If you bought yourself a nice, kind, well started 4 year old with 60 days of training, you basically bought yourself a horse sized lump of play-dough. 60 days is nothing. Your horse has no fitness, barely knows anything and has next to no experience. It will take years of steady, regular exercise to build up a good, solid core of strength, range of motion and fitness.
His training will also be unconfirmed. 60 days is nothing. The best thing to do here is focus on solidifying the correct reactions to your aids, especially to your leg and seat, while your horse gains the fitness and experience he needs to carry your weight and do his new job. When he’s fit and all your aids are in place, you’ll have everything ready to start working on fancier things.
If weather, footing and temperament allow, our work week might look something like this:
- Baby “dressage/flatwork” day where we practice turning, bending, stopping, starting, rest and relax in the middle of the ring and then calmly go practice for a few more minutes.
- “Conditioning” day – we have a 3 acre field with a good fence line, 2 gates and good footing. A few laps in walk each way, with a 2 or 4 footed friend is often enough to set a young horse up for a lap-lap and a half in trot around the outside, practicing straight lines supported by a wall and passing the gate. Then a rest and chill followed by a lap or so the other way. After another rest we might leave by a different gate than we entered through, walk around the outside, still supported by the fence line, and home.
- “Obstacle” day – this might be a cone course to practice steering, a few poles, and gentle terrain like small hills, easy ditches, and different surfaces. We’re fortunate to have an area where we can serpentine down a slope to a driveway, across the road and up another slope. Figuring out how to comfortably carry a rider through these types of exercises can be a real challenge for a young horse.
- Ground day – this could be practicing getting on and off the trailer for the day or it could be something like some a series of Dynamic Mobilization Exercises such as a few small circles in-hand, a few steps sideways each way, backing up a few steps and a nice bonding hand-walk over some terrain and around the neighborhood, as a precursor to trail rides.
- A short trail ride with a friend if there’s a suitable area and our horse feels safe and has developed enough confidence to go out.
- We also like to practice 2-3 hours in a stall most days but otherwise they live out with friends.
Each time you practice something, even something small, like walking past the gate to go home, or walking forward from halt, practices a skill, it etches a small dent into what will someday become a full picture of a well prepared sport horse.
Knowing how much you can do with a young horse is a bit of an art form. We try do enough that we’re contributing to fitness but not so much that the horse is surprised by it or uncomfortable from it the next day.
Click here for some more suggestions on developing your horses
https://koperequine.com/10-tips-to-improve-muscle-care-recovery/
And for some suggestions on how to ease the training development process
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