Training
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Endurance Riding – Ultimate Cross Training
I started this year off by trying something new… an endurance ride! I love trail riding, and decided the idea of conditioning for a longer, faster-paced ride sounded fun. I liked the fitness component, and the crystal clear goal, right down to a distance to be completed on a certain date. This ride was an AERC sanctioned endurance ride called The Last Tango at 7IL Ranch in Cat Springs, Tx on New Years Day. We did the Intro ride, which was about 13 miles. For a few months leading up to the ride, I had been working longer rides into my riding schedule with Sofie, trying to get at least…
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3 Position Warm Up Exercises to Start Your Ride Right
When you’re riding on your own, sometimes it can be hard to get a ride off to the right start. Getting yourself focused and able to use your body to get your horse to use his body gets you both in the best position (literally!) to progress towards your more challenging work as your ride gets going. It’s also the best place to start if you’re starting at the very beginning building a fitness and training foundation for yourself and your horse. Today I’ll share my 3 favorite warm up exercises that I use to begin every ride, and I’ll explain how they help me and my horse develop the…
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Ottb vs Warmblood: Training Two Fillies
Two fillies, both about to turn 4, are beginning dressage training. One came from the track, the other from the breeder’s field. Each horse requires a slightly different approach, and each one offers a few advantages over the other, as well as a few drawbacks. Here’s a side-by-side comparison. Filly #1: Boogie Rose, 15.2 hand bay OTTB This pretty girl is dainty and elegant. Light on her feet, with athleticism to spare. She’s a worker-bee and thrives on exercise and discipline. She likes routine, attention, and is at her best when her energy is channeled into work. She also has a tendency to channel that energy is less-favorable ways when…
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Getting Control of Your Horse’s Shoulders with the Leg Yield Hexagon
Leg yielding can be such a useful exercise, but one of the most common things that goes wrong is the horse falling over his outside shoulder instead of stepping across his body with his inside hind leg. Here’s a simple exercise to help improve the quality of the leg yield you are getting and give you control over your horse’s shoulders by encouraging him to hold himself up instead of falling on the forehand. To begin, if you need to review what a leg yield is or how to do it, you can read about it here. The other easy piece of this exercise is to turn, or even better,…
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A Tool For Times Your Horse Makes You Nervous
My sixteen year old student did something the other day that I just loved. It was an easy and very effective way of working through the type of resistance from her horse that often makes her nervous. It’s a tool everyone can use anytime they need it. They had taken a little walk break, and she was supposed to be getting him back into a trot and onto a circle so we could work on her right lead canter transition, which can be a little sticky. Maybe there was already some hesitation in the back of her mind just knowing what was coming, I’m not sure. Or maybe he thought…
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Proof the Horse Does NOT Do All the Work
How many times have you been told horseback riding is not exercise, all you do is just sit there while the horse does all the work? Our sore legs and abs after a good lesson tell us otherwise, but it’s hard to help someone understand that without putting them on a horse. And I’ve never had a way to compare just how hard I worked when riding to other types of workouts, like running or biking. Now with my Fitbit I can easily track just how hard I’m working while I’m riding, and track my rides over the course of a week or a month to look for consistency and…
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Video Analysis of My Ride and How to Make This Tool Work for You
This video I took to establish a baseline on where my horse and I are at riding different movements. There are plenty of mistakes, but I wanted to share it to discuss those mistakes for learning purposes, and to show how to use video as a powerful tool to improve your riding. Hopefully this doesn’t get taken out of context! The horse in this video is my 10 year old off track thoroughbred, Remy (Jockey Club registered as Mr. Painter). I’ve had him since he was 4. He raced a few times but was too slow, and retired young and sound, but the most awkward gangly looking thing you’ve ever seen!…
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How I Focused My Look-y Horse To Get Good Work Instead of Spooks
It was one of *those* nights – early spring, nearing dusk, with a slightly gusty breeze… and of course, the indoor arena now had all the windows opened up after the long, cold winter. Alone in the ring, my normally quiet, sensible horse was on edge as he examined the new openings all around the ring, surprised each time he felt the wind blow INSIDE the arena, listening to previously muffled sounds that now added a constant murmur of background noise to our usually silent work space. Birds were chirping, cars were cruising passed on the road, and a train horn sounded in the distance. Really, it was noises we shouldn’t…
