Hi,

Was curious what has worked for others in building endurance in their horses. Living in flatland midwest, no hills or slopes around and water treadmills are a bit expensive. Have 14hh paint we barrel with who always give 110% but is running out steam after rounding third barrel and coming home. He's ridden 3-4 times a week(performance work) and longed 5-6 times a week for 20 minutes mostly long trotting. Have a 15.3hh app on same routine that will run all day if asked. Wondering what other excercises and drills have worked for others. Thanks.

You are dealing with two different types of muscles here.  Endurance muscles are slow twitch. Speed events use fast twitch muscles.

I don't work with Speed event horses. I do work with endurance and distance horses. So my advice may not be worth 2 cents.

We build endurance by doing long slow distance exercises. We want to condition the horse's metabolic system to keep ahead of the demands of long sustained aeroboic exercise.

Performance horses use fast twitch muscles, pretty much preform using stored energy. You want to increase the amount of energy you can store in the muscle or make the muscle more efficient so it can perform more repetitions without refueling. The lungs & heart are not expected to stay ahead of consumption.  You will want to do speed exercises to build those fast twitch muscles.  i.e. Like a football player doing Windsprints as opposed to a cross country runner doing 10 mile runs. So 20 minute lounges at a trot are probably not building the fast twitch muscle like several 30 second full out sprints would.

I feed no grain or high energy  feeds to my horses. Like Sugar in a kid these hop up the horse for a short duration. And the the crash follows. This may be good in a speed event horse where you want 16 seconds of performance. Terrible in a endurance horse where I want 50 or 100 miles of performance.

I'm sure others who train speed event horses will offer other suggestion.

Painted horse has good advice.  Long, slow distance work builds up aerobic ability too.  Barrell horses are like race horses just with a pattern.  Conditioning work for the whole body will pay off in the short and long term.  Before an event, you may wish to up carbs gradually to the day of the event, then let off the carbs, replacing the calories with fat calories.  You might want to look at some books on conditioning race horses.  Before we took a trip to the Smokies, we upped carbs for a few days and while riding in the mtns.  20 plus miles a day, horses needed the extra carbs.  We usually feed whole oats and minerals.  Then we add whole corn for the energy boost.  A bunch of bermuda hay, white salt blocks, plenty of water;  sometimes adding electrolyte powder to the water.  My main trail horse is 13 yrs old and his body is a solid muscle.   All it takes for him to fire up is a handful of corn added to his daily feed.  Just my experience. 

Long Slow Distance rides build mass in the hard tissues. Bone, tendons, etc. This takes a long time. Six months to a year or 3-5 times a week. Any horse can benefit from improving the hard tissue.

Soft Tissue, i.e. muscles, heart & lungs condition much quicker.

A good website to visit is Susan Galinghouse Evans'

She discusses Nutrition, energy expenditures, Calcium-Phosphurus ratios etc. Her info is slanted toward endurance horses, but she shows a lot of comparisions to speed event horses.

http://shady-acres.com/susan/index.shtml

bare with me on this question.  When I condition a horse  I began by working with their mind.  It's got to be a challenge for them.  Younger horses become bored more quickly than some of the older horses.  I have a conditioning work plan that I do every  week with my horses.  Here is just a few. One day I will do ground work with the horse.  He should back , side step, jog, flex both ways and cross many objects with no hesitation while on a loose rope.   Next day I will ask him to do quick stops and turns, short burst of Backing and flying changing leads just for the heck of it while I'm riding him around.  I might ask him to do that a half a dozen times during the ride.  I of course warmed him up first before I do theses steps.  If you have hills  I usually trot them up the hill and then down with all my weight toward his hunches.   I will do an extended trot when he gets stronger.  When a horse does theses exercises he will usually hollow out, therefor you need to bump his stomach ,to suck it in so that he quites hollowing.  This also helps conditioning a horse when he tighten his stomach muscle.  By doing this it strengthens his back muscles and some hip muscles.  The next day I will do dressage moves with my horse.  There are all kinds of exercises you can do there to condition a horses.  I also help horses by how I carry myself in the saddle through there training.  Remember that this training I do depends on how advance the horse is in his training.  They need to understand what you want them to do before you ask them.  When I'm done working a horse I will do stretches to relax their muscle.  If I can take a horse two miles with my conditioning program He or she can go anywhere between 7 to 13 miles with no problem in one day.  Also feed is important for what you take out of your athlete you have to put back in.  I have horses charge, beet pulp, biotin, ADE vitamins, B 12 along with cracked corn and oats to help in restoring my horses condition.   I also use electrolytes when needed.  All my horses can do this workout without any mouth contact with the bit.  My four years old can do this with just a halter.  Your horse needs to use his body, all of it to get conditioned.  One more thing when a horse stretches his neck while riding he is conditioning the neck muscle and there is only one muscle in the neck that will get conditioning by that one movement. Let him do it.  Most of all play with you horse. Make it a game for him.   Have fun.   sorry for the windedness   good riding. cat_nap_2

cat_nap_2, you don't have to apologize for being a little windy with your posts.  Most of us are looking for honest information, there in lies the problem.  Honest information is hard to come by these days.  Somebody is always trying to sell something and the almighty dollar is driving the answer at times.  It's nice to get answers to questions when the dollar is not driving the answer.  Thanks for your post and keepum' comin'.

Happy trails.