During winter, you and your horse may not be getting the conditioning you are used to. The weather gets bad and you cannot get to the barn, it gets colder and the arena freezes or gets too muddy to ride.

Winter, for many of us, forces us to decrease the intensity, frequency, or length of workouts. The result? General fitness will go down for both horse and rider.

While this article aims to give you ideas for getting your horse back in condition, much of it holds true for you too. If you keep these general principles in mind you can keep some level of fitness and be ready for the spring when, under clear skies or warmer temperatures, you will bring your horse back to work. When the weather improves you will still need to bring your horse slowly back to work but there are things you can do for both of you to maintain a baseline throughout the winter.

Here are some tips that might make going back to work in the upcoming spring easier.

You can maintain a baseline level of conditioning for both you and your horse with two to three cardiovascular workouts each week. Try for 40 to 60 minutes of medium intensity work, just to get your heart pumping and your breathing up. Remember to warm up slowly, work for about 30 minutes and then cool down slowly, giving your horse time to dry his coat and relax his muscles. If your winter goal is to maintain fitness then cardio workouts will be enough. If your goal is to maintain suppleness too, you will want to work on lateral movements at each workout. A great time to do this is at the walk during the cool-down when he is mentally calm. Your horse’s muscles are relaxed and warm so he can stretch and flex and bend. It gives you both a nice time to work together either in the saddle or on the ground.

Remember, your horse’s age, general fitness, work ethic, and work and injury history will affect his physiological and psychological response to conditioning. Remember this as you bring your horse back to competitive or trail fitness. Some horses will take longer, slower workouts with a gradual increase in intensity to reach optimum level while other horses will bounce back fairly quickly. This depends on his individual make-up, previous fitness, and time of lay-off.
Some basic rules apply to everyone, horses and humans alike. Apply your conditioning program with these rules in mind, and if you have any doubt or questions, ask your vet (or your doctor).
• Workload must be within the capacity of the horse’s heart, muscles, tendons and skeleton. If not you risk injuring your horse.
• It takes weeks to months for muscles to respond to increased workload.
• It takes months to years for bones, tendons, and ligaments to respond to stress from increased work. Some stress builds strength, too much can cause injury.
• The body needs time to rest and repair. Allow time between workouts, either with light work or turnout. Adequate rest may take a day or 2 to 3 days if a training session has been intense or especially long (endurance horses will get 1 – 3 weeks of layoff after a hard 100-mile race).
• Baseline fitness can be maintained with twice-weekly lower intensity and lower duration work.
In general, your conditioning program should be adjusted according to you and your horse’s needs—and the weather. Monitor the response to daily, weekly, and monthly training and, if possible keep a baseline no matter what the weather or other limiting factors of life.