The walk: don’t just sit there! - use it in your everyday work
For many riders, getting your horse fit means lots of trotting, cantering and (if you are an eventing rider) lots of jumping and galloping. Whilst all of this is important, many riders neglect or underestimate the importance of walking in the fitness program. Walking is important to all disciplines for both conditioning and for recovery and it is good for both muscle development and for mental development. Let’s explore this further.
Firstly, it is important to “ride” the walk, not just sit there and relax, allowing your horse to wander, jig or dawdle. Whilst this might be ok on a trail ride or general family day out, when we are talking work-outs this is not enough! Remember that in walk all faults of both horse and rider are visible (Wehorse 2019). If there are any issues with contact or rhythm then these will be obvious and much easier to concentrate on at the walk than at any other gait. Training your horse is like learning to speak another language, if there is a miscommunication then yelling at the horse (overuse of aids or riding faster) won’t help them to understand you any better. This goes for teaching new movements, get it right in walk first and then move to trot or canter.
“What does not work in walk won’t work in trot or canter” Anja Beran
Many experts suggest that the first 10 - 15 mins of every workout should be spent in walk. To warm up, the walk should be forward and active (but not hurried), the horse should be kept straight and walking with purpose but not jigging or anticipating a faster gait (it’s harder than it sounds). The horse should be allowed to start in a long frame stretched into the bridle. Think… “free walk on a long rein”… from most dressage tests. The bonus of this as part of your training, is not just that it gives the horse time to warm up its back and other muscles (particularly for older horses with a little arthritis) but it also gives you the time to practice this movement for your dressage test (it’s worth double points remember). In winter is is particularly important to allow time for all the ligaments, tendons and joints to warm up before moving to harder work.
Use this time to practice lengthening and shortening the reins without disrupting the quality of the walk and also work on shortening and then lengthening the walk to develop elasticity, steadiness and rhythm. Moving through the “gears” in walk is an important part of your horses training and will create balance. Allowing another 10 mins of walk at the end of your workout not only helps the horse cool down, but also creates calmness. It is also good to use hills for the warm up and cool down walks as this helps build muscle and balance (Coffin 2020).
A “good” walk should see the horses shoulders moving freely with the hind feet tracking up to or over the prints of the front hooves. Whilst a large over track can be a good thing, it can be hard to maintain rhythm and purity with such a large walk. Think about what your hands and seat are doing in the walk. Are you allowing the horse to stretch and reach into the bridle and to move freely through the shoulders or are you restricting or blocking the movement. Is your seat relaxed but forward, not grinding down into the horses back and not pushing him out of his rhythm? Watch that you are not getting “busy” with your legs during walk. It is important to teach your horse to maintain their forward active walk with out your constant assistance so that they remain sensitive to your aids.
So go out now and get riding and practice your walk. If done with purpose and incorporated as a regular part of your work-out, you will begin to see the benefits in both your test scores, your horse’s performance and overall suppleness and calmness.
Sources
https://www.wehorse.com/en/blog/walk-horse-gait/
Coffin, T. 2020, Conditioning the event horse at the Novice and Training level, https://useventing.com/news-media/news/conditioning-the-event-horse-at-the-novice-and-training-levels