Up until now, you would have been working on “Training” your dog to do the various exercises.<\/p>\n
Within each exercise, your dog would have reached a certain amount of proficiency – this means your dog is really good at executing some exercises while other exercises, he is getting better at but not yet proficient in.<\/p>\n
You are taking your dog from “training” to do the various exercises, to being able to use the exercises in a conditioning program.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When setting up a training circuit you may be wondering:<\/p>\n
Which exercises should I group together?<\/p>\n
There are an unlimited number of ideas and combinations that you can put together and this is where you can get creative for both you and your dog. But I would start with considering what your fitness goals are for your dog.<\/p>\n
What would you like to improve or work on:<\/p>\n
It is important to think about your goals such sporting fitness, general wellbeing, senior strengthening.<\/p>\n
Once you have your goal, you can start to formulate your path to reaching your goal and how you would like to put your strength circuit together.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
IMPORTANT:<\/span> Do not circuit train any dog whose growth plates have not closed<\/strong><\/p>\n Puppies should not perform more than 3 reps of any circuit at the age of 7 – 8 months. The only thing you need to teach your puppy are some skills when it comes to some of the puppy appropriate exercises. Puppies are uncoordinated and switching between exercises places too much strain on an underdeveloped body. Circuit training is age and fitness dependent. It is designed for a fully developed dog who has the necessary fitness level for safe execution.<\/p>\n A dog who is not ready for a rotational circuit generally ends in failure when handler expectations are mismatched with the dog’s readiness. It is not fair to you or the dog.<\/p>\n Rather start with progressive overload on a straight circuit of sequential sets of exercises and slowly start pairing one exercise with another, all the while building on your dog’s proficiency in each exercise. Incorporate play, breaks, and slowly work up to overloading the body. Always monitor for signs of fatigue and stress and take a break when necessary. No program is set in stone and just like humans, some days are stronger days in the gym than others.<\/p>\n \n Don’t forget these! It primes the body for work and helps get focus. We always want a mindset that is conducive to training even if it means lowering the drive of high drive dogs. We need our dogs to work toward precision and form, not high energy and higher drive.<\/p>\n If you are going to train a circuit, your warmup may include the individual exercises in that circuit at their entry level and the circuit is simply bringing all those exercises together. <\/p>\n This will help you identify if there is a skill lacking or a skill you still need to concentrate on for extra proofing before entering into a circuit e.g, is my dog equally capable of circling to the left and the right if it is included in the circuit. If not, change the circuit and work on the skill required separately.<\/p>\n \n This minimizes both dog and handler frustration. This is important when putting your circuit or exercise sets together.<\/p>\n Without a plan, we generally fall back on what we know – this way we walk out of the gym with a false sense of “feeling good” that our dog could do everything and not working on items required when we listed out goals for our training program – this happens in sport too! \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n Without a plan, our goals don’t come to fruition. We use up the same energy but have less result.<\/p>\n Keep your plans simple to start. They can always be built on and added to later, but simple to start.<\/p>\n Your plan should include your goal and the equipment you will need for that session. It is you map for your journey that you will be taking to reach your goal.<\/p>\n Planning your sessions ahead will give you maximum focus on your session. Write notes on how your session went, your observations about your dog and what your dog did well and what did not go as well as what you had hoped. These notes provide guidance on your approach to your next session and how best your sessions may be tweaked.<\/p>\n If you know ahead of time what you will be looking for e.g. control in a movement, ease of foot placement, ability to hold a position etc., it will help you plan what you want to reward and how best to manage your dog’s behavior or even what you could do to improve your own body mechanics.<\/p>\n \n Sequential Circuits<\/span> with Sets of Exercises<\/strong>: Choose 3 – 4 exercises, one from each category of difficulty for your dog<\/p>\n Rotational Circuits<\/span> (this is for the dogs that are more advanced with their exercise execution):<\/strong> Choose only exercises that your dog is absolutely proficient <\/strong>in. Rotational circuits are much harder to do and if your dog is still having difficulty in an exercise, adding it to a circuit is NOT a good idea and only increases frustration.<\/p>\n \n Progression is not a race – the body works on it’s own timeline.<\/p>\n If working in sets of exercises, rule of thumb is to increase or progress an exercise every two weeks if you are training at least 3 x per week and your dog can execute the movement with at least 85% accuracy.<\/p>\n When working through Rotational circuits, complete the same circuit over a week and simple change the order of the exercises that you are doing. Depending on the exercises, the fitness of the dog and degree of difficulty, you could work that same circuit over 2 – 3 weeks continuing to ensure proper form and technique and then move onto the next group of exercises and circuit.<\/p>\n This will also help you save time and help your planning.<\/p>\n Remember that it takes time for the body to adapt to new exercises so there is no rush to change exercises every week.<\/p>\n \n Start with just helping your dog understand the skill involved in an exercise. Once he knows two exercises, start your first set of exercises with 3 exercises (2 known and 1 new exercise) each week.<\/p>\n Exercise is physically demanding but also mentally demanding and adding one new learning item to a body that may be already tired is not an easy task for any person or dog.<\/p>\n Once you have 3 exercises, stick with the three and slowly build your dog over a few weeks as he learns more skills and becomes stronger and fitter.<\/p>\n Continue training new exercise skills and once your dog knows how to execute the exercises you can then change your focus to conditioning training and building circuits through sequential sets and progressing through increased repetitions, changes in difficulty, elevation, timing, speed etc.<\/p>\n You could then also change it up by adding your first rotational circuits consisting of just 3 exercises and slowly build them to working through eventually 4, 5 or 6 exercises.<\/p>\n Start by mastering your rotational circuit of 3 exercises and work your way up.<\/p>\n Remember:<\/strong> Always ease your dog into training sessions and then into circuits.<\/p>\n For a dog new to strength training, it is important to master and understand each exercise, then to master a sequential circuit, then add progressions and only then a rotational circuit and work your way up to having rotations of up to 6 or 7 exercises.<\/p>\n \n Generally training time is dependent on your dog’s fitness, age, skill.<\/p>\n Try to keep sessions within 15 – 20 minutes (including any water breaks)<\/p>\n When starting out the number of repetitions and sets completed in this time will be lower and as your dog becomes fitter and stronger, you will be able to increase the amount of work done during this time.<\/p>\n Sometimes, when starting out a dog may need two shorter training sessions in a day so don’t be afraid to respond to the needs of your dog and perform two exercises in the morning and possible two in the evening if your own time or your dog’s fitness level requires it.<\/p>\n Try not to push your dog for more than 25 minutes of gym time. If you find this is happening, please relook your sessions and your program.<\/p>\n \n Sometimes handlers may rush through exercises on sequential sets of exercise due to time or the dog is in too high a drive and is rushing an exercise, so we let our criteria of form and technique slide. form and posture are what gets us results and if this slides, so do our results and goals,<\/p>\n We work very hard in the beginning to attain good form and posture and if we allow it to slide, our dogs will look to this as their new criteria and all your hard work becomes undone.<\/p>\n This is especially true when we start rotational circuits due to the continued changes in exercise.<\/p>\n Keep in the forefront of your mind – Form and Technique!<\/strong><\/p>\n We do this in our sports and we must do this in our gym if we want results that matter.<\/p>\n If form starts to slide, your dog is either not listening (in the wrong drive state) or is struggling with an exercise. This is the time to STOP.<\/p>\n Simply change your focus of the session and make that session count. A good idea is to go back to “training the exercise” and work on the individual exercises that the dog is struggling with and stop the rotational circuit. This gives you time to analyze the situation and adjust accordingly – perhaps the equipment was too difficult or the transition between the exercises was too complicated physically or even mentally, especially if your dog is new to rotational circuits. Remember, pairing exercises together and learning how to perform them takes time to learn and understand.<\/p>\n Do not rush to finish a circuit<\/strong>. Take your time and make sure your dog is able to handle any new challenge presented in a session and if not, it is simply a matter of taking a step back to work on “training” the sequence before making it a “conditioning” routine.<\/p>\n \n Video your sessions! I know I have repeated this throughout this program – but I am repeating this to emphasize its importance.<\/p>\n You will see your own handler errors, signs of fatigue, small errors in posture which causes the targeted muscles to be missed completely, any off-loading of weight in a limb, positioning on equipment etc., etc.<\/p>\n You will gain your most valuable information through video. It will show you what you or your dog still needs to learn, modify, adapt or apply in your next session.<\/p>\n You will have tangible progress on video and you will be amazed at how far your dog has come in such a short period of time.<\/p>\n \n Circuits can be fun! They are a functional way of progressing and reaching your goals!<\/p>\n There is lots to do when you start: <\/p>\n Once that groundwork has been done, have fun putting it together and slowly adding your progressions.<\/p>\n \n My dog just started this exercise<\/p>\n My dog is still learning this exercise<\/p>\n My dog can do this exercise for 8-10 reps<\/p>\n Using just three foundational exercises – make sure that each exercise you choose is in the Green Smiley Column. <\/p>\n Show the number of repetitions of each exercise that make up one set that you feel is appropriate for your dog and send us a video. <\/p>\n Let us know what you think went well and what you think you should improve on for your next session<\/p>\n P.S. If you don’t have a lot of green smiley exercises to choose from, head back to the Building your Basic exercises and work on teaching the skills and proofing the exercises.<\/p>\n Remember, conditioning is not a competition. <\/p>\n There is no first prize for going through this the fastest.<\/p>\n There are, however, huge rewards if you take the time to set your dog up for success!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-9722","tva_lesson","type-tva_lesson","status-publish","hentry","tva_courses-bk-9-foundational-strength-program","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"yoast_head":"\nWarm Up and Cool Down<\/h4>\n
Have a PLAN<\/h4>\n
Exercise Selection<\/h4>\n
Progression:<\/h4>\n
Start small and build gradually from there<\/h4>\n
Training Session Time<\/h4>\n
Criteria is Always Paramount<\/h4>\n
VIDEO is your Superpower<\/h4>\n
In the end<\/h4>\n
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Here is your To-Do exercise:<\/h3>\n
1. Build 3 Sequential Circuits containing Sets of Exercises.<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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2. Build a Rotational Circuit <\/strong><\/h5>\n