Conditioning articles

Monitoring Fitness of Horses by Heart Rate an Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Fact Sheet  article identifies ways to monitor heart rate and how to interpret heart rate response at different times in the conditioning program

Mental Training for the Long Distance Equine 9 articles by Jim Holland These articles are written to help you train a horse mentally for Endurance and provide guidance on what will be expected of your horse…and you…at an Endurance ride.  Interesting reading.

Principles of Conditioning – Lori Warren, PhD, PAS Provincial Horse Specialist The success of a conditioning program relies on the body’s adaptive response to the stress of exercise. If the horse performs the same amount of exercise every day, a certain level of fitness is attained as the horse adapts to the workload. However, without a further increase in training load (an increase in training duration, intensity, or both), there will be no further increase in fitness. To achieve a conditioning or training effect, the horse must be subjected to gradual increases in workload. Each new level of training is maintained until the body has adapted to the added stress, after which a further increase in training load can be applied. Alternating periods of increasing workload with a period of adaptation is known as progressive loading.