Do We Really Need a Study to Know This?
Apparently, Agria, the insurance company, needed to commission an external survey to figure out something that’s been common knowledge to horse people since like the dawn of tack rooms, which is a lot of riders lack basic structure when it comes to training and competition.
The numbers they presented shows more than half of the riders surveyed, don't have a plan for their competition season.
Nearly two-thirds of the riders had no weekly training schedule what so ever, and some don't even try to pretend they think about recovery!
They just wing it, day after day, after day, after day...
I get that we’re living in the age of flexibility and [not so] smart phones, but we’re actually dealing with live animals.
And still, some people seem to believe horses are the equivalent to breathing bikes, things you can just leave in the shed for a week or two, and then, when you feel like it, you just take them out for hard training and or competitions.
Agria’s very own in-house vet believe not having a mental plan for your horse’s season is irresponsible...
You think!
Just enter everything!
So 58% don’t have a competition plan at all, and 6 out of 10 don’t plan for downtime and recovery. And here's a kicker, cause as much as 15% of the male riders aim to do as many shows as possible in a season, no matter what.
Their strategy seem to be: “just enter everything, and see what sticks".
All this while horses are running on empty.
We keep talking about animal welfare, social license to compete and yada, yada yada. Still plenty of horses are running back-to-back weekends from February to November every year. Not only cause the riders want it, because the system allows it!
In old-school barns, riders used to work toward a goal, which would be in the total opposite to the new normal, where one just seem to throw ones self into the ring every other weekend, and hope for the best.
Back in the day, we didn’t need neither surveys or smart phones to understand the the foundation of training. Cause training is about balance, it’s about mixing things up, to build strength and stamina, while also giving the horses proper time to rest and recover so they can stay healthy.
I am not sure what Agria tried to achieve with the survey, maybe they just wanted to create some kind of conversational starting point which could and should be a good thing.
Sad thing is, the survey just prove how far horse people [?] and the equestrian sport drifted away from the basics of good old fashioned horsemanship.
