JANUARY 2012 THE RIDER /13 Fitness for Riders: Setting Up A Simple Training Plan By Heather Sansom.
As you reflect on your year and goals for 2012, you may find yourself peeking at show schedules, starting to develop some goals for the sum- mer competitive season. It will be a perfect time to experiment with a planned approach to your own conditioning as a rider. Conditioning yourself is not really something that very many people argue with. Everyone knows that a healthi- er, fitter self brings more energy to everything: work, play, rela- tionships, riding. Most people start the New Year with a reso- lution of some kind in the area of health and wellness. Just notice the marketing of fitness items and programs at this time of the year.
Take advantage of the New Years resolution momen- tum around you, and commit to planning your own condi- tioning this year. Unless you overdo it, I can pretty much guarantee you that it won’t slow your riding goals down in any way. Taking a planned approach to your own training CAN often be the little extra inch of effort that leverages all your other efforts exponentially. There’s no replacement for your riding coach and saddle time, but if you can go to those activi- ties with more stamina and sup- pleness, you’ll reduce your risk of strain injury, reduce stress and find exercises in your riding easier to do. Tap into your full athletic potential, whatever your age or challenges.
To help you start on your way to a New Year for your body, start by thinking about where you’d like to be in June. Visualize it. Enjoy it: you and your horse are perfect. See yourself smiling, and the two of you doing your activity effort- lessly.
In your partnership with your horse(s), you owe it to the horses to carry yourself. Since horses weigh almost ten times the rider’s weight, they often compensate for rider lack of car- riage/rider error in ways that aren’t noticeable as directly
linked to the extra work they are doing on your behalf. Bringing your best self to the ride is just plain courtesy to the horse for the working part- nership you have.
in place one month at a time so that by the time you arrive at that moment in June, you will be ready.
The first priority is to unblock tension from your joints, and to re-set symmetry and fluidity. While you start on that, you slowly start to build cardio-vascular stamina. Car- dio-vascular stamina is more than your heart/lung capacity. It includes the overall capacity of your body for oxygen transfer to your muscles and brain. You will really need to be efficient in this area in June, because it will be hot, the day will be long, you will be exhausted and running on adrenaline…right when you need to sink 6 months worth of expenses and efforts into 4 min- utes in front of a judge. Don’t think about it, go back to your happy visualization of harmony and achievement. But let the math involved sink in long enough to motivate you to see how small 5 minutes a day of effort really is.
You can work with your coach to work backwards from that moment to all the steps you need to put in place to make it happen as far as your technical execution and your horse’s fit- ness are concerned.
For yourself, realize that there are also some simple building blocks that you can put
Once you have started your long and slow buildup of cardio-vascular stamina and worked the tension out of your joints, you are ready to lay a base layer of core strength. Some riders do not move out of this phase. Your core strength, suppleness and agility has a tremendous effect on your aids because your torso controls your hip position, leg strength, leg aid accuracy, shoulder position and indirectly your arm and hand aids. The base of your core strength is your seat. That means exercising your hind end, which means working your legs.
Indirectly, the side benefit is more stamina generally and more toned legs. The direct benefit to a rider is more control over leg position, and more stamina for your postural mus- cles, and muscles controlling your seat bone positioning. To make it really easy, here is the general plan in broad strokes:
January: get started: extensive stretching, start habit of cardio- vascular activity in your life, start core work
February: establish a base: increase intensity of cardio-vas- cular activity, and times per week, but not duration per ses- sion, steadily increase reps in core work, introduce leg work
March: your real workout begins: This is the month when you rely on the slow, steady and faithful base you put in place in January and February. Reduce frequency of cardio work, but increase time per session, main- tenance stretching, more time on leg work, introduce full body strength work to build muscle tissue for stamina, while inte- grating core and continuously suppling
April: kick it up a notch: This is the month that really counts. You need to go for the gold here and get as much endurance in your muscle fibres, and increase in your body awareness and response times as you can- aim to exceed what you need for rid- ing by several percentages, because you will need to later
drop down your training as you increase your riding time. This month’s training is your ‘bank account’ you draw on for May- Sept. If you are an Eventer, this period of the year should be really intense. Increase cardio time and intensity together, reduce amount of time strength training but increase intensity, re-introduce extended stretching
May: start to taper: Drop cardio work to maintenance, gradually bring strength work to mainte- nance levels, pick up intensity of core
June: light maintenance: Drop to maintenance levels for the competitive season
Here is your plan for Jan- uary (you can get started earlier if you like..just spend more time in each phase). Watch next months’ tip for the February plan:
January 2012 Training Plan: Getting Started
Week 1 & 2 - daily extended stretching, walking or other loosening exercises 3x/ week, 20 min minimum
Weeks 3 & 4 - daily mainte- nance stretching (short and dynamic), heart-rate elevating relatively light activity
/week, core training 5-10 min / day, 5x/week
3x
This article was also print- ed in the Equifitt Monthly Equi- Tips newsletter. You can sub- scribe for free to monthly rider
tips at
www.equifitt.com .
By Heather Sansom,
Equifitt.com Equestrian Fitness – Balanced Training for Better Riding. Equifitt specializes in helping riders achieve clearer aids and better posture, for bet- ter riding in any discipline.
About the author:
Heather Sansom, Equifitt founder is a certified personal trainer and Centered Riding® Instructor. She has taught on fitness for riders at the U of Guelph, Kemptville, is a colum- nist on rider fitness for Dressage Today and The Rider, and has published articles in several equestrian publications includ- ing Horse Sport, Canadian Horse Journal, Hunter & Sport Horse, Hoofbeats, Chaff Chat(Australia), Her monthly newsletter is distributed around the world to a few thousand subscribers. Heather also speