walk

2 minutes of canter

2 minutes of walk

2 minutes of canter

2 minutes of walk

3 minutes of trot

1 minute of walk

3-5 minutes of trot

10 minutes of walk to cool down