Lunging is a great way for horses to exercise and build muscle. But it's easy to fall into bad habits. See if you're making these lunging mistakes and learn how to correct them. As a professional trainer, lunging is a handy skill I practice often – both in the round pen and on the lunge line.
As well as a loosener before riding, lunging is helpful in developing balance, rhythm, and to improve the horse's gaits. Ayden also gives advice on how to make sure the whip is used correctly. As Ayden points out, lunging improves communication, with horses learning to respond to voice commands.
Using your whip, you can gently gesture to or nudge the inside hip, showing your horse where he might be off-balance. By moving your horse to place his feet more correctly, he is using his hind end and his back to balance, therefore building up that long back muscle that creates a beautiful topline.
Lunging can be a great way to exercise your horse, especially if time is short or you're unable to ride. Aside from helping to build and maintain fitness, lunging offers lots of benefits: Encourages suppleness, engagement and obedience. Improves balance, especially in young horses.
Constantly being on a circle puts stress and strain on the horses' joints. It may cause excessive wear and tear on a young horses' joints, particularly if done too soon. Older horses may also not be good candidates for too much lunging as it may put added stress and irritate any existing arthritis.
There are, of course, some drawbacks to lunging over riding though. One of these is that you have less refinement of the aids. While you can work on transitions, different size circles, and good rhythm and engagement, you cannot apply leg, seat, or even independent rein aids.
A great way to build a topline under saddle is hill work. Riding up and down hills works the muscles in the hindquarters, the back and the abdominal muscles. A slow trot or walk is most beneficial in the early stages.
Initially, walking and a slow trot are plenty. Going downhill is just as beneficial as uphill – and both encourage your horse to use their topline in a natural way. As your horse's balance and strength improves, you can even trot or canter downhill. You can even do this on a lunge line.
Horses must work on their fitness and recovery times to improve athletically. Lunging once or twice a week is great for this and will be sufficient within the work routine. Lunge work is more demanding for the horse and sessions should be around 30-45 mins max. Factor in plenty of stretching and walking.
Regular lunging has many benefits – it gives me time to connect with my horse, allows him to work for a while without having to carry me, and offers the opportunity for me to check that he's sound.
Lunging training is a beneficial cross-exercise that helps to improve your horse's topline.
In fact, lunging sessions shouldn't typically exceed 15-20 minutes anyway, as it can cause strain on the horse's joints, particularly if you are working in a small circle for the majority of that time.
What age should you start lunging a horse? You can begin to lunge your horse when he is mentally and physically ready to start light work. Every horse is an individual and it's important to ensure that the horse is sufficiently developed to commence any type of training.
Lunging is an excellent exercise for building trust and communication with your horse. It allows you to work on your horse's balance, rhythm, and relaxation while allowing you to observe their movement and behaviour.
For muscle development, it is important that your horse's feed contains the right amino acids and adequate energy. Muscles consist of muscle fibres, which in turn are made of proteins. Proteins are made up of amino acids. A horse therefore needs protein to build muscle.
Riding over ground poles or raised poles: This encourages your horse to actively lift its legs and engage muscles of the hind quarters for better ground clearance and range of motion. Hills: The most challenging hind quarter strengthening is walking or trotting up hills.
Speedi-Beet is extremely versatile. Feed it in small amounts to overweight horses as a carrier for a multivitamin and mineral supplement or in larger quantities to a poor doer for weight gain, or to a working horse for energy. Remember to collect your tokens for our loyalty scheme, more info here. So easy to prepare!
What is the fastest way to put weight on a horse? High fat, high protein grain combined with a rich alfalfa hay can quickly put weight on a horse, if there is not an underlying medical condition.
Find out how to take the challenge now, and start seeing your horse build topline muscle within 3-6 weeks. Check out the incredible transformations equestrians have achieved with their horses building topline muscle, often in less than 3 weeks!
Lunging is really, really hard on the joints. It's even harder on the joints when your horse is wild, and doing the gallop whilst leaning at a 45 degree angle to the ground, oh and adding some airs above the ground work. You can see where this could be really, really hard on those sticks they run around on.
Lunges are a powerful exercise, allowing you to shape and strengthen almost every muscle in the lower body-the hips, glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves. It helps strengthen your lower body, increase core strength, muscle tissue and help you get the perfect buttocks you always hoped for.