The importance of planning

I confess I am rubbish at planning, but if I don’t then weeks can drift by while I try to juggle work, home, family and the horses. So a plan for each of them is important.

Training for the youngsters is an endless list, but the older ones I sometimes need to get exercises to do each week.

I subscribe to horse magazines and read books (see recommended reading) so these give inspiration when I’m struggling for new ideas.

I used a whiteboard with all the names on to put the plan for that day or week on and then from that exercise or session try and gauge what to work on next.

Here is an example Training Plans so for Galaxy for example the first column is to keep his top line in shape as he is getting on in years and so could lose it if it’s not used, so I would perhaps put ‘top line walk and trot over raised poles’ in column one, in the ‘arena’ for the where column and then see how that went and if anything else needs working on for example if he got tired quickly then the next session would be something like fitness so maybe getting him to do more canter work next session.

Using Blue’s feet picking up as another example I would put that for him in the first column and then if one side was easier than the other I may decide to concentrate on the other side more in the next session.