The warm-up is for the horse, not just for you

Ask a rider what their warm-up is for and most will describe finding their seat, getting their balance, settling their nerves. All fair, and all about them.

Meanwhile the horse has come in off a paddock where he has been standing about, and he is being asked within four minutes to bend around a leg and take a contact. Then he feels stiff, or resistant, or is "being difficult on the left rein again", and the rider starts working on the problem.

Quite often there is no problem. There is a horse who has not loosened up.

What a cold horse is actually like

Think about how you feel first thing in the morning, before you have moved about. You can walk. You would not want to be asked to stretch to your full range straight away, and if somebody insisted, you would brace.

That is roughly the situation. A horse who has been standing has a back and a set of legs that have not done anything for hours. He can absolutely walk around. What he cannot do straight away is swing through his back, step properly under himself, and hold a shape.

And when he braces, the honest problem is that it does not look like stiffness from the saddle. It looks like arguing.

What a warm-up should look like

Walk first, and for longer than feels necessary. Ten to fifteen minutes on a long rein, allowed to stretch his head and neck down, going somewhere with purpose rather than shuffling. This is the single biggest improvement most riders could make, and it costs nothing but patience.

Let him be long and low before you ask him to come together. The shape you want at the end of the session is not the shape to start in. A horse who has been allowed to stretch out will come up into a rounder outline far more easily than one who has been held there from the first minute.

Add trot gradually, and in straight lines before circles. A twenty-metre circle asks more of a horse's inside hind and his balance than a straight line does. Do the easier thing first.

Change direction early and often. Most horses are noticeably better one way than the other. The warm-up is where you find out what you have got today, not where you fix it.

Watch for the moment it changes. There is usually a point where the back starts to swing, the stride opens, and he softens without you doing anything. That is the horse telling you he is ready. Before that, you are negotiating with a cold horse.

In this climate, the clock lies

Something worth saying for riders around Townsville specifically.

A warm-up is about the horse, not about a number of minutes, and in North Queensland the same horse needs quite different things in different seasons. In the cooler dry months he may take longer to loosen. In the build-up he may be loose quickly but tire far sooner, and the risk shifts from under-warming to overdoing the whole session.

So use the time as a guide and the horse as the answer. If you have walked for fifteen minutes and he still feels tight, walk for another five. Nothing is lost.

What you get back

This is the part that persuades people, because it sounds like a cost and it is not.

A properly warmed-up horse gives you a better second half. The work is easier, the resistance you were expecting does not turn up, and you get more done in thirty minutes than you would have got in fifty spent arguing. Riders who add ten minutes of walk almost always report that the lesson felt shorter and went better.

There is also the part that matters over years rather than sessions. A horse asked repeatedly to work before he is ready gets sore, and a horse who is regularly sore starts to anticipate the work with tension. That is a slow problem to create and a slow one to undo.

And afterwards

Worth one line, because it gets skipped even more often than the warm-up.

Walk him off on a long rein at the end until his breathing has settled and he has stopped being warm. In our climate that takes longer than people expect. Getting off a hot horse and putting him straight out is the other half of the same mistake.

Frequently asked questions

How long should I warm up for? Ten to fifteen minutes of walk for most horses in normal work, then build gradually. Longer for an older horse, a stiff one, or one coming back from time off. The horse tells you when he is ready.

Is walking on a long rein really warming up? Yes, provided he is actually walking out and not ambling. A purposeful, swinging walk on a long rein is doing real work loosening his back.

Should I lunge as a warm-up? You can, kept short and on sensible sized circles. Be aware a circle asks more than a straight line, so it is not automatically the gentler option. There is more on it in lunging your horse safely.

My horse feels great straight away. Do I still need to? Yes. Feeling loose and being ready to work are not the same, and the cost of a proper warm-up is ten minutes you would otherwise spend fixing something.

He is stiff on one rein every single ride. Is that a warm-up problem? A little one-sidedness is normal and usually improves as he loosens. If it is always the same rein, never improves, or has appeared recently in a horse who was even before, mention it to your vet. That is not a schooling question.