Every spring, I hear the same thing.

“I don’t know where his topline went.”

It didn’t vanish overnight.

It slipped away, a little at a time, over the winter. 🦄

Think about your own summer

Light until 9pm. Rides every evening. Long hacks, fun rides, maybe a show or two.

You’re on your feet all day, getting loads of steps in.

You’re riding fit.

Now think about December.

Dark by four. Fewer rides. Shorter sessions, squeezed in after work, if they happen at all.

Your steps drop. Your fitness drops with them.

And when you get back on in spring, you feel it.

Your horse is exactly the same.

What’s happening to your horse

All summer, your horse had the lot: plenty of turnout, regular work, a routine that kept the muscles switched on.

In winter, turnout shrinks. Riding drops. The sessions you do manage are shorter and colder.

Think about how much of the day your horse spends standing still. In the stable all day and night, or waiting at the gate for hours to come in.

In the wild, a horse covers around 20 miles a day. Not that I’m suggesting you do that! But it’s how they’re designed.

And muscles follow a simple rule: use them or lose them.

The first to go are the deep postural muscles, the ones that hold your horse’s back up, stabilise the spine and help them carry themselves. They lose tone far faster than it took to build.

(I wrote about one of these, the multifidus, here. It’s well worth a read.)

The signs your horse’s core is slipping

These creep in slowly, so they’re easy to miss:

• They tire sooner in sessions that were easy in summer

• They need more of the session to feel forward and willing

• They feel flat or heavier in the contact when you first get on

• A back that looks lower or a topline that’s reducing

• Their crookedness getting more obvious, falling in or stiffer on one rein

• A belly that looks a bit saggier, even when their weight hasn’t changed

If you’re nodding at two or three of these, your horse isn’t being lazy.

They’ve simply lost some of the fitness they had in summer, just like you would.

And strength is only half of it

A strong core on a crooked horse can still be used crookedly.

That’s why strength and straightness have to be built together. More on that soon. 🦄

How to hold on to it this winter

You wouldn’t stop all exercise because the evenings are dark. You’d do a shorter workout at home.

Your horse’s version of that needs no arena, good ground or long sessions.

1. Stable-based core exercises, most days

5-15 minutes before you tack up, or on the days you can’t ride at all. This is your horse’s home workout.

Peer-reviewed research has shown these exercises increase the size of the multifidus muscles over time.

2. Slow, deliberate backing up

A few steps back, straight, with each leg stepping on its own. It gets the core and hind legs working together.

3. A monthly topline check

Photograph your horse from behind and from the side, standing square on level ground, in the same spot each month.

Compare them side by side. You’ll spot a dip or a drop weeks before you’d notice it by eye, while there’s still time to do something about it.

Come spring

You want to be able to say: “It’s all still there.”

Want to keep your horse’s core strong this winter?

Start here: the Core Exercises Course. The stable-based exercises that switch on and strengthen your horse’s deep core. 5-15 minutes, no equipment, no arena. Just £9 / $12.
👉 Core Exercises Course: Click HERE

Next step: the In-Hand Exercises Course. Take that core strength into movement from the ground: standing square, backing up, equal bend both ways, then lateral exercises including shoulder-in, quarters-in, leg yield, turn on the forehand, all from the ground. Half price at £49.50 / $68.
👉 In-Hand Exercises Course: Click HERE

And as always, if you have any questions, need help deciding which course is right for you and your horse, or want to chat about 1-2-1 support — you can get in touch via the Contact page. I’d love to hear from you. 💛