Horse Illustrated Magazine

When you’re in a lesson with your trainer’s guidance, everything goes great. At home, you read articles with training exercises and think, “I’m going to try that!” But the next time you ride into the arena for a schooling session, you forget what you’d planned to do and end up with a less-than-productive ride. The next time you have a lesson, it’s like you’re starting over.

This phenomenon, familiar to many amateur riders, inspired one equestrian to develop the Horsing app. This app is a training tool that allows you or your trainer to create schooling plans for training sessions that occur between lessons. Although the app was created to help riders and their trainers build more effective training plans, it could also be used by riders who don’t take lessons, but want more focus for their own self-directed schooling sessions. It can also be used to create a structured plan for bringing a horse back from injury or improving fitness.

Here’s how it works.

After a lesson, a trainer can assign “homework” for the next, unsupervised schooling session. Trainers can set objectives and record audio instructions for the elements they want the rider to work on. They set a duration for each exercise to give riders some guidance on how long to work on each element. They can even record vocal reminders (think, “heels down,” or “eyes up”) and choose how often those reminders should be repeated.

Self-directed riders can also create these schooling plans for themselves. The app allows users to set their plan ahead of time, which means you can create your next training session while the previous one is still fresh in your mind.

The app doesn’t come with pre-set training plans, and that’s by design. The idea is for each rider and their trainer to create the training plan that fits their goals and their horse’s needs. The app simply helps riders stick to their own plan.

Horsing also provides tools for scheduling a horse’s other activities, like vet and farrier appointments, and send reminders. This information, along with the training log that is created through regular use of the app, provides a comprehensive history of the horse’s progress through the season.

The app is currently in development with a targeted release for summer of 2017. The inventors have launched a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the next stages of development. Click here to learn more and find out how you can back the Horsing project.

Leslie Potter is a writer and photographer based in Lexington, Kentucky. www.lesliepotterphoto.com