Exercising Overweight Non Ridden Horses: 7 Excellent Exercises

Do you have a herd bound horse that you can only work in the arena? You can’t ride your horse and he desperate needs to lose weight. Are you looking to help your horse get fit with non ridden exercise?

Weight loss for Equines

Before we look at R+ Movement Training, lets get the big picture first. Weight loss for equines is based on 3 pillars:

• Management; How we keep our horses
• Nutrition/Diet; What and how we feed them
• Exercise/Movement; How to they burn off calories

Force Free Movement Training for Horses

There is a lot you can do to influence each pillar. I’ve tons of experience exercising non ridden equines with positive reinforcement and helping people get fat horses fit.

In 2016 I started with my own horse Kyra, who was diagnosed with EMS (Equine Metabolic Syndrome) when she got laminitis. Exercising my horse with R+ was my #1 priority. She was overweight and exercising was hard. I was a clicker coach with an online business and online R+ courses , therefor I wanted to exercise Kyra with positive reinforcement.

Long story short: I found ways to do it and got better and better at it. I started to help other horse owners who struggled with getting their reluctant, overweight horses in better shape. I’ve seen many horse owners successfully clicker train their overweight horses, using non ridden exercises!

From Reluctant to Move, to Eager to Exercise

The horses who were reluctant to move at first, started to enjoy their exercises with Force Free Movement Training!

Once horses overcome their first hurdle: aversive association with the arena and/or exercising, changes happen fast!

When moving/excising becomes a habit for the horse and he’ll know it won’t be boring, endlessly long and hard, but fun, easy to do, short and they will get something in return they LIKE, their attitude changes completely!

7 Ways to Exercise Non Ridden Overweight Horses

In my Facebook group many horse owners are struggling with exercising their horses consistently! Exercising Laminitis EMS Horses is aimed at force free (R+) exercising laminitis EMS horses, who are often overweight and reluctant to move. You’re welcome to join.

Some people think: ‘There is nothing that I can change’ and .this is exactly what it feels like, when you’re stuck.

At that point you don’t see what others see (from the outside in). It can feel there is no hope and you might have to fall back on traditional (coercive) training methods to get your fat horse fit.

I’ve been helping people with overweight horses since 2017. Teaching R+ non ridden exercises and sharing my At Liberty Rectangle (I used to call it Reverse Rectangle because I adusted the Reverse Round Pen idea to something easier for horses) exercise that works really good to exercise a horse force free.

I’ve found that there is always something we can do, change or improve to help our equine. A bit of support and inspiration from others in the same boat ,can help a ton!

7 Excellent Exercises for non ridden horses:

1. Hand walks in the arena
2. Hand walks outside the arena (off premises, on the road, in nature)
3. Cycling with your horse
4. Long reins (this is really fun and you can do a lot of dressage exercises to get your horse in shape, when advanced)
5. At liberty in the arena (tons of exercises that you can do with R+)
6. Driving/ground driving
7. Swimming

Cycling with Sholto

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How to Start Exercising an Overweight Horse

Depending on where your horse is at right now, walking can be a great start. With clicker training you can teach your horse quickly to *offer* movement. The first step to start enjoying his movement training.

Start where your horse is at!

The aim for walking is one steady, brisk pace. That’s probably not where you’re at right now, but that’s what you can accomplish with R+ real quick.

It’s not necessary to start with trot or transitions right away. Most important is to start the *habit* of regular exercise and make it fun for your equine, right from the start. Positive reinforcement an amazing tool to help horses change their minds about aversive things.

I’ve found that starting with short, 10-20 minutes hand walking/long reining a day, you can accomplish a positive impact. Keep in mind, this is only the beginning. It’s a start!

Related blogs

• 5 Tips for Clicker Training Overweight Horses
• Pitfalls to get my fat horse fit with clicker training (and how I overcame them!)
• Using clicker training to get my fat horse fit
• Exercising your laminitis horse
• Best Tip to making Clicker Training Your Horse Easy

Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

Is your horse overweight? Did the vet recommended: No more treats!” or “More exercise” to get your horse in shape? Do you struggle getting your horse in shape with non ridden exercises, trained without coercion?

Consider my course  Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses. We’ll address your biggest struggle in getting your horse to move with positive reinforcement. You can only join after a personal conversation. I tailor this 2-week online coaching program towards your horse, your situation and your needs!

To see if you’re a fit I offer a free assessment. In the assessment we’ll find out what’s holding you back and you’ll find out what you can change to get your horse in shape. There is no obligation to join my program. People have told me the assessment is a great tool and gave them lots of insights.  Book a assessment

• Building duration in exercising your horse with R+
• Getting your horse in shape and lose weight without a crash diet
• Teach your horse to move by himself, at liberty

Sandra Poppema, BSc

Founder of the HippoLogic and creator of Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

14-day personal coaching with this program

Exercising your laminitis horse

When your horse has or had laminitis, one of the recommendations you’ll get from your vet is to exercise your horse, so he’ll lose weight.
Where to start?

