Ridecamp: Re: [RC] leasing and how many days a week do you ride for a 25?

> Quoted from heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx's message:
>>You should ride every other day at most, and a 3-day-a-week program
>>works  well for most horses, with two shorter rides followed by one
>>rest day and  a longer ride followed by two rest days
>
> Actually, it's important to put some back-to-back days in as well.
> Tack  problems and other problems that won't show up on conditioning
> rides - but  *do* on endurance rides - will often make themselves
> obvious by riding two  or three days in a row.  Additionally, I think
> you get more conditioning  value out of back-to-back rides.  Consider
> how many people report that  their horses actually improve in condition
> over the course of a multi-day  ride.  If that's the case, *careful*
> back-to-back conditioning training  will do the same.  Of course I'm
> not talking 7/week - you would have to  schedule rest days just as
> carefully as work days.

You can actually create problems by conditioning back-to-back that you
would never encounter by giving the horse adequate rest between rides. 
Tissue recovery times are in the neighborhood of 48-72 hours, and small
increments of damage can become cumulative when there is insufficient rest
between exercise sessions.  It takes a very astute horseman to catch
subclinical damage before it becomes more serious--and even the most
astute can be fooled sometimes.  I wouldn't suggest doing back-to-back
rides until a horse is already fairly fit, unless it is a matter of doing
very subminimal work (polishing arena skills, etc.) on in-between days.
BTW, multi-day horses seem to go one of two directions--they either go and
go and go, and look like they could keep right on going at the end of 5
days, or they start to look a bit shaggy around day 3.  For the former
horses, 50 miles is submaximal exercise--for the latter, they are pushing
themselves to do 50, and by the 3rd day, the subclinical damage starts to
become clinical.
Heidi



=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
 Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
 Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=