I suggest continuing to ride 4-5 days a week for 45 minutes to an hour each day. If your horse recovered fine in the first week, increase the trotting intervals. Keep an eye on the time it takes to recover; ideally, you'd like to pick up the pace every 15 to 20 minutes.
However, if you just want to keep your horse in a healthy physical condition, riding your horse three times a week for at least 20 minutes at a time can help maintain a good level of health.
Unless your horse has an injury or is getting old, they should be fine to be ridden more than once in a day. If your horse is out of shape, then it is best to start out slow and build up their workouts over time.
Intense training should be limited to 3-5 days a week with rest days in between depending on the fitness of your horse. However, short casual rides are okay to do daily. Never ride a horse to exhaustion everyday and limit intense riding to an hour or less.
If possible, interact with your horse for an hour or two, five to six days a week. If that's not possible, carve out one midweek slot so you can space visits evenly. To reduce daily grooming time, hire competent help for a weekly deep-cleaning. Find a good rider who can exercise your horse once a week.
Time for horse care. How much actual time your horse will require will depend on a lot of factors. In general, expect to devote at least 8 to 10 hours a week to horse care. If you're doing more of the work, then 14 to 15 hours a week is more realistic.
Although your horse can be safely left alone overnight, you should never leave your horse unattended for longer than 10 hours. Doing so can have a serious impact on the health or happiness of your equine companion.
Typically, your more endurance-trained horses can cover up to 100 miles per day. An average trail horse can cover upwards of 50 miles within a day. Mostly, either type of horse can not go more than a few consecutive days at this distance without a few days of rest and recovery in between.
There is no set age for retiring your horse. Some horses have physical conditions or diseases that require an early retirement. Other horses can be ridden late into their life without issues. As a general rule, most horses should stop being ridden between 20 to 25 years old.
Considering Weight
There is debate about this percentage, but the general rule is that a horse should carry no more than 20 percent of their weight. 2 Remember that this weight also includes the saddle and other riding equipment, in addition to the rider. An overweight horse cannot necessarily carry a heavier rider.
It can be tiring
A lot of physical and emotional strength is required to ride a horse and it will wear you out, especially if you are dedicating a lot of your time to the sport. If you lead a busy lifestyle, then you will need to take this into consideration before taking up horse riding properly.
In full flight (in a gallop) a horse can cover up to just over 3km before it begin's feeling fatigued. However if gaits are varied with canters and trotting, a well-conditioned horse can cover 30 to 50km in a day (while giving the horse multiple breaks in between to regain strength).
For a person weighing 150 lbs, riding at a walk burns approximately 136 calories in a 30 minute session. If you increased the horse's speed to a trot, that same person would expend 72 additional calories over that same 30 minute period of time (208 calories). Galloping a horse burns 261 calories per half hour.
On their working days, they do 2 or 3 lessons, normally a mix of standards e.g. 1 walk / trot lesson and 1 trot / canter lesson to vary their workload and keep them interested.
Compared to the general population, there is a high occurrence of back pain among horse riders. Horse riders are at a greater risk of experiencing back pain than the general public due to both the repetitive nature of riding as well as the long-term consequence of a riding injury.
Horse riding helps with:
Cardiovascular health - Horseback riding has been shown to be good aerobic exercise. Core strength - Maintaining good posture in the saddle ignites your core muscles. Muscle strength - Riding requires strength – so does saddling a horse, and carrying buckets of hay and water.
The book "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell states that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at anything. If the average student takes one lesson a week and rides 30-45 minutes during that lesson, then they will have about 40 hours of saddle time during one year.
Exhaustion occurs in most equestrian sports, but it is more frequent in events that require sustained endurance work such as endurance racing, three-day eventing, trial riding, and hunting. Exhaustion is also more likely when an unfit, unacclimatized, or unsound horse is exercised.
If a horse is in great condition, the average distance they could travel in a day (without stopping) is 20 to 40 miles in a day. But, again, that's if the horse is in great shape. Breaks are highly recommended so they don't overextend or injure themselves.
Following a trail ride, dressage lesson, or a jumping school, your horse needs time to relax and cool down before you put him away for the day. Make a habit of walking for the last five to fifteen minutes of your ride (less after an hour-long lesson, more after a several-hour trail ride).
Horses naturally live in herds and a normal horse is never alone by choice. These facts drive the behaviour of horses and cause them to do some of the things that can seem irrational to us – such as panic if they get separated from other horses.
Horses and ponies generally like to live out on grass for much of the time. This is when they enjoy the freedom to graze, interacting with other horses and generally exhibiting 'normal' horse habits and behaviour.
Horses don't sleep all night like we do.
Instead of falling into a deep sleep every night, horses typically spend their nights alternating between rest and activity. They might take a short snooze standing up, graze for a while, and then stretch out on their side to get a few minutes of deep sleep.
Plenty of horses seem to enjoy being ridden and are fond of the attention they get from their riders. However, there are definitely horses out there who do not like it. They'll be more stubborn while you're on and maybe agitated while being tacked up. Though, riding does benefit the horse.