From: Joshua
Dear Jessica. Your service is wonderful and I am proud to be a supporter. I am sending a check today and will support your service every year from now on. We used to get a lot of horse magazine subscriptions, but these days they all seem to be the same magazine full of ads and show stuff and the same recycled articles. HORSE-SENSE is the best place I know to find good information. Thank you. I have a question about my daughter and her horse, but let me give you some background first. We all ride, but Sarah is on her horse from the time she gets home from school until suppertime on weekdays, also all day on weekends. She doesn't seem to like horse shows very much. She gets too nervous about them and then gets sick at the shows, so we don't do that any more. Lately she has gotten very interested in Endurance Riding. She is fourteen. We have Arabians and from what I understand, they are a good breed for Endurance Riding. We also have access to a big forest preserve area with big hills, so Sarah has a good place to practice. I am worried about the level of stress that is involved with this sport. Sarah has a good coach, a rider who has been competing in Endurance Riding for many years, and she seems to think that Sarah will be good at this and that her horse is suitable. But she also talks a lot about stress, and about how important it is to increase stress as part of training. I haven't said anything to Sarah yet, but I am a little worried about this. Since every other newspaper and magazine article these days seems to be about how important it is to reduce stress for health reasons, I am concerned that taking up this sport, with its focus on stress, may be bad for my daughter and her horse. Is this a legitimate concern, or am I just an anxious father? Yours truly, Joshua
You are an anxious father, but a very NICE anxious father, and I get the strong impression that Sarah is a very lucky young lady.
It sounds to me as though Sarah has everything going for her: Good support from her family, a good horse from a breed that dominates her chosen sport, a good coach, and a nearby place to train herself and her horse.
Don't worry about the stress factor, for two reasons. First, a good coach won't let a rider or a horse become too severely stressed. Second, the stress involved in this or ANY athletic endeavour is PHYSICAL stress, which is not necessarily a bad thing. You are right, we see so many articles about avoiding or reducing stress, that it's easy to begin to see stress as something dangerous and threatening. What you have to remember is that most of those articles are about EMOTIONAL stress, which can indeed be unpleasant and destructive. Can you remember a time in your life when you were unhappy, perhaps working for someone who was unpleasant, demanding, and unappreciative? Even if your work was all "brain work" and you never lifted anything heavier than a pen or a company newsletter, you were experiencing emotional stress. Can you remember a time in your life when you were doing something physically demanding but interesting and pleasant? Whether it was building a treehouse, white-water rafting, or just participating in a regular jogging or walking program, you were experiencing physical stress. Which one left you feeling better?
"Stress", for a layperson, often conveys "something nasty and unpleasant and upsetting" - in other words, either (1) emotional stress or (2) the state of tension and exhaustion that results from pushing the body and/or mind too hard for too long. For a scientist, doctor, exercise physiologist, horse-trainer, or coach, the term "stress" doesn't have the same meaning; "stress" simply means a normal physiological response to increased demand upon the organism (the horse or human). There's nothing wrong with it and nothing bad about it. If your doctor orders a "stress test" for you, you're likely to spend some time on a treadmill whilst the doctor or nurse monitors your heartbeat. The idea will be to discover your level of cardiac fitness - not to exhaust you or cause a physical or emotional crisis (although the experience could be emotionally stressful for you, simply because many people become anxious when they undergo any sort of medical exam or procedure!).
Endurance Riding is a wonderful sport. Sarah and her horse are going to become very fit and strong as the result of their training. They'll both have the benefits of physical exercise, companionship, and a feeling of accomplishment. The sort of stress Sarah was experiencing at horse shows could be quite unhealthy and certainly wasn't pleasant; the sort of stress she's going to be experiencing now is likely to be both healthy and pleasant. As long as she and the horse are fit, healthy, and happy, just go on supporting them both and enjoying their pleasure in their new sport. And you might even consider joining Sarah - after all, you ride too, and you have Arabians, you have access to a forest preserve and a good coach... Why not give it a try? In the early stages of training, you'll basically be going on trail rides, learning to handle terrain, and learning how to keep track of your horse's fitness level and your own. Even if you decide, after a few months, that this is NOT the sport for you, and that you'll participate only by crewing for your daughter, you'll have a much better appreciation of what Sarah is doing - and of what her new sport is doing for her.
Jessica
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