Hill Training for Horses
Hills offer potent training stimulus, but their benefits rely on understanding the wide variety of uses and outcomes. By itself, riding up and down hills with a vague hope of strengthening your horse does not accomplish much besides creating fatigue. “Strengthening” is a very broad term, and can actually mean all kinds of things, so when we set about hill training it really helps to know why. After all, this goal determines how and when we tackle hills.
For a training tool like hills to create adaptations, it needs to be applied relevantly, repeatably and measurably. Hill training serves three main conditioning roles, each with different approaches. These are as follows.
Movement Therapy. Exercising horses on slopes, whether mounted or un-mounted, requires neuromuscular coordination, increased joint flexion and connective tissue stimulus, and postural balance adjustments. It is used for these reasons in rehab settings, early conditioning phases, and correcting poor movement patterns. Examples include: rehab for core muscles, asymmetry and stiffness, proprioceptive loss from confined lifestyle. Hill training in Movement Therapy scenarios relies on particular parameters. In other words, it is NOT the simple act of trudging up and down a long hill. These parameters are as follows:
A gentle slope, i.e. a 4-6% grade, not steeper than 10%.
Short exercise bouts, from 10 to 20 seconds. Bouts are repeated an appropriate number of reps based on vet or expert’s recommendations
Exercise performed mostly at walk; low intensity; horse is not taken to point of fatigue or soreness
Exercises are performed 2-3 times weekly
Exercises of this nature include: Backing up a gentle slope, walking sideways across a slope, Walk-Stop transitions while walking down hill.
Strength Gains. Commonly cited for improving general hindquarter and/or stifle weakness, hills offer low impact resistance training. Traveling up hills targets the horse’s extensor muscle chain while traveling down hill activates the flexor muscle. Terrain of this sort can add power and function to the horse’s locomotion, improving his collection, fatigue resistance, and durability. The parameters for hill training in this scenario include:
A slope of 6-10% grade
Exercise efforts (i.e. going up or down the hill) lasting 1 to 3 minutes with multiple such efforts throughout the session, depending on horse’s fitness, age, goals
1 session of this type every 5 to 7 days
Exercises are done in whichever gait is most aerobically efficient. Remember, the goal here is strength vs cardio. If you are working on hills and your horse is gasping for air, you have diminished blood and oxygen supply to his muscles (read as: they are not getting stronger) and you need to downshift to a slower pace.
Exercises that fit the role of general strength gains include: Schooling on a Slope, Riding a Ditch (repeating this short exercise continuously for at least 1 minute at a time), and riding extended walk up a hill with lowered neck position for 30 seconds followed by walking down hill in a collected walk for 30 seconds, repeat.
Sport Specific Conditioning. While many riders assume they should be covering miles and miles of hills when their vet or trainer tells them to go out and strengthen their horses, this kind of conditioning is actually best suited for specific adaptations within certain disciplines. The primary outcome of prolonged repeated hill efforts is huge cardiovascular improvements. And, sure, most horses could use some cardio fine-tuning, but for most arena disciplines, strength is a greater need (this is bullet item #2 above and, arguably, where MOST riders should find themselves). Studies have shown that even F.E.I. level dressage horses rarely exceed a moderate heart rate while competing and even fewer recreational horses need the respiratory response of, say, racing Thoroughbreds. Long repeated hills performed at higher rates of speed— fast trotting, galloping— are most beneficial for endurance horses, high level jumpers and 3-day eventers, combined driving horses, and sports with taxing cardio demands.
Besides cardio this kind of conditioning also offers endurance and muscular stamina in addition to metabolic efficiency that comes with buffering waste from eccentric loading while riding down hills. The parameters of these efforts vary depending on each sport’s goals, but generally are as follows:
Hills longer than 3 minutes to ascend
Horse’s pulse and respiration recovery dictates time between work intervals
Variable steepness of slope can serve the role; duration and repeatability play as much a factor as steepness of terrain
1 workout of this type every 5 days
All gaits are used, including gallop. Some trotting down hills also commonly prescribed
In my experience, the vast majority of horses need the type of hill training described in items #1 and #2 above. This includes a creative approach to the training stimulus. Short gradual inclines work great here, you do not need long steep trails through the forest. Use your terrain imaginatively, utilizing a variety of figures and stride lengths, practicing both ridden and un-mounted exercises. The key is to be clear about your purpose and consistent with your practice. Remember, ‘strength’ means many different things for different horses. A 100-mile endurance horse will train very differently on hills than a Western Dressage horse or a show horse or an aging pleasure horse.