Before you start exercising

• Make sure that the trigger for laminitis is identified and removed
• Your horse is off all pain medication
• You have a tested (low sugar) and balanced diet in place
• Your vet has given you clearance for exercising your horse

Start where your horse is at

You may have to start really short walks in hand. With short I mean 5 minute walks. You can gradually build duration. Keep in mind that even a little exercise is better than none!

We have to start our horse somewhere. Starting with a short exercise regime can also help us build the habit of exercising our horse on a very regular basis!

Make exercising appetitive (fun!) for your horse

Exercising can be hard for overweight horses! They might not enjoy it. Using positive reinforcement can really help shift this for your horse.

In positive reinforcement training, you strengthen a behaviour by giving your horse something valuable for what he just did. When you use a bridge signal to ‘bridge’ the time gap between the desired behaviour and the moment you’re able to deliver a treat, your horse will pay attention to what he just did and do more of that behaviour.

Here is how you start clicker training your horse.

Use positive reinforcement to help your horse move

When your horse doesn’t want to move you can wait until he does a slight weight shift forwards, then click and give a treat. With a ‘treat’ I mean a sugar free food reward, something that is low calorie, yet still yummie for your horse.

The next step is to click for a step forwards. This way you can literary raise your criteria for a click and treat, step-by-step. That’s how I did it with Kyra. She was already clicker trained, so she understood that she had to take initiative and move.

I found it very rewarding to use clicker training to exercise my laminitis horse, because she didn’t want to move in the first place. Using force would have negatively impacted my good relationship with Kyra and I didn’t want that to happen. I’ve tried it at first, but it was clearly the wrong choice for us! She resented lunging and working at liberty in the round pen, so I had to come up with alternative ways. And I did.

Do you struggle with exercising your overweight horse and help get your fat horse fit?

Make sure you find a tribe that understand the struggles that you’re going through. When you are a clicker trainer, it can be extra challenging to exercise your horse using food rewards, because the majority of people, including vets an farriers, don’t understand this training method. They only see a horse that struggles with movement AND that gets ‘treats’.

Contact me if you would love to have support in getting your overweight horse in shape with clicker training.

Happy Horse training!

Sandra Poppema, HippoLogic

Do you really need to stop giving treats in training when your horse needs to lose weight?

Is your horse overweight? Did the vet tell you to STOP FEEDING TREATS!? You know your horse needs to lose weight and get back in shape, but How to do this without treats?

Why stopping giving Treats is a good idea

It seems like a solution to stop offering your horse treats when he’s overweight, right? If you’re giving your horse lots of dense-calorie treats without asking him to burn them off, it’s probably a good idea to stop giving those.

Take a good look at what you consider a treat: Is it calorie rich? Is it nutrition value low? Or is this just the common human approach of “treats”?
We -people- usually mean candy or other low nutrition value/high calorie foods. Right?

If you’re using real treats like peppermints (although how much calories would all the peppermints in one training contain?) are they really having that much impact on your horse’s obesity?

Or can you influence his weight with changing his management? Usually decreasing hay or grass intake and minimizing dinner grain portions have a much bigger (pun intended!) impact on your horse’s weight!

If your horse turned into a Mugging Monster, you can turn that around quickly!

Why stopping giving Treats is a bad idea

When we train horses (R- or R+) we still need to reinforce the desired behaviour from time to time. If we don’t, and the behaviour is not intrinsically reinforcing, the behaviour gets extinct.

Traditional trainers need to use their whips, sticks or ropes once in a while (depending on how much of a threat the aversive still is) to keep their horses in line. ‘The horse needs a little reminder,’ is what they say.

Same goes for positively reinforced behaviours: we also do have to remind our horses (with a treat!) what we want from them (movement).

We need to do that to keep motivation high! Whether that’s in R- or in R+. Or we’ll lose it.

When we clicker trained our horses to exercise and offer movement (walk, trot, canter, jumping, gallop), we still have to offer a treat with enough value, once in a while to keep their motivation high. That’s why it’s a bad idea to stop giving treats to (overweight) horses in training.

If you’re a clicker trainer and you suddenly stop giving treats as reinforcement, you’ll disappoint your horse. He’s expecting food rewards. When he doesn’t get them he can get demotivated! That’s another big reason why stopping with treats is a bad idea.

You can experiment with other reinforcers: things your horse will value. When you get more behaviour (movement) you’ve successfully reinforced your horse to move. When you get less behaviour or sluggish movements or a slower response time to your cues, you know you weren’t actually reinforcing the behaviour and you need to find a better appetitive!

Read my blog about How to Move Your Horse with A Click

Healthy Treats for Horses

Most of my clients find it a challenge to find healthy treats for their overweight horse. Part of it is our own mindset. We usually value “healthy treats” way less, than unhealthy snacks! That’s human thinking! We need to shift our minds!

Start thinking how a horse thinks and how he sees the world. Horses eat about 16 hours a day. That’s their nature! Therefore they will always be hungry (to a certain extent). They love low calorie/high fibre foods! That’s another huge difference between us and a horse!

Ideas to keep training with treats (the smart way)

• Training a horse with treats, means we can use (normal, healthy) foods to motivate them in training!
• Take the amount of food (calories) you use in training, out of their daily ration. That way using treats in training won’t contribute to weight gain
• If you’re horse doesn’t get dinner grain/pellets/ use, alternatives. Here is a list of over 30 options for treats in training.
• Add interesting options to the low calorie/high fibre foods in training, like cinnamon added to soaked beetpulp, r adding a few sunflower seeds in the low calorie food rewards etc
• Balance the calorie denseness of the treats with the amount of movement (calorie burning) you ask your horse to do.
• The more you train (and the better your horse understands what he needs to do), the less food you need! So when you train your overweight horse to move and you need a lot of food reinforcers, knowing that this won’t be lasting forever helps!
• Once movement/exercising gets intrinsically reinforced (‘runners high’), the less external reinforcement (treats) your horse needs!

Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

Is your horse overweight? Did the vet recommended: No more treats!” or “More exercise” to get your horse in shape? Do you struggle getting your horse in shape with non ridden exercises, trained without coercion?

Consider my course  Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses. We’ll address your biggest struggle in getting your horse to move with positive reinforcement. You can only join after a personal conversation. I tailor this 2-week online coaching program towards your horse, your situation and your needs!

To see if you’re a fit I offer a free assessment. In the assessment we’ll find out what’s holding you back and you’ll find out what you can change to get your horse in shape. There is no obligation to join my program. People have told me the assessment is a great tool and gave them lots of insights.  Book a assessment

• Building duration in exercising your horse with R+
• Getting your horse in shape and lose weight without a crash diet
• Teach your horse to move by himself, at liberty

Sandra Poppema, BSc

Founder of the HippoLogic and creator of Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

Two week online program

https://mailchi.mp/a0a07dd3228d/rplus-training-for-overweight-horses

Move Your Horse with a Click

How often are you adjusting your training in order to make it easier for your horse? If you want to avoid frustration for your horse, I bet this is on your mind all the time! But…

You can make it easy the wrong way and the right way.

Read on to discover if you’ve fallen into the pitfall of doing it ‘for your horse’.

Biggest mistake

The biggest mistake you can make in positive reinforcement training is that you reinforce “not offering behaviour”.  People do this often by ‘doing the behaviour for the horse’ in the hope the horse gets (copies) it.

Let me explain… This is a common pitfall I see many, many clicker trainers fall into. We often do this unconsciously because we still think like a traditional trainer. That’s what makes clicker training sometimes seems to give slower results. Or that it takes longer to teach a horse something new.

Fallacies in Horse Training

In traditional training (R-) you almost always ‘get’ the goal behaviour instantaneously: you give pressure and when your horse yields, you release.

You wiggle your training stick closer and closer and more forcefully, until your horse moves forward. Voila! You immediately get your end goal results: walk, trot or even canter within minutes.

It’s a fallacy to think we can use the same approach without force. We’ll show the horse what he needs to do and then click for it. If you’re one of those people, you’re not the only one. Go on YouTube and search for ‘reverse round pen’ and find dozens of clicker trainers that move as much or more(!) than their horses, when exercising their horses.

How to get movement with R+

The biggest difference is that in R+ (clicker training, positive reinforcement training) you only can reinforce the DESIRED behaviour when (or immediately after) it’s happening.

Therefor we need to get the behaviour first, so that we can offer the horse an appetitive to strengthen the behaviour. Something he wants to have and is willing to work for.

It’s a thinking mistake that when we tell the learner the right answer (trot), he’ll learn quicker. What you want to do is to help the horse figure out what you want and reinforce his decision to trot.

Teach your horse to move

Next time you teach your horse to walk, trot or canter or you’re watching someone teaching a horse to exercise with clicker training, pay close attention. Often, we want to make training easier by doing it for them, instead of teaching them to offer walk, trot and canter.

When a horse doesn’t start walking, trotting or cantering right away, people often try to ‘help’ their horse by showing them what they want. They move, their horse moves and click! They click the horse for walk, trot or canter, right?

Place yourself into your horse’s shoes

 I can’t tell you how often I see people make the mistake to click for ‘following’ (a target or the trainer), instead of clicking for offering walk, trot or canter. That’s exactly what you’re teaching the horse if you do this: you’re teaching him to follow the target or trainer. And this becomes the cue!

It’s the opposite of what you want. It’s very similar to what people do in traditional training: teaching the horse to stay passive and re-act only of the trainer is doing something. To me “training” is teaching, not simply “reacting”. It will take a bit more effort in the beginning of the training, but it will pay off tenfold later on when your horse starts to enjoy his exercises!

Who is successful? You or your horse

If you think you don’t do this, or haven’t done this, watch your training videos. It might surprise you what you’ll discover, now you know what to look for.

It can be very obvious or it can be most subtle: You might be the one moving first, just before you click. So you can be successful! Think about that: who do you really want to be successful? You or your horse? Most people don’t realize that they are setting themselves up for a pitfall that is hard to climb out of.

If you want to teach your horse to move by himself (building distance) or for longer (duration) you’ll run into trouble if you’ve clicked too many times for ‘follow the trainer/target’. The pitfall is that we’ve done the behaviour for them (we or our target stick moved), so they haven’t learned to take initiative when it comes to moving. Now your horse simply thinks that he needs to do what you do, because that’s been clicked and reinforced. How to reverse it?

Solution

In other words; we haven’t taught our horse to ‘make the decision’ or to ‘take action’ to move forward. Instead, we’ve fallen into the pitfall to ‘let us trainers/our target sticks do the moving and our horses do the following’.

If that happens you’ve taught your horse to stay passive during exercise training. This mistake can slow down your future training tremendously.

Recovering from this pitfall

We can fall into this pitfall in training almost every behaviour: we push our horse gently over so that we can take his leg up (and click) instead of teaching our horse to lift his own leg. We’re touching their legs with a target, instead of setting our horses up so that they will touch the target (and lift their leg in the process!).

Instead of teaching the horse to move on his own, we (or our target) moved and we reinforced our horses to ‘follow’ , instead of offering trot. Sounds familiar? (Go here if you want to learn to teach your horse to offer movement)

When you know better, you can do better

Instead of training your horse to follow you, you can start teaching your horse to walk, trot and canter without you running in front of him with a target. Then you’re teaching what you actually want him to learn. That will be a skill that your horse will enjoy the rest of his life.

Offering the right baby step!

Instead of making the behaviour easier by ‘doing it for your horse’, you have to think about a solution to make it easier for your horse ‘to make the decision’ so he will offer the behaviour (walk, trot, canter). You can use a target or mats to help you. Just don’t let these training tools turn into crutches you can’t do without. These are just tools for training. Your cue needs to become your most important communication tool.

Overcoming fear of punishment

Keep in mind that this (making decisions and taking imitative in movement) often has been punished in the past if your horse has been traditionally trained. They are not supposed to make decisions on their own or start walking. Therefor we need to encourage our horses for the slightest try to ensure them that this is what we actually want in our setup.

Teach your horse to think

When you reinforce taking initiative and making decisions over and over, clicker training will go faster than ever. You’ll get better results and you get the engagement of your horse that makes working together so pleasurable and fun. Win-win.

Need help or have a question how you can teach your horse to listen to your cues? Come and join the HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy.

In the Academy I teach you the Principles of Clicker Training so that you can become an autonomous clicker trainer, enhance the friendship with your horse and do the things you really want to do with your horse.

HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy 

If you want access to many DIY online clicker training courses, free Clicker Challenges and get weekly personal feedback on your training videos join the HippoLogic Clicker Training Academy. 

Send in your application today (click the link) so you can enroll the next time the doors open. Only once a month I open the doors, and only for 2 days! Don’t miss the opportunity to join a select group of R+ enthusiasts!

Exercising Your Horse With R+

Interested in learning more? A few times a year I offer courses and teach equine clicker trainers to exercise their horses with positive reinforcement. Most courses are online with personal coaching and feedback in a group, so everyone gets the best results possible. Contact me and we’ll have a chat.

Sandra Poppema, BSc
Founder of HippoLogic
Enhancing Horse-Human connections through clicker training

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Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

Is your horse overweight? Did the vet recommended: No more treats!” or “More exercise” to get your horse in shape? Do you struggle getting your horse in shape with non ridden exercises, trained without coercion?

Consider my course  Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses. We’ll address your biggest struggle in getting your horse to move with positive reinforcement. You can only join after a personal conversation. I tailor this 2-week online coaching program towards your horse, your situation and your needs!

To see if you’re a fit I offer a free assessment. In the assessment we’ll find out what’s holding you back and you’ll find out what you can change to get your horse in shape. There is no obligation to join my program. People have told me the assessment is a great tool and gave them lots of insights.  Book a assessment

• Building duration in exercising your horse with R+
• Getting your horse in shape and lose weight without a crash diet
• Teach your horse to move by himself, at liberty

Sandra Poppema, BSc

Founder of the HippoLogic and creator of Force Free Movement Training for Laminitis Horses

Two week online program