Why do Two Sessions a Day?
Daily doubles offer a uniquely effective way of improving fitness without boredom or fatigue, especially for rehab cases or for horses learning to adopt new postural habits. They allow you to add stimulus without the deleterious outcome of an overwhelmed nervous system or soft tissues maxing out their excitability. As a general rule for posture training, activating movement patterns with greater frequency counts far more than a single prolonged duration of effort. Two shorter sessions, or even three mini ones, performed a few days per week when you have extra time allow you to do this.
When horse owners contact me for help designing a conditioning plan for their horses rehabbing from injury, I frequently prescribe a double session two days per week. In its guidelines for recovering from soft tissue injury, the American Association of Equine Practitioners recommends this. Combining those recommendations with my own experience of personal fitness, I began incorporating double sessions for the horses I train regularly and have been compelled by this practice. Put simply, the more often we recruit systems, the more we strengthen those patterns.
The specifics of each session differ considerably for individual horses, but I will offer some basic how-to information here as well as basic examples.
First, aim to conduct each session 2 to 5 hours apart. The existing research to date indicates that this timing allows your second session to build on your earlier one’s stimulus. Each session can be the same length, although typically the second one is shorter. The minimum time I recommend is 15 minutes. In the instance of horses rehabbing from injury, the content of each double might be the same, i.e. hand- walking and few stretches or Corrective Exercises. For performance horses in full training, the content of each session might differ. Here is an example from my own barn.
A couple of times per week, I ride Diamante around 9am, schooling his dressage movements in the arena for about 45 minutes. Then, I cool him down and put him in his paddock. After lunch around 1pm, I get him out for 20 minutes of groundwork including brisk walking over ground poles and Corrective Exercises. This second mini workout allows me to tune up his body mechanics, observe any tightness in his gaits, and keep his soft tissues hydrated, oxygenated, and adapting to the positive training stress I undertook in the morning. It also re-circulates metabolic waste lingering in the tissues from the earlier workout, helping prevent stiffness or restriction.
Heading out for round #1….
For rehab cases, I try to employ multiple short sessions as often as possible. I aim for at least two sessions, sometimes three or four. Depending on the horse’s needs, these sessions range from 10 to 25 minutes. I find this always produces more effective results than a single session of hand-walking as prescribed by the vet. For instance, I am currently rehabbing a student’s mare and this is the approach I take. At 7:45am when I arrive at the barn, I bring her to the arena and walk through ground pole routines and then perform Corrective Exercises. After 20 minutes, she goes back to her paddock. Around noon, I bring her back out to perform a different batch of Corrective Exercises totaling 10 to 15 minutes. And then before 2pm, I get her out again to hand-walk on a different surface (firmer than the arena), perform some stretches, and occasionally ground drive.
I offer these examples as a way to help you think creatively about your own training. Many of us are accustomed to getting our horses out for a single focused effort of exercise daily, but spreading short sessions throughout the day can be even more useful. In human fitness terms, we call this “greasing the groove.” In essence, you’re optimizing the functionality of movement grooves (or patterns) with multiple stimuli throughout the day rather than one exercise session followed by a lot of stagnation.