From: Francesca
Hi Jessica! You can't immagine how much we all love horse-sense, even though we live far away in Africa! Thank-you very much for all the help! I hope you don't find my question useless, but I've been noticing that we seem to be doing always the same excercises with our horses. This is probably because we don't have riding teachers here... As you can immagine, our horses don't know much, and are only jumped in small shows in our riding stables (which is the only existing one here). What I was wondering was: Do you have any easy, basic excercises we could do to get in our warm-ups? And, are there some excercises which are fix, and are always used to warm up? I hope my questions don't sound dumb! Thank-you again for the help. (We all hope you decide to come and visit Mozambique, so we could have riding lessons!) Cheers, Francesca & Crystal (my 4 yrs. old THB brat!)
Hi Francesca! I'm glad you're enjoying horse-sense. There are lots of exercises you can do in warm-ups or indeed at any time. ;-)
Your warmup is very important -- especially since on many days, a complete warmup is all you may have time to do! For a rider, warming up a horse is very similar to the process a pilot goes through when performing a pre-flight check. The pilot checks all the systems, gauges, and dials, and needs to be certain that all of them are in good working condition before he proceeds to take off. The rider needs to check out the horse in a very similar way, checking the horse's coordination, flexibility, and responsiveness, so that any problems (not just lameness or injury, but small stiffnesses or any soreness) will be discovered immediately and can be dealt with before they become bigger problems.
Walking is always the best way to begin a warmup; at this point, you are literally WARMING the horse's muscles. I generally recommend beginning with fifteen minutes of walking. If the horse has been playing in a field, he may not need as much time at walk; if he has been standing in a stall, he will need more time. It's a good habit to adopt for other reasons too -- if your horse is ever lame or recovering from a lameness or an illness, and needs exercise but only at a walk, he will be quite accustomed to coming out of his stall and WALKING under saddle, whereas a horse that has been allowed to come out and explode for the first five minutes will not understand why he is being "punished" by being made to walk. ;-)
Walking doesn't have to be boring. Incorporate changes of direction, straight lines, turns, large circles -- use all the large ring figures, make up patterns of your own, and as the warm-up progresses, the figures can become smaller. At the same time, you can do transitions within the walk -- shortened strides, lengthened strides, just a few strides at a time, alternating with your horse's normal working walk.
When the horse is warmed up at walk, you can do the same thing at trot, but this time incorporating transitions within the trot, as well as transitions between walk and trot. Again, turns, circles, patterns, large and small ring figures, spiraling in and out on circles, a little leg-yielding if your horse is new to lateral work, a little shoulder-in if your horse is more sophisticated.
After the trot work, you can do much the same thing at the canter. One caveat: if your horse is older and/or stiff from age, arthritis, or any other condition, it may find it easier to warm up effectively and comfortably if you allow it to follow the walk portion of the warm-up with a few minutes of canter (you in a half-seat, the horse on a loose rein). Horses are quite good at knowing what activity will stretch their warmed-up muscles -- if your horse always volunteers a canter after his walk warm-up, allow him to stretch that way; your trot will be the better for it.
At all gaits, transitions are key -- and the better the transition, the better the gymnastic benefit to the horse. Tempo is also key -- do a lot of work on lengthening and shortening your horse's stride at each gait while maintaining the rhythm and tempo.
And now, I know what you're thinking -- if I do all that, I may not have any time left to RIDE! That's not a problem -- you won't lose anything by taking the time to do a complete warmup. If all goes well, and each system is "go", you'll know that you can, in fairness, ask your horse to work on something new and/or difficult. If you find that there is something that doesn't go right during the warmup -- a stiffness in one direction, an inability to stretch one way, a tight muscle somewhere or a short stride in one leg -- then your job is to go back to the exercises that lead up to that movement, and to work on those exercises until you've put it right. If this takes your entire session, don't worry -- it's giving your horse an increasingly solid foundation, and in the long run, you will not lose ground, or time, by proper preparation.
THROUGHOUT your warmup and your ride, be sure to allow your horse to stretch its head and neck every three minutes -- all the way to the ground if it finds this comfortable. This regular stretching needn't take long, a few seconds may be enough, but it's an important part of the warm-up and of the work for EVERY horse.
Good luck, have fun!
Jessica
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