Athletes

As riders, I think that we are all acutely aware that our horses are athletes.  We condition them slowly and pay careful attention to their overall fitness.  Time and again, we tell people that our sport involves two athletes when in fact most of us probably place more emphasis on the equine athlete than we do the human one.

the trail I'm using to go for walks/hikes

I have said before that I'm not really big into fitness, and by that I simply mean that if I did not have a horse, despite all my best intentions, I would never work out.  Walker is how I stay fit, and every muscle I have in my body is in some way related to riding.  In fact, it really wasn't until recently that I would have even considered myself an athlete.  I'm really not the athlete type, and I'm still surprised every time someone thinks that I am.

Unfortunately, all this time while I've been moping during Walker's time off, I was just letting my own fitness deteriorate away.  I've become wildly obsessed with Walker's conditioning back into work.  I have a billion schedules for him - his progression on the lunge line, under saddle, etc. - but up until this point, I didn't actually bother to think about my own transition back into work.

I decided pretty much this weekend that I have been a fool to let myself get so unfit.  Now, instead of achingly bringing Walker back into fitness, I have to bring both of us back into fitness, which will only slow down our progression even more.

So I'm instituting a month-long boot camp for myself.  For the next month, while Walker gets to play with all the other ponies and only get lunged a couple times a week to maintain his current fitness (and hopefully add a little bit to it), I'm going to put myself through the ringer.

For the first time ever, I can actually say I'm in training for something.  I'm in training to be worthy of my horse.  We expect them to do so much for us and it simply is not fair if we don't give the same back.

Below is a short video I took of Walker lunging.  It is only 10 seconds long so don't blink or you'll miss it.  It turned out to be super difficult to lunge AND videotape AND keep him going because he really likes to take advantage of me if I'm not on his case.  This is the only 10 seconds in a row I could get.

Obviously he is still really stiff, and he's really not reaching under himself, but hopefully I can use this video as a good comparison for later work.  I must say that I wish I had videotaped him cantering because where his trot/jog on the lunge line wasn't anything to write home about, I was pretty impressed with his surprisingly bouncy, cute little canter.  He was like a little coiled spring.  That's got to count for something, right?