11/04/2026
Don’t overlook fitness when preparing your young horse for starting under saddle….most youngsters are super unfit and that makes learning to carry a rider harder for them.
Horses definitely aren’t designed to carry riders but they have evolved to travel a lot of miles every day. In nature the youngsters - even foals - travel with the herd walking 10+ miles per day with regular bursts of high speeds, so from a young age they are building a fantastic baseline fitness. Learning to move over varied surfaces and terrains - hills, ditches, rivers, sand, rock, earth - in all gaits also develops their proprioception, balance and core strength, and stimulates development of the internal structures of the hoof.
If you contrast that to a domestic setting most young horses are paddock-potatoes living a very limited lifestyle. None of us however hard we try can replicate a truly natural environment (1000s of acres of rugged plains), and as a result most youngsters aren’t getting a lot of miles under their belts and aren’t getting a lot of practice travelling over hills and different surfaces. This means that most youngsters are weak and unfit, and often the internal structures of their feet aren’t very well developed either.
And this matters because no matter how well bred they are, a weak unfit youngster is going to find it harder to learn to carry a rider than one who is fit and well conditioned. Even when done ethically and with high skill, starting under saddle is a big challenge for the horses fitness, their balance, their core strength. Having a decent level of fitness at the beginning sets them up for success and makes it easier for them.
In terms of how to go about getting your young horse fit, there is lots of age appropriate groundwork to choose from -
Basic groundwork exercises
Agility
Obstacles and poles
Long-reining
In-hand hacking
Ride&lead from an experienced horse
I definitely don’t recommend drilling or use of gadgets, I don’t recommend lungeing in side-reins for example. Arena time should be psychology based, short&sweet, and feel like educational playtime. An ideal goal is to use the arena just as a safe area to get started, and once things are going well you get out of the arena and get out and about. Regular in-hand hacking or ride&lead is an ideal way to build fitness and let your young horse see the world.
From a groundwork and pre-ride training point of view it doesn’t matter so much which approach you prefer - BHS, natural horsemanship, clicker training, classical etc. If you prefer one over the other that’s fine, anything that helps you get out and about and get some miles under your youngster’s belt is much better for them than just sitting in the field doing absolutely nothing til the day they get a saddle on.
Pictured are a few of the lovely youngsters I have helped with pre-ride training. 🙂
Kirsty
