Riding Out: Strategies for Training Outside the Arena to Improve Horse Health and Performance - Softcover

Klimke, Ingrid

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1646012216 ISBN 13: 9781646012213

Publisher: Trafalgar Square, 2024

Synopsis

Gold medalist Ingrid Klimke has long encouraged competitive equestrians to spend time riding outside the arena or typical fenced or covered training area. Klimke learned to love trail riding and working outside the ring from her father, the admired dressage master Reiner Klimke, who insisted it be a regular part of their weekly schedule.

While Klimke notes that the most important part of “riding out” is for horse and rider to enjoy it, there are also many training and conditioning benefits for the horse. It:
- Promotes relaxation in mind and body.
- Provides variety to everyday training.
- Boosts motivation when under saddle.
- Builds fitness in diverse ways.

In these pages, Klimke provides top-level guidance to making riding outside a regular and rewarding experience for you and your horse. She discusses:
- Equipment considerations when moving from arena to trail.
- Riding with others and best group formations.
- How to stay safe on the trail and in open spaces.
- Riding through water.
- Jumping small obstacles.
- Making specific improvements in a horse's fitness, stamina, and strength.

Klimke strongly advocates for regularly riding dressage horses out on the trail and in open spaces, outside the “sandbox.” Here she provides ideas for safely making use of the energy a horse gains when schooled in open country. Readers will discover suppling exercises to improve forwardness and focus in the arena, and techniques to help horses develop a calm and unflappable frame of mind. Chock full of gorgeous photographs of Klimke's world-class horses demonstrating their own love for being ridden outside the arena, Riding Out is for every horse person in search of ways to increase their connection with their athletic partner while improving the ridden horse's general welfare.

This is professional guidance in a fundamental way to make training more enjoyable and more well-rounded―Klimke's own astounding successes in international competition prove its incredible value.

About this title

About the Author

Ingrid Klimke is an international trainer of dressage, show jumping, and event horses, and currently competes for Germany as an event rider. She had always been able to call on her father Reiner Klimke’s experience but has also been greatly influenced by Fritz Ligges, Ian Miller, and Anne Kursinski. She’s appeared at five Olympics, from 2000 to 2016. With her horse Abraxxas, she won two gold medals in team eventing, at the 2008 Summer Olympics and the 2012 Summer Olympics. She won a team silver medal with Hale Bob at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. She placed seventh at the 2002 Dressage World Cup Final with the horse Nector van het Carelshof. In January 2012, she was promoted to a 'Reitmeister' (Riding Master, a special title of the German Equestrian Federation). Klimke is only the second woman ever to be promoted as 'Reitmeister'.

Edition details

• Publisher: Trafalgar Square
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1646012216
• ISBN 13: 9781646012213
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128