Day 2: The Horse – Body and Movement Task: Assess your horse's movement and physical condition. Identify your horse's strongest gait or exercise, and specify an area you would like to improve or find challenging. Take into account any conformational issues, previous injuries, or other risks, and evaluate how your horse's ...
Day 5: Summary Task: Bring together your findings from the previous days. Summarise the key areas for improvement and note any resources or support you may need going forward. Use this summary to help plan your next steps in strengthening your partnership with your horse. Look at the findings of task 1, has this given yo...
Day 3: Rider Task: Reflect on your own role as a rider, manager, and partner. What are your strengths, and what areas could benefit from further development? This could include riding skills, training knowledge, mental challenges, fitness or weight, or even time management. We as riders (and carers) of our horse influenc...
Day 1: The Horse – Temperament Task: Consider your horse's personality: is it friendly, lazy, excitable, or sensitive? How does your horse react to particular situations or exercises, and what are you currently doing to address these responses? Reflect on whether any aspects of temperament are preventing progress for you ...
Groen Equestrian invites you to take part in a new (FREE!) partnership challenge from 1 to 9 November 2025 that encourages you to deepen your connection with your horse—no matter your discipline. Whether you are passionate about endurance, dressage, jumping, team chasing, eventing, or simply enjoy hacking, everyone is welcome to join the exper...
What was your first thought seeing this picture of Watt and me cantering on these gallops?Most thoughts will have been positive: a lovely bit of cantering, "oh I would love that", and some of you can nearly feel the air passing their face because you know how it feels to have a nice canter on a good surface.Snapshots like these: of a rider doing th...
Goals! Plenty of those, I want to do 160 km! Oh wait, do they need to be feasible? I'm afraid that goals are not the same as dreams… But we can all dream of course, and try to make them true. I have done it, so why wouldn't you too? But we have to start small, learn about our capacities and take steps up every time. It takes a minimum of...
Goals! Plenty of those, I want to do 160 km! Oh wait, do they need to be feasible? I'm afraid that goals are not the same as dreams… But we can all dream of course, and try to make them true. I have done it, so why wouldn't you too? But we have to start small, learn about our capacities and take steps up every time. It takes a minimum of...
Welcome to the " Starting with Endurance" Tutorial series on the free Groen Equestrian Community section of the website. Thank you for wanting to learn more about endurance, I presume this is the first tutorial you see, the GE Community member section is ever-expanding so it is still very much a work in progress. I hope you will explore ...
This is the fourth tutorial in the free introductory series "Starting with endurance" called: I want to start to do endurance with my adult horse Most people have a horse that they ride/hack/compete and decide to try endurance. So they have a go with a horse that has some (or a lot) of basic fitness. Be warned! Endurance is highly addict...
This is the sixth tutorial in the introductory series "Starting with endurance" called: The difference between 1 day and multiple day endurance If you have already done a bit of endurance, and/or are wondering what would be your challenge to progress. Of course, you can progress in distance (and after that in speed), but you can also decide to...
This is last tutorial in the introductory series "Starting with endurance" called: What makes a successful (major distance) endurance horse? Has the endurance bug bitten? Or are you quite a competitive person and want to try and really go for it? In that case you might need that really talented endurance horse (or perhaps you already hav...
A while ago I turned 50... And I took stock of my body and how it is doing, looks and wear-and-tear wise. And I must say, I have seen a lot of 50 year olds that look a lot worse (and a good few who look better ?), but overall I'm not too bad. Wear-and-tear wise it's probably a little less, I am getting more and more aches and pains, but t...
This picture (photo by Ruud Overes) is so very special to me. It is the finish of my 1st 160 km ride in 2013. I was the only one to finish, we were 6 combinations starting out and I just had a few minutes of the maximum time allowed left to finish.The horse is Shadiya, a Russian bred power mare with plenty of stamina, but not a great recovery in he...
Do you know the expression "having a monkey on your back"? It means you have an addiction. Well, I wish it was just a monkey on my back. Suffering from multiple horse syndrome, I have horses on my back. And they are bloody heavy! Horses get a lot heavier on your back in the winter months... especially long tough winters like this one and last winte...
In this week of mental health awareness, I felt like writing a little piece to share some of my thoughts and experience about this. What we all see on the outside is not necessarily what is going on on the inside. We try to look our best, act confident and pretend all is well. Social media is aiding that: don't we all select th...
