Help - non riding training

dcp

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Mar 31, 2005
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I want to give my horse a good workout at the weekend but without riding. My riding seems to be getting pretty crap and I would like to do some schooling with him as I feel we've really slipped on this. Would lunging be the best thing? And what is the maximum amount of time you should lunge for? Got any ideas what things could I practise on? Or even a little schedule?

Thanks
 
Lauren

I'd say 15-20 mins as it can be quite intense. Obviously if you are working at slower paces and walking with the horse to extend the 20m circle into straight lines etc you can take that into account. 20m circles are quite a lot of stress on the legs if you do them for 15 mins :eek:

Start and end with the horse "loose" i.e. no side reins or restrictions. Thats is your warm up and cool down. In between those two is your work session.

make sure you spend equal times on each rein. and warm up BOTH reins. I normally do a short no-gadget warm-up on one rein, change rein to warm up the other side, and then add side rein or chambon etc on the same rein, swap reins to "work" the other side. Finish with a cool off.

What to do - depends on what you want to work on ? For example, you could work on transitions. Or work over raised poles for flexion and suppleness.

Have you lunged before ? if you can handle two reins you could work using a mix between long reining and lunging.
 
Yes transistions and a steady canter is what I's like to practise. What about if I did 20 minutes lunging then what long reining around a small field for a couple of mintes. He seems to like long reining
 
be careful with canter on the lunge - thats really intense. a horse needs to be really well balanced. I work on Fi's canter online - but I may only ask for a couple of transitions up on any rein and don't keep her in canter for too long..

and I move it about to make it as big a circle as I can.
 
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