New Years resolutions with our horses!

Happy New Year to you, and I hope that 2021 will be a better year than 2020 and all of the difficulties we face with the Covid pandemic. 

I wanted to write a quick article as a New Years post, just to pause for a moment with our horses, and consider what we might like to aim for in 2021 with them, and therefore to consider what changes we need to make to enable this to happen, or at least to be able to get closer to our goal.

The biggest piece of advice that I can give in achieving your goals with horses is....consistency! 

So whether your goals are big or small, that doesn't matter, what matters is what we are going to do to get to that goal, and what changes and actions we can implement on a daily basis that will help get us to where we want to be. 

With horses, it takes roughly 6-8 weeks to build muscle, so we will be faced with several weeks at the beginning of an exercise programme where we don't SEE any real visible results, so here CONSISTENCY is key - keep going! 

If you want to change your horses posture, the shape of your horse can be changed quite quickly, but you will then need to strengthen the new posture, again it takes time, so consistency is the key, daily actions towards your goals. 

And small changes and actions are much more manageable to fit into your schedule! For me, I know that I won't ride every day, but what I can do is set my goal to do core activation exercises and in-hand exercises daily in addition to my 3-4 days per week exercise with my horse. So the core activation and in hand exercises only take me 5-10 mins but they are my series of specific exercises to engage my horses core, so if this is done daily, this will have a fantastic accumulative effect over time! Small but effective exercises to get me towards my goal of my horse being stronger in his core. 

I hope this helps you to think about making small alterations to your routine to help towards your goals? Do come and join me in my Practical Tips group on Facebook, where I do a weekly talk on lots of topics around exercise and rehabilitation: Practical Tips for your horse Group 

And if you're interested in the series of core activation and in hand exercises that I use, my Online Learning Platform includes training modules and videos on this and many more exercise and management based topics! 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE DETAILS: Online Learning Platform