Saturday 28 January 2017

Ride Schedule

Since I'm in super duper show season planning/getting fit mode, I thought it might be interesting to discuss what sort of riding schedule and activities everyone does with their horses on a weekly basis through the winter.

Since B and I are currently planning another year with a mostly eventing focus, my priority right now is mostly fitness, along with keeping Bridget interested amd happy.

Mondays:

Riding lesson. We alternate jumping and dressage each week.
Jumping in the dark.

Tuesdays:

Bridget does a vaulting class for little kids. Its adorable. This essentially amounts to lunging in side reins, mostly at a walk, while kids jump all over her. She likes this, and I think it's a nice change for her after our normally difficult lesson night.

Cute

Wednesdays:

Riding lesson, usually a progression of whatever we worked on in Monday's lesson.

Thursdays:

Fitness. Depending on how hard she worked on Wednesday, and how much daylight we have, this can be anything from canter sets in the arena, to walking/trotting up and down the big mile long hill near the barn. It's a very steep hill, so we walk down and mostly walk up. I usually do a lot on a loose rein and try to keep her forward and stretching in all gaits.
Hill is steeper than it appears

Fridays:

Flatwork, the odd jump at the beginning or end as a reward. Depending on my schedule, I might switch this with Sunday to be her day off.
I tried to set up video yesterday, amd failed. You get a blurry screenshot.

Saturdays:

Free for all. If the weather's awful, we jump. If it's even halfway good, or we've already had jumping lessons during the week,  we trail ride, usually 1-2 hours, mostly walk in the forest. Our trails are quite technical, so there's only a few spots for trot and canter. Another day that I try to sneak in some fitness work while disguising it as "fun" :)

Sundays:

Usually her day off, although I do switch it with Fridays now and then.








SHARE:

5 comments

  1. Your schedule is pretty great! Very full with lots of variety. :) I'm really struggling with the finer details of mine. Mine would work a lot better if I could learn to get up early on Thursdays and Fridays. :( Working on it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Omg Bridget is freaking adorable for the kiddo vaulters!!! Great schedule too. I was just talking about this with my friend yesterday - this is my first winter with an indoor and it's been a total game changer. In the past, we had to haul out just to keep the horses ridden during the depths of winter, but this year I've been able to just keep going. For Charlie I'm mostly trying to do two days on, one off, and keeping as much variety as is possible with the short days.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love that schedule - I'm digging all the variety you have built in to keep the pony happy!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love Bridget and the vaulters! What a good pony!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Variety is the spice of life! I'm not planning on gearing up for show season until March or so, so right now Miles is just getting two light hacks, plus a lunge each week. I think he's enjoying his downtime though!

    ReplyDelete

BLOGGER TEMPLATE MADE BY pipdig