From: Jean
My thirteen year old QH/Tb gelding, Scrabble, is getting so fit and feeling so good that he reacts with glee to things going on around him. I am not a confident rider & he scares me!
Let me give you some background. I am 55 and that many pounds over weight. My seat is really quite solid, but rather than developing confidence in my ability every time he is 'enjoying' himself I become more apprehensive. Scrabble has cronic stiffness in his rear end and has been getting crondroitin sulfate for 2 1/2 months. I also have been riding 2 to 3 times a week. I have a dressage instructor, but she is only in northern Utah for about 2 months twice a year. We have been working on bending and flexing trying to get him loose in the rear end and lighter in front. Now that it is starting to be accomplished - he scares me.
I have been a 4-H leader for 20+ years and know exactly what I would tell my youth. Sit down and drive him forward. I have no one on the ground to tell me that while the expressions of glee are going on. I assist and teach all the adults I ride with, and although I would love it if they would teach their teach, they don't do it.
I work Scrabble in hand before we ride, getting him to bend and step under. I then sometimes lounge him at a walk, trot and limited canter.
You've already noticed that if you do a lot of longeing, he gets fitter! That means you're doing it correctly, which is good -- if he just got tired, you might be grateful in the short run but you'd be damaging your horse in the long run. As it is, you're building him up. That's good -- and now we need a way to build YOUR strength and coordination as well, so that you can keep up with the horse and enjoy your riding.
Even people who have the time (and the horses!) to ride six or seven horses each day, six or seven days each week, can't count on riding to get them fit enough to ride. If you're only able to ride two or three times a week, you'll definitely need to do some other things to get riding-fit.
You need several kinds of fitness: endurance, strength, and flexibility. I go over this pretty extensively in my book -- there's a whole chapter devoted to this subject -- but let me try to sum it up here.
The first thing to work on is aerobic fitness -- and you can achieve that, nicely and with minimum impact, by walking at a reasonable pace (not a run or a stroll - say 3.5 - 4 mph) every day. Even fifteen minutes will help, and if you can manage half an hour or forty-five minutes, you'll notice a BIG difference in your riding within a week. Another hidden advantage to aerobic fitness is that you begin to breathe more deeply and slowly -- this is something you can begin doing during your very first walk, BTW, not something you have to WAIT for. This kind of breathing will help you a lot in your riding, because when you are nervous, you will be able to sit tall and go ON breathing deeply and regularly instead of rounding your shoulders forward and taking shallow breaths or holding your breath (either of which will make your horse tense and quick to shy).
The second thing to work on is strength -- you need to develop stronger abdominals (which support your back), back muscles (which hold up your spine), shoulders and arms, and legs, especially thigh adductors. Don't get carried away, and you don't have to go to the gym, but even fifteen minutes three days a week, working gently with light weights, will pay off.
The third thing to work on is flexibility -- and here, stretching is the key. The time to stretch is AFTER your walk, when you are good and warmed up, and BEFORE your strength training, because you can't contract a muscle properly until it's been stretched. Here again, the payoff is all out of proportion to the effort you have to make!
Now, as for Scrabble.... I'm sure you're delighted that he's feeling better (I have an old mare on chondroitin sulfates; we'll have to compare notes sometime), but he may be overdoing it now that he finally doesn't HURT when he bounces.
The first thing to do, IMO, is check Scrabble's diet. I hear from a LOT of people who are overfeeding their horses, especially by feeding extra protein, and an overfed horse -- if it isn't hurting anywhere -- will develop a case of the bounces in no time.
The next thing I would do is look at his exercise schedule -- is he getting enough turnout? If a horse is healthy, comfortable, well-fed and kept in a stall, it's natural for it to bounce off the walls when we come out for ONE hour a day and take it out for a ride. If Scrabble could have a few hours out to play BEFORE you ride, that would help take the edge off. If that isn't possible, perhaps you could arrange to have him turned out to play just before you ride. If that is also impossible, put him on the longeline and let him blow off a little steam on the biggest circle possible -- if your longeline isn't a full 30 or 35 feet, or even if it is, walk a big circle inside Scrabble's circle, so that he can really move out without hurting himself.
In-hand work is nice, but it's better if you save it until after Scrabble's warm-up, either free-schooling or on the longe. You're basically asking him to stretch and flex, and those are difficult things to do unless the muscles have been warmed up FIRST -- he needs to warm up, THEN stretch, just like you!
During your ride, have a plan, and then -- always staying flexible in case one of you has a stiff day or the riding arena is busy -- ride the plan. Decide that you are going to spend ten minutes in an active, forward walk, then ten minutes doing walk-trot transitions on a 20- meter circle, then another minute of walk on a long rein, then leg- yields or trot-canter or walk-canter transitions -- whatever you're working on. Start slow, work hard, then slow again toward the end of the ride, and ask for more flexibility and stretch as you warm down.
Keep Scrabble busy, keep the transitions coming, and tell him "good boy" every single time he does something you like, or comes close to doing something you like -- or if you can tell that he is THINKING about doing something you like. If you keep him busy, entertained, and keep reinforcing him, he won't have as much time or inclination for those spontaneous expressions of joy.
Horses find it incredibly difficult to entertain two ideas at once, which is why you lose their attention entirely when they spook. But you can use that trait to your advantage, by keeping Scrabble busy answering YOUR questions, and if you do, you may find that he settles down surprisingly quickly.
If you ride a twenty-meter circle, or even ride around the arena, totally focused on your horse -- he will focus on you. But if you begin by being focused, and then think about something else and put him on auto-pilot, he'll be very distractable, because as far as he is concerned, YOU have hung up the phone, so to speak, or at least put him on "hold."
The advantage of working on your own physical fitness OFF the horse is that you can do it every day, not just on riding days, and that being more fit will allow you to RIDE for your entire session, and not become a passenger from fatigue during the second half. It will also allow you to become more relaxed as you BEGIN your ride -- and early tension contributes to fatigue DURING the ride, so the less tension, the better, for a lot of reasons.
Don't expect your students to be helpful -- most students have a mental block when it comes to making suggestions to their own instructors. Instead, analyze your own position and problems just as you would someone else's, and make yourself a little checklist that you can run down as you ride. If you need to think about your eyes, shoulders, and heels, say "eyes, shoulders, heels" to yourself at least once on each side of the arena -- and adujst your position every time you think and say it. If you need to push Scrabble into his corners, think of what you would tell your student -- "Position your horse, leg- yield into the corner, keep the rhythm, and keep the position as you come out of the corner" -- and then say it to yourself, AND MEAN IT. A lot of students really don't SEE what's wrong, and those who do, often have no idea what to say to help you correct it -- so you're going to have to be your own coach. Fortunately, coaching riders is something you KNOW how to do!
And if you get a chance to work with a GOOD visiting instructor, even if she isn't your regular one, go for it! It can help a lot to have someone look at your riding with a fresh eye.
-Jessica
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