conditioning the bronto 2.0

Charlie has been back in work for about a week since our vet appointment. If you recall, the whole point of that appointment was to take a fresh look at Charlie's overall wellness, including comprehensive evaluations via ALL of the flexions haha.

The long and the short of it was that Charlie overall is a sound horse with no real issues precluding him from doing all the things I want to do. Which, ya know, is always SUPER NICE to hear from a vet lol. I will never ever EVER get tired of listening to a vet tell me my horse is sound. Ever. Ahem, cough cough.

pro tip: eeting entire giant branches of maple leaves (not the red ones tho) will apparently make for sounder happier horses lol.... who knew?!? /sarcasm

There were a few pieces of low hanging fruit tho -- a few steps we could take to help improve Charlie's margins. Obviously getting him back into leather pads up front was a huge priority to address his foot soreness. Luckily that happened early last week.

The other biggie was joint injections in Charlie's stifles. He got them while on the track as a racehorse, but I hadn't touched them since. Now was the time, tho. And actually the vet seemed to think this wouldn't likely become part of our regular maintenance anyway. My hope is that getting him more comfortable on the stifles now will allow us to put better and stronger muscle around the joint via conditioning. So that the joint stays comfortable and supported for longer. We'll see how that all works out haha.

this variation of cross country is probably not what the vet had in mind when she told us to "do more."

Because ultimately, the vet saw Charlie's case as predominantly revolving around better conditioning for his entire system. She wanted me to be more focused in integrating more frequent bursts of higher impact, higher intensity work into Charlie's work cycles.

Which like, c'mon, who on earth would be sad to hear a vet telling you to gallop and jump your horse more often?!?! That's basically the best medical prescription evar lol...

So I've spent the time since that appointment meditating on what that might actually look like for us. What changes need to happen in the routine I've cultivated over the last couple years?

Honestly I think we just need more.... more. Of everything. Remember our 2017 #adultcamp field trip to Windurra for a guided tour by Boyd Martin? During which I asked about his fitness and conditioning programs for his horses? To this day I STILL regret not recording his answer, bc he gave so much detail so quickly that my notes after the fact were seriously lacking. Sigh.

legit the only pic i currently have of charlie's fresh leather pads up front. if you're interested tho, there's footage in the helmet cam below!!

Anyway, the general gist was that his horses all get ridden a lot. My notes were:

"Long story short, it's very heavily focused on conditioning. Basically every horse works twice a day. Once for some type of conditioning, usually done by working students. Whether a long slow walk or trot, or more purposeful canter or gallop sets. Then another ride done on the flat or jumping, usually done by Silva or Boyd. 

...It really struck me just how much these horses get ridden - but especially how low-impact much of the riding actually is. It's not just short bursts of intense activity, but long slow building up."


It's funny in retrospect looking back on those notes, bc you can see right away that I fixated on the sheer amount of low intensity work. While apparently ignoring the fact that it's balanced by frequent, tho shorter, high impact sessions.

i put a microphone muff on my helmet cam to reduce wind noise. jury's out on whether it worked or not.

Anyway, that type of schedule is obviously challenging when you don't have a veritable army of working students eager to toil away at hacking out your upper level champions haha. This is further complicated when considering that most of us adult amateurs live the 9-5 work life. There just isn't time in the day for that, ya know?

So I'd settled into a schedule where the conditioning happens on some days, and the higher intensity on other days. My theoretical weekly routine consisted of: two conditioning type rides - one a long walking hack, the other trot sets. Two to three focused dressage schools. And one jump lesson.

Tho obviously in reality the schedule changes constantly. Because #reallife, yo. But even still. In light of how the vet reacted when I described all the low intensity, low impact work I do with Charlie, I think that whole approach above needs an overhaul.

we've seen this bench a bunch before!

So my first edit is to stretch out the length of every ride. But not in the form of longer "schooling," if that makes sense. Charlie doesn't necessarily need to do focused dressage for 45 minutes. At least at this point in our combined training, we're generally better off aiming for closer to ~20min of really focused purposeful work. Not including the warm up or breaks. Anything longer than that and our quality degrades as the horse tires.

The warm up remains critical tho, especially now that the horses are stalled during the day. Meaning Charlie's been relatively stationary for hours by the time I get out to ride him. Maybe some horses can come out of the stall feeling loose and supple and ready to rock 'n roll, but Charlie is DEFINITELY not that horse haha. Homeboy gets stiff.

My plan is to basically do a little bit of hacking out / conditioning as our warm up for every ride, instead of as its own ride. This could be walking or trotting the fence lines, wandering the trails, or hitting up the cross country fields, whatever, right?, for at least 20min before making our way to the arena for a proper school.

oooh but this is new! this jump is SO COOL, GUYS OMG haha

The added bonus of this approach is that since we're already fully warmed up by the time we reach the arena, we can get straight to work. No moseying around on the buckle for ten minutes. No confusion about being lazy or behind my leg. The moment we step into the ring, we are on the clock, so to speak.

Long time readers may see how this can be an advantage for a horse who isn't always the most forward thinking haha. It's always been a challenge to stay disciplined about insisting on forward. But I'm thinking that this approach of reserving the ring for proper work will help Charlie get with the program faster.

Meanwhile, the lengthier warm ups out on terrain and up and down hills will serve the dual purpose of increasing our overall time spent conditioning. Ideally, we'd be able to do a second little hack-about after finishing schooling too. Tho in practice this thought has not translated as quickly to action.

The other big change to our program is just plain old JOMPING. Doing more of it, more frequently. Not necessarily more jumps per school, but more frequent schools. Right now in my mind this means more frequent sessions of anywhere from 10-20 jumps. Either in the stadium ring, or out on xc.

oooh we have TWO of these roll tops now, the one with the aqua top is in another field as a combination, yass!

To be honest, tho, I'm likelier to take those extra jumps out on the xc course. For one simple reason: No jump crew needed haha. Bc let's be real, Charlie is not exactly careful.

Plus. Cross country is fun. Obvi haha. Right??

So this week I really tried to put my money where my mouth was. And after a careful return to full work, and after we missed our normal weekly jump lesson again for reasons and stuff, I made it my business to get our butts out into the xc fields.

Per usual, I started second guessing myself and rationalizing why maybe we shouldn't or whatever as the time drew nearer. But dammit, this was vet-mandated, wasn't it?? I gotta be super honest in saying that's such a nice ace to have up my sleeve when my nerves start jangling haha. It doesn't have to be a very serious ride, doesn't have to be long or crazy or anything like that, but it *does* have to include some jompies. Vet's orders. Boom.

first time jumping this T table thingy! full disclosure: our turn to it was not my best work. needs moar straightness!

And how could I resist anyway? I had gotten out to the barn in the morning before the worst heat of the day. The cross country course was freshly set up and mowed. The fields were empty as most herds are stalled for the day. And I came complete with helmet cam and studs. A recipe for success, no?

So out we went haha. And, well. It wasn't exactly the most mind blowing schooling session in the world, I'll be totally honest. Charlie and I haven't jumped anything since our epic cross country lesson with Sally Cousins at Windurra almost 4 weeks ago. Plus I had foolishly put a plain loose ring snaffle on the horse, instead of our normal elevator. Whoops haha.

It was totally fine tho. Actually, it was kinda nice getting run away with again after working so hard for so long on being more forward lol. Silver linings??

look who's turning into such a gate professional!

Regardless, we kept it really simple. Our first field contained a bunch of jumps Charlie's seen a million times before. A couple BN efforts to warm up, then the N bending line from last year's Jenny Camp course.

And then a SUPER RAD skinny nestled between two trees in the fence line. I've wanted to jump this sucker FOREVER tho. And not just bc it saved us a gate haha. It just.... idk, it always looked really cool. It's not the tallest or widest jump in the world, but the way it's situated between trees it usually ends up on the T or M courses. Anyway, I was super pumped to try that, and Charlie jumped the SHIT out of it haha, good boy!

That whole little session was about half a dozen jumps plus going up / down the banks. So I figured we'd just go to the water for a little extra work before calling it a day. If we're actually going to do this every week, there's no need to cover everything in a single ride, right?

awww his goofy faces just kill me tho <3 <3 <3

Plus I had in mind all those videos Boyd Martin just posted wherein they schooled all the horses over more or less similar variations of course work depending on the horse's level. A quick warm up. A couple biggies. And some more technical efforts with more forgiving jumps. Then done. Seemed like a solid recipe to me, so that's what I tried to do too.

Once at the water, we kept it really simple: cantering through just the water alone first. Next going from the water to the N boat house, and then reversing that same line. Then moving to the T roll top to the water. Tho we kinda biffed it the first time, so had to repeat. Same story with the last single T table we did, another new jump for us.

We were a little short, then a little long, not quite getting the bigger jumps as cleanly out of stride as I would have liked. But I'm chalking that up to being rusty and not jumping often enough lately haha. And in a way it's kinda nice seeing that Charlie feels confident enough with the height / width of these jumps to make easy enough work from less than perfect distances.

helmet cam video here! complete with footage from getting back to the barn to untack, take the studs out, and hose the horse off. in case any of y'all are into behind-the-scenes looks ;) let me know if you like that!

Obvi I'm not going to give up on carrying the drum beat of, "dear god but we need more xc lessons" just because the vet told me to jump more often. But it *is* somewhat liberating to have that thought in mind. It's nice to shift my mindset away from "saving" the horse or wanting to "limit" how many efforts he faces.

Instead of being consumed by "making every effort count," I can appreciate that just getting out there and doing a little bit at a time is still important and good for both of us. Because let's be real, I need more mileage in general too. Not even specific to trying to jump bigger or harder fences. But just practicing being in the moment and working on my eye, my position, our pace. All that good stuff.

So we'll see. I'm excited about taking this new approach to Charlie's and my conditioning. Especially as it makes me feel like I've got more options when scheduling lessons gets challenging.

And possibly more important than all the rest, I feel like I've got a mandate straight from the horse's vet's mouth to plain old have more FUN with my horse. Obviously an exciting prospect haha.

Have you likewise ever had to do a complete overhaul of your horse's schedule? Or ever been told something that completely flipped your mindset in how you approach conditioning your horse?