Building muscle

[DeirdreBarlow]

Just wondering :) . . .

What are the best exercises for building muscle in a totally muscle-less, gangly horse?

The pony I've recently bought (as company for my little shetland :D ) has fantastic paces and a lovely shape (minus the muscle :rolleyes: ).
Given that I feel he has potential, I'd like to show him, but I need to "build him up" first.
He's never been ridden in an outline (we're working on it, but I haven't had him long and he doesn't currently have enough muscle to maintain a shape), but is aerobically very fit.

So, I'm looking for ideas ;) (he's 9 years old by the way and has passed his vetting and saw the dentist and physio 4 wks ago (I did check up on this) - so he's healthy ;) ).

What do people recommend for muscle building (everywhere)?

[No_Angel]

what i did with my tb who had no muscle, was let her walk very free, with her head down and stretching through her back, we keep an active walk, and do lots of hills.
She got fitter doing 10 mile pleasure/endurance rides, but built her muscle by stretching down and building up her topline, the hills helped her bum and made her stretch down to get up the slopes.

[coss]

i do a lot of circle spiralling work to build up muscle, it achieves lateral flexion which encourages the head down and brings the inside hind leg under the horse to encourage them to round through their back. only do a max of 10mins of that before letting the horse stretch out fully as they may get achey and then they won't want to flex. after a break, you can start circling, leg yielding again. keep giving the horse short breaks as this will build up the muscle without makin the horse stiff.