topline & muscle building advice
This is my thoroughbred/oldenburg warmblood. He’ll be 15 this year, and he’s definitely carrying quite a bit of extra belly fat right now. I’ve had him for about 4 years. I’ve always ridden and worked with him, but over the last year I’ve really been trying to improve my riding and become more educated overall. Looking back, I definitely let him get away with some bad habits without really realizing it at the time, especially things like carrying his head too high and not properly correcting it.
When riding, he tends to throw his head up in the air, especially in the trot, which obviously hasn’t helped his topline. We’ve been working on it for a while though, and he’s finally starting to understand. I do a lot of walk-trot-walk and walk-canter-walk transitions since I’ve heard they can help build topline muscle.
I also really want to focus on his straightness because he’s a drifter and will drift all over the place if I’m not really correcting him with my legs through turns and lines. I feel like circles are helpful for building topline and bend, but at the same time I’m not sure how much they help with straightness.
I also really want to start getting more into jumping and dressage, because I think he could be an amazing horse for both, and I feel like dressage would really help our flatwork overall. So far I’ve mostly just done basic english pleasure riding and some smaller jumps, but I’d love to progress more with him.
I’m not super advanced, so I’d really appreciate any tips, exercises, pole work ideas, conditioning advice, or anything else that could help us out :)