Following on from my previous article TEAM A (Training Emotional and Mental Agility) I cover how to approach training and we look at some examples including a case study of 14 year old endurance horse Simba.

Balancing out all 3 categories discussed in my previous article which are: physical, mental and emotional aspects within any one training session is key. 

To help keep a check on this I have devised a ‘scoring system’ to help. For this it can help to keep a chart to track your progress or if you prefer then just taking a mental note is fine. 

TEAM A Scoring System.

In the training examples below 

10 is maximum and 1 is minimum

In each category there is a maximum of 10 points, meaning 10 is the maximum of what your horse is comfortably capable of. 

The categories are:

Physical. 10 points max

Emotional.10 points max

Mental.10 points max

For each combined training session you want to balance out all three categories so that your aim for your overall score stays well within 30 points. 

Ideally when starting out you would be aiming for between 15 to 20 points during the training session, and this is especially important if travelling is involved in order for your horse to have enough energy left in all three categories for the journey home and therefore not to exceed 30 points overall.

Staying within this threshold obtains overall well being and achieves maximum progress. 

Training example:

Let’s say your new, young or green horse is physically becoming more fit and you’re going out on a familiar ride at home incorporating some hill work. Leaving home and the other horses isn’t now difficult emotionally for your horse due to having worked on this separately. You hardly see anything that is mentally challenging on the first half of the ride but coming home you meet a big vehicle creating a narrow gap to pass through, a cyclist and some strange road markings. You work through these challenges fine but notice your horse is getting tired and is slightly more reactive than you would ideally like. 

The points used for your training session would look like this:

Physical 6 points

Emotional 3 points

Mental 4 points

Total score =13 points

Summary: The session was balanced and your horse wasn’t maxed out in all 3 areas. More mental agility training might be a good idea in this case to get the score for this category down as low as possible, working on reducing mental tiredness and less reactivity. 

You can use this system to adjust and plan accordingly so if say you had lots of mental challenges at the start of the ride then you might decide to go easier physically on the rest of that particular ride to even things out. 

Or similarly if you didn’t meet any particular mental challenges on the first part of the ride then you could focus much more on the physical aspect of the training during the second half of the ride.

Here's an example of a training session that focuses on travelling out for the first time.

Loading and travelling is hugely mentally and emotionally challenging for horses and physically demanding too especially if they aren’t that used to it or had a long break. Its an area that can easily be overlooked and a huge amount of energy can be conserved if good, consistent loading preparation is factored into training. This training scenario below is presuming that you have already done a few successful round trips, your horse is comfortable loading, travelling and unloading  and you are now ready to embark on a 20 minute journey to a nice quiet, stress free location. 

This could surprisingly use up quite a few of your points overall. Typically 4 emotionally, 4 mentally and 4 physically and maybe even more according to the individual horse.  So when you arrive and unload, the most you would be looking to do would be to walk about in hand for a short while, expending the least amount of energy, so that your horse has plenty left to cope with the journey home. From here you can gradually build stamina in all three categories and then progress to incorporating riding out in new locations.

Acclimatising to different venues is a good next step. When your horse is ready and has ticked all the above areas of training, then embarking on little short trips out to quiet, small venues or small shows is a great way to start. Plan to not ride but just walk around in hand, explore and soak up the new atmosphere without expecting anything from your horse. This will do wonders towards making that all important first ridden event a success.

Simba & Barbara

Here’s a lovely example of an older starting endurance horse that I work with weekly, Simba and her wonderful owner Barbara.

Simba lived in a field and a big herd for her first 12 years, was never stabled, just lightly backed at 12 years old covering the basics. Sold directly from the stud one month later, loaded onto a vehicle with minimum if any loading training. Travelled a few hours to her new home, unloaded and voila! A whole new life experience began.

Even though Simba was naturally more physically developed than a youngster, she was not so developed emotionally or mentally.

Issues that we had to work on and solve included : catching, standing still to tack up and mount, foot handling, building confidence to cross different surfaces, go through narrow gaps, and not minding random touch which she was overly sensitive to, especially from behind. We then worked on loading and travelling,not to mention saddle fit and bit fit issues.

It could have been easy for her owner to overlook these issues or rush them, by placing an expectation on her more mature age. But having worked with Barbara before some 10 years ago with her then youngster Syrian Moon, she was aware that training work could be done to overcome these issues and to help develop a very rounded and centred horse which was what she wanted. 

Through weekly balanced sessions incorporating both emotional and mental agility training, attending my Trust and Confidence clinics as well as successfully working on ridden aspects with Enlightened Equitation riding instructor Tash Smith of TLS Equestrian-EET, Simba is currently progressing excellently. She is now in her second year of being ridden and has really enjoyed taking part in the endurance pleasure rides this season with view to starting competing this year.

Here’s a photo of Simba and Barbara at one of their very first rides out. You can see by Simba’s expression that she’s embarking on a new experience but she took it all in her stride.