How many minutes should a horse be able to canter to be fit for upper level eventing?

Question

When I'm older, I want to breed and train my own horses for upper level eventing, like Rolex and Badminton. How long should I canter my horses (building up gradually, of course) so he can stand the demands of the long cross country courses?

Answer 1

I started with 631. 6 minutes walking, 3 minutes trotting, 1 minute catering or hand gallop. You repeat this a couple times then quit. As the horse gets better, you can extend the amount of each and how many times you repeat it.

My friend does upper level eventing (not Rolex but she does HUGE jumps) and she rides 6 days a week. Her schedual was like 1 day of jumping, 2 days of conditioning, 3 day of dressage or a hack. One of her days of conditioning she takes the horse on a three mile road and canters him down in, turns him around and canters back. She said it was like 10 minutes but couldnt remember how long exactly.

Best thing you can do is get with a trainer of that caliber and get a working student position. It will teach you so much.  

Answer 2

He needs to EASILY be able to canter the amount of time an average course is.  I don't know much about eventing but I know about polo.  Our periods are 7 minutes.  So we made sure the horse could canter (a fast canter too, not just a lazy one) for at least 10 minutes.  I imagine it's pretty similar for eventing.

You just build it up little by little.  Start with 2 minutes (if he's really out of shape) and add another minute on every couple of days.  We could get the polo ponies, who had been sitting on pasture for 3+ months, back in great game shape in about 6 weeks.

Remember, trotting is what helps get the horse fit, cantering helps with his wind.  By the time our polo ponies were in shape, we would trot them 25 minutes and canter/hand gallop them for 10.  But you have to work up to both of these.

Answer 3

I'm not sure how many minuts a horse should be able to canter, but to build it up, start with like 5 minutes a day. Do 5 minutes of cantering a day for a few days. Then after about 3 days of 5minutes, increase it to like 7 or 8 or 10 if you want, and then do 10minute cantering for a few days. Then up it again and again each time until you get them where you want, but don't push them to hard, and let them have break days where they can rest. good luck =D

Answer 4

I have a horse competing at the Preliminary level right now, and he can gallop for about...15 minutes without being seriously winded.  We started out last year (competing Novice level) trotting 10 minutes, walking 2 minutes, and then going 5 more minutes of trot.  Basically any horse can do this without much of a problem.  Then, after the 5 minutes trot, I go straight into 5 minutes of gallop.  I do this for about 10 days, and then I up each trot set by 2 minutes, and add 1 minute to the gallop.  My horse easily does 40 minutes straight trot, two minutes walk, 10 minutes trot, 10 minutes gallop three times a week.  Sometimes I do endurance training (more trot and slow gallop) but then another thing that helps is speed training.  When I do speed training, I trot for 10 minutes, slow gallop for five, gallop at 700 mpm for 2 minutes, and then back to slow gallop for five, and back to ten minutes trot.  Other times I will do like, one lap around the pasture in canter, go across the diagonal breeze, one lap, breeze, etc. etc.  Good luck!  Be sure to ice horses legs after tougher days and poultice too.