Der Pferdepodcast · Jenny und Chris Berdrow

#413 Go with the flow: Antrainieren nach dem Winter

·45 min·3 clips

Jenny finds all three horses still asleep and snoring despite her noisy stall cleaning, delaying their 'room service'.

1. Der Pferdepodcast episode 413 covers training horses after the winter break, anchored by a conversation with Austrian dressage trainer Nikola Wohlsdorf. 2. The episode is hosted by Jenny (based in the Black Forest region with three horses) and her Berlin-based co-host, with guest Nikola Wohlsdorf, described as a dressage trainer active through Grand Prix level who runs online coaching programmes. 3. The episode's core question is: how do riders find the right measure when returning to training after winter, and how do they recognise when a horse has had enough? 4. Jenny opens by describing her three horses — AC, Kleksi, and Benni — all currently in good form and willing to work despite cold temperatures still below zero at night in the Black Forest. 5. Her main focus is Benni, who turns five in late April and is now being asked for more precise lateral work, including leg-yielding in trot and serpentines through a 40-metre arena. 6. Jenny identifies Benni's primary challenge as inconsistent contact: the moment she applies slightly too much rein pressure, he immediately evades upward, a reaction she attributes to her own timing errors rather than the horse's resistance. 7. She compares Benni's hypersensitivity to a Lamborghini and her older horse Globus — who had similar fineness but far less quality — to a Fiat, while AC sits between them as a more forgiving horse who tolerates small rein errors. 8. Jenny mentions an upcoming clinic with trainer Silke Ramschütz in two weeks, where she plans to bring Benni on both days specifically to work on stable contact and early weight-bearing on the hindquarters. 9. The hosts note that even the most experienced trainers, including their regular coach Hubert, can sometimes lose track of how long a horse has been working in a group lesson, illustrating that over-training is not purely an amateur problem. 10. Nikola Wohlsdorf enters the conversation and immediately identifies the most common mistake she observes: riders resuming training with the mental image of where they were before winter and expecting the horse to match that level immediately. 11. Nikola explains that muscles are not as flexible after a break, the entire physiological system needs time to return to a work-sport state, and that rushing this process leads to escalating frustration that worsens the longer it continues. 12. She draws an analogy to human sport: someone returning after a month's break would not immediately run a marathon but would start with warm-up, stretching, and short runs, gradually increasing intensity. 13. Nikola states that what the horse learned before the break is not forgotten — the skills are retained — so there is no need to rush; the only requirement is allowing the body to catch up with the knowledge. 14. She advocates for always entering a session with a structured plan divided into three phases: Lösephase (loosening), Arbeitsphase (work), and a Cooldown phase, rather than the improvised 'let's see what works today' approach. 15. Central to her method is setting one specific daily focus — whether trot work, canter work, or simply loosening — and stopping when that goal is met, even if the session feels productive, reserving the next goal for the following day. 16. She emphasises honest self-assessment: riders must ask whether continuing serves the horse's genuine need or whether it is the rider's own ambition driving the session past the point of usefulness. 17. Nikola lists three concrete signals that indicate a horse has reached its limit: it can no longer carry itself and begins to drop its neck, it responds more slowly to forward-driving leg aids, and the risk of muscle over-acidification increases, impairing recovery for the next day. 18. She confirms that pushing through exhaustion is not always wrong — as in human sport, going beyond comfortable limits builds conditioning — but only within the work phase and not when the horse is already showing the exhaustion signals described above. 19. The tone is conversational and practical, blending Jenny's personal stable diary with Nikola's coaching experience, with light humour about the Berlin-Black Forest remote recording setup. 20. Listeners who benefit most are German-speaking recreational and competitive dressage riders with their own horses; those expecting pure technical instruction or English-language content will not find it here.

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