June is the kickoff for the summer fun! It should be so for our riding as well. So here is our challenge for this month – if you are training less than three times per week, add one extra training session per week to your program. Remember when I say “training” that it doesn’t have to be scary. Mostly that just means time spent having a conversation with your horse on a subject matter of your choice. It doesn’t have to be fancy or intense. In fact spending ten minutes with our horses on positive reinforcement in groundwork can do more good for our relationship than an hour of battling through our big goals where we tend to get frustrated.
What To Work On
If you have been following along the last couple of months we have been preparing for this busy riding season by logging our training time and giving our tack a close evaluation. If you would like to catch up on last month’s challenge you can do that here. For those who have managed to log your training, you have a firm grasp of what your schedule looks like and what your activities have been like for the last month or so. And if you are like many of us, you are feeling a bit crumby about it too. We have the best of intentions and yet here we are looking at only a few short entries on our riding logs. No wonder our horses make us work so hard every time we get on!
Where To Begin
A good place to start is finding patterns in what you have been discussing with your horse. Try to use your added training time to address any holes in your training or nuisance issues. Some common areas that many of us could benefit from stepping up our work are intervals for building endurance, desensitizing, lateral work, riding in different locations and ground work. Most of us spend the majority our time working on our specific riding interest and tend to pass over some of the “smaller” issues. When in fact the smaller issues are often the root of larger hinderances to progress.
Alternatives
If you are already rocking and rolling with your training routine that’s awesome! Spread the wealth to an extra horse if you have access to one so you don’t overwhelm one horse with all your energies. This is also a good idea if your main horse is one with limitations and can’t take much extra work. In either case it’s beneficial to riders to work with multiple different horses as each horse presents its own challenges and requires different techniques.
Since we all have different circumstances this challenge will need to be applied differently for each rider. The main goal is to get us all hands on, spending quality time with our horses and working towards balance in our training. Remember, doing something, no matter how small is always better than doing nothing. Now let’s put on our barn boots and get out there to start the summer fun!
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