How to do hillwork without hills?

The advantage of hills is the 'weight' a horse has to pull up a hill. Picture riding a bike up a hill, versus just riding in on the flat. For a horse, flat ground allows them to maintain an even speed-- uphill requires them to push more, and downhill requires them to coil their hindquarters and control and slow their speed.

So the equivilent without a hill is:

1. Transitions. Speeding up and slowing down frequently will use the same muscles as hill work, but only for a stride or two. More transitions = hill work. This doesn't mean gallop to stop! Even walk stop transitions work the same muscles, if the horse stops using his balance instead of his bones.

2. Pole work: Cavelleti are great for making the horse 'push' up just a little more than it normally would. Walk and trot are best for your horse, since it isn't yet ready for the excitement and challenge of cantering over poles.

There are other ways to build muscle and strength in a horse, but the two above most closely copy hill work.

The suggestions about building your own hills - too funny! I suppose you could if you have access to things like a bulldozer and some topsoil. But if you had to hire a landscaping company I think you are talking thousands of dollars.

So, it's probably better to focus on other exercises that strengthen the horse's topline and hindquarters. Unless you're a marathon runner yourself, I doubt you can accomplish a lot by the jogging in hand. Riding over poles is a great exercise though. As she gets better at it, you can even start to work over raised poles (a few inches off the ground) for an even better workout. I see so many people just put out several poles on a straight line, but you can get very creative with them.

One of my favorite exercises is to place 4 poles at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00 on a 20 meter circle. If you ride over the very center of the poles, you are riding about an 18m circle. Ride this exercise at the trot. Begin trotting the circle aiming for the very center of the poles. Then, spiral in to where you aim for the inside edge of the poles. Then, spiral out to the middle of the poles, and continue until you are crossing over the outside edge of the poles. It helps if your poles are painted with stripes so you have a visual target to aim for. Not only do you get the benefits of the poles, but you gain some lateral suppleness from the spiraling in and out. Plus you may find you need to slightly adjust your horse's stride length to hit the poles correctly as you change the size of your circle. A fabulous exercise, very easy to ride, but extremely difficult to ride really well!

Dressage simply means "training," so no horse is too out of shape to start dressage moves. Dont just walk and trot around. That just burns calories without building the muscles you want. Do a lot of transitions, trying to make them as smooth as possible. Transitions, when done correctly, help to develop hindquarter and topline muscles. Go for quality of work, not quantity. A good trainer builds more muscle in a 20 minute ride than your average rider can when riding for over an hour. Don't forget those half-halts to make sure your horse is using his hindquarters and not getting too strung out.

Lungeing in side reins is another good way to build the muscling you are looking for. Just don't overdo it! Never lunge for more than 15-20 minutes, and not every day. Keep the circle large. Otherwise, you put a lot of stress on the horse's legs.

lots of circles! the smaller the circle the more emphasis there is on the back end, so i would recommend starting at 20 meter circle then going in to 10, then 5 meter if shes up to it, then push out back to 20. Just remember to go straight every now and then, change directions often, and keep impulsion when your getting into a smaller circle. As your mare gets stronger start adding some transitions to these circle exercises for more intensity, especially upward into trot and eventually canter. Or if your mare is accepting of the bit, play with the elasticity of her neck. Stretch trot or walk on circle and then to a working trot or walk to back again really helps to keep your horse through in the back and gain topline.

It sounds though like your horse is still quite weak, so start on with lots of walk. Walking in my opinion is the absolute best way to gain a beautiful topline in a horse because it works just about every muscle! Just keep impulsion, and see how much you can relax the poll rewarding with each inch of relaxation. As she gets stronger it should become easier to do this, and once again I would recommend stretching and flexing the neck with impulsion. Holding a dressage whip might help also to make the focus on the back end and impulsion.

Good luck!

I didn't have hill until a month ago either :( And my horse has absolutely no butt. Cavalletti and pole work and little jumping grids did help a lot.

The barn was putting a bunch of new sand in the arena once and left it sitting in a pile for about two weeks. We used that as a baby hill. It was alright after it got packed down, but you really could not trot it without risking your horse tripping

Im not sure about the hill problem but lunging your horse in draw reins will develop the topline fairly quickly.

lunging and hill paintings is well and plenty and plenty of trotting builds them up. patience is the important thing if you'll experience her flippantly daily with the intention to do her wonders. in view that she used to be soo underweight make certain she has all of the minerals she demands... salt and mineral block licks are nice!! placed one in her paddock and each time she demands a few she may have a bite on it!! well success

you can build a hill lol. get a truck load of dirt and climb it. get a horse treadmill, they work awesome. teach her to slide stop, that will get her hind quarters back in shape real quick.