What Type of Exercise Suits Your Horse Best?

A simple place to start when it seems like your horse’s fitness is failing to improve is to switch from a continuous style of training to an interval-based style, or vice versa. Even in a well-designed fitness plan, a horse’s unique physiology dictates whether his body absorbs the training stimulus daily. In other words, you might exercise the horse every day but not observe many gains.

Some horses require a continuous style of exercise— maintaining a moderate level of exertion throughout a session with few interruptions— whereas others horses will make few, if any, gains from this. These horses might require an interval-based program, or a blend of the two styles.

The first step, and a productive endeavor for any equestrian, is to determine what approach you tend to use already. Many riders do not realize they favor a particular style until they stop and think about it.

Continuous Exercise

Continuous exercise is the type familiar to most of us who have gone running, cycling, or to an aerobics class at the gym. This type of session includes maintaining a steady level of exertion, typically something moderate and sustainable for about an hour or longer. A few short breaks might be sprinkled in, but generally effort levels are not so intense they warrant breaks.

Most arena riders follow a continuous exercise style of training. Over the course of a daily session, we often school an exercise or pattern for three to five— or more— minutes at once and then move on to other ones while maintaining a low aerobic heart rate zone for the horse. Because the overall exertion is relatively low, giving the horse extended breaks would dilute the fitness training effect. Short breaks every few minutes are sufficient to relax and oxygenate the muscles before resuming exercise.

Recreational trail riding is also generally considered continuous training except in cases where riders are doing structured workouts like hill repeats or gallop sets. For most riders cruising along with their riding buddies at a conservative pace, the exercise stimulus is maintained at a continuous dose from start to finish.

Plenty of horses respond well to this style of training, only requiring an occasional harder dose of exercise in the form of a structured workout every ten days or so. Certain horses, however, do not respond to this style depending on their fiber types, exercise hormones, VO2 max, and unique physiological adaptations to training.

Interval-Based Exercise

Many horses benefit from intervals now and then, but three specific populations rely on this style of training more than others. First, horses that are entirely out of shape respond best to an initial conditioning phase that favors intervals. For example, anyone who has brought a horse through a vet-prescribed rehab program will be familiar with the protocol to introduce trotting for a certain number of minutes followed by a walk-rest set, gradually increasing the length of each interval over time. This allows muscle fibers and energy systems to be recruited, taxed, and then recover. The body absorbs the exercise stimulus this way as opposed to just tolerating it. There is a big difference between the body adapting to training on a weekly basis versus going through the motions without underlying physiologic changes.

Next, horses possessing moderate levels of fitness and/or ones with higher composition of fast-twitch muscle fibers often benefit from interval-style sessions albeit not every day of the week. Generically, interval sessions combine periods of higher intensity activity with periods of easy or rest activity. The actual length and intensity of intervals can vary widely depending on the goal of a workout. Generally, the more intense an interval is, the shorter it will be performed. A full-out sprint, for instance, might be performed for 10 to 30 seconds followed by a rest period of equal or longer duration (this cycle is repeated a specific number of times based on the horse’s fitness level and goals). By comparison, a more moderate effort like a brisk canter or an exercise necessitating collection (i.e. a Half-Pass Zig-Zag), might be performed for 2 or 3 minutes before a rest period of the same or shorter duration. Basically, the architecture of your intervals depends on what is appropriate for your horse. You can read more specifics and find sample workouts in my book33 Strength and Fitness Workouts for Horses.

Interestingly, some of today’s colder blooded horses like Haflingers and Friesians often have a high percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers even though they are arguably mostly used for sports that do not prioritize anaerobic efforts. Training them for recreational pursuits like dressage or pleasure riding, however, requires occasional interval-style exercise to address their unique physiology. Horses that do not necessarily have a high percentage of fast-twitch fibers but are already reasonably fit can also benefit from strategic bouts of interval training due to the specific demands of higher intensity efforts that deliver a novel stimulus to the musculoskeletal system that prevents a plateau.

If nothing else, start by asking yourself what style of training you tend to rely on. And then take an assessment of whether it seems to be working. And again, if you’re unsure how to start, pick up one of my books for help.