Fitness Plan?? Advice needed

[westphalenlover]

My pony has been out of work for about a month now. Before that i was able to take him out on hacks for an hour and a half. I was just wondering if anyone has used a fitness plan before, did it work and what was it I'm not looking to get him competition fit. I just want to be able to school, jump and hack with him...and lessons of course and to do all of this comfortably. So that we can both enjoy it

 

[westphalenlover]

anyone?

 

[Joyscarer]

Mine was a start from practically zilch fitness plan purely based on hacking as that's what I do and the field wasn't dry enough to lunge back then.

2 weeks of walk only building from 20 mins at first to 1hr 30 mins. An active walk mind you

From there I introduced a couple of bits of trot and slowly increased the period of time I trotted for.

After that, in I think it was the 4th week, came canter. At first just one short go up a hill because Joy was desparate to canter but not fit enough to do much and the hill kept the canter shorter and meant she wouldn't drag me off too far! Then gradually increase the amount of canter.

The biggest thing is to really get a feel for how your horse is feeling and not to do too little otherwise you aren't getting any fitter but not to do too much either.

It took about 6 weeks to get to a level of fitness that I was happy with. If you want to do more than fast hacks then you might need longer but given you are starting from only having had 1 month off I wouldn't think so.