I love January! No, I mean it, I’m serious….I know horse owners aren’t meant to like winter but I just love the fresh start, the hope, optimism and excitement of the coming year. I know that’s so cliché but hey it gives me so much motivation.
Every year in December I go back to my parents house in Mid Wales, where the hacking is out of this world and even the easiest route is a 200m elevation climb. In the run up to the trip I’ve usually done 6 weeks of the basic training, pessoa lunging, schooling, ground work, short walk hacks, that kind if thing. All in preparation for my big hill training to kick off the coming seasons training cycles.
I like to split my year into cycles of 6 weeks. I choose an end of season main goal and work backwards from there. My priority is to peak training for that end goal with mini peaks along the way. It’s really important to me that I don’t over compete my horses but also that I don’t over train, so rest is planned with as much thought as the actual work itself.
Each cycle I shift the training focus, in humans that’s the best way to get a well rounded, fit athlete whilst minimising injury risk. This means that for 6 weeks the main focus will be on long slow and hard hacks (like those Welsh hills) then for the next 6 weeks it would shift to faster, easier and shorter work, upping the time in faster gaits, mix it up with continuous and intervals, pull the schooling focus in and out, switch up the surfaces, that kind of thing. It means no block of training is the same and I have a logical system of increasing training load. Usually based on high intensity, low volume or low intensity, high volume.
Beth Endurance 