Winter Exercise for your horse

The winter months in the UK sure can be difficult for horse owners! Snow, ice, frozen ground, wind, rain, mud, short days, all of this makes life hard to keep our horses in exercise! 

But it's really important for us to keep them moving as best we can, and as safely as we can, for so many reasons, and especially if they are stabled for long periods. AND if you're dealing with Kissing Spine, or Arthritis, even more reason to maintain your exercise regime for your horse, in an adapted way. 

Don't let the weather defeat you - adapt! 

Core Strength: winter can be a good time to work on stable based core exercises with your horse! If you can't do as much ridden work as usual, there are still lots of exercises that you can do with your horse in the stable to work on flexibility and core strength, on a daily basis. Use the down time effectively! 

Posture: if your horse is stabled for long periods and lacking movement, his posture will suffer due to lack of muscular and core strength. Poor posture can equal back pain. So another reason to work out an adapted winter exercise plan. 

Digestive health: movement is important for digestive health. Long periods without movement can slow down your horses digestive system, and there is therefore a risk of colic. Coupled with potential dehydration if your horse won't drink really cold water, this really does need some consideration. 

Joint health: whether your horse has diagnosed joint issues or not, standing in the stable for long periods, or standing out in the snow/rain etc for long periods can cause stiffening up. So again, building movement into their routine, and slow/gentle warming up are important in the winter. 

Mental stimulation: I do find that horses do respond well to daily walking for example, when stabled, and seem much calmer and more settled - might seem obvious to say this, but even a 20 minute hand walk will be beneficial if you can't do anything else! 

Muscular strength: it's important to try and maintain muscular strength if we can't do our normal exercise over some parts of winter! And then when the weather improves, it's much easier to bring your horse back into work as your horse already has some base muscular strength/flexibility/core strength! 

When the weather is against us, I find it really useful to have a brainstorm about what type of exercise is actually available to us, on our yard, that we CAN do. You might not be able to ride for various reasons, but what CAN you do to keep your horse moving as best you can? 

For example...:

• Long reining
• Hand walking
• Walk on lunge line 
• Walk over poles
• Walk around yard
• In hand exercise 
• Core exercises in stable 
• Walk around barn
• Horse walker 
• Hand grazing

Some of these forms of exercise may be different to what you would normally do, but they can help to fill the gap left by your usual ridden work, and help maintain some core strength, mental stimulation, and bodily functions etc for your horse. 

Don't under-estimate the value of a couple of hand walks each day for your horse if the weather keeps your horse in - it's massively valuable for their health and wellbeing. You won't be able to maintain high level fitness like this, BUT more importantly you will be able to help with maintaining important bodily functions. 

Mindset: winter exercise often involves a mindset shift! Particularly if your horse is stabled for long periods over the winter, you need to be planning ahead for what you will do with your horse on bad weather days, so that he/she can have some daily movement. 

Horses are wild animals, and nomadic by nature, so it's completely unnatural for them to be stabled and unable to move freely. So it's important that we do our best for them, and try to recreate what they need! 

I hope this article helps with your winter planning, I like to keep my horse on 'tick over' if I can't ride due to the weather, and will always get him out for a good walk on the lunge line as minimum, and do some core exercises in his stable for his body as well as his mind, and find this all helps to maintain him during the difficult weather periods! 

***If you would like to add some core exercises to your horses routine over the winter, my Ebook will explain and show you how to do Core Mobilisation AND Core Activation Exercises...CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS...CORE EXERCISES EBOOK