Six tips to know when enough is enough

How do you know when your schooling session should come to an end? It’s an important skill to have, says CHRISTINE ARMISHAW.

I want to preface this article by saying that an hour-long training session is too long. And that’s worth stating upfront because I’ve noticed many people really don’t know how long to ride their horse, but for some reason, they think one hour is the magic number!

But if you’re genuinely, properly schooling your horse – as opposed to being out on a relaxed trail ride – and not giving them sufficient breaks, then in most cases an hour is too long for the horse both physically and mentally.

1. What are you training for? Think about what you’re training for. For example, if it’s dressage, you’re training for a six to eight minute test at the most, not, thankfully, a 60 minute marathon! Yes, you have to train at home for all the components, the movements, suppleness, the transitions and so on, but overly long training sessions potentially put your horse at higher risk for injury and for arena sourness. We’ve all encountered a horse who makes it clear they don’t want to see us today if we’re going to make them train again! Which is why variety is good. Mix flat work and pole work up with other exercises and, if possible, get out of the arena too.

When I’m giving an hour-long lesson, I’ll break it up by asking the rider to stop so I can explain what we’re doing and show them what I mean. When learning something new, breaks of 10 to 30 seconds allows time for a scratch, lick and chew, and for both horse and rider to process the information and catch up mentally.

2. Teaching something new: If you are teaching a horse something new – and if you’ve got a young horse you’ll likely be teaching them a lot of new things – it’s much better to focus on short and sweet so that it doesn’t become mentally and physically exhausting for them. I normally ride a horse for about 25 minutes. However, if the horse takes 15 minutes to settle and get into work mode, then I might ride for another 25 minutes to work on whatever I’m teaching them. So, there are variations to the length of time depending on what’s going on.
3. The rule of three: When you’re teaching something new, your aim is to get what you’re asking for three times in a row. So, keep my rule of three in mind: if they managed to give you what you were asking for the first time, it was potentially a fluke, maybe they did it accidentally rather than on purpose; the second time, well, you’re probably actually starting to get somewhere, especially if it’s the second time in a row; and if you get the right answer three times in a row, then that’s becoming a learned behaviour – your horse is saying ‘I think this is what you want’ and they’re offering it to you.

And if they offer that three times in a row on both sides, even if it’s in the first 10 or 15 minutes, great! Jump off! And that’s especially true if it’s a young horse. Don’t keep asking them to repeat what they’ve learned, because you’ll actually start to undo all the good work you’ve put in.

4. Quit while you’re ahead: This tip is a really important one, and perhaps is something that only comes with experience. So, the training session is going really well and you’re having a great time, so much so that you want to keep going and going. But you have to know when to say when!

Perhaps you’ve put the jumps up, and your horse is doing a great job – but don’t keep pushing until they start to mess it up because they’re getting tired, or it’s something that they’re just learning, or you’ve made it more challenging. Before you do it again, ask yourself if you’re certain that the result will be at least as good as it was before, if not better, because if you’ve got doubts, now’s the time to get off before you undo all that good work. You should always finish feeling like you could have done more, not that you should have done less.

5. When less is more: Feeling that you could have done more also applies to the classes you choose to compete in. To put that into context, you should be jump training at 10 centimeters higher at home than the class you’re aiming for, and with dressage, at the level higher than the competition you’re entering. And that’s a good rule of thumb to use when you’re wondering what classes to enter. You want to go to that competition and come away thinking I could have gone up a level, rather than I should have entered the lower class.
6. The last minutes matter: You’ve ridden for 30 minutes just to get five good minutes at the end. But this does not mean that you had an awful ride for 25 minutes! What you did was to work quietly away at whatever you were doing so that the last five minutes were good – and then you hop off on a positive note. And that’s the key takeaway: as long as you finish on a positive note, that will be the feeling you come away with – and just as importantly, it will be the last thing your horse remembers. How you finish really does matter.

Christine Armishaw Equestrian offers a variety of coaching and other equestrian services at her Otford Valley Equestrian Agistment & Training Centre just south of Sydney, NSW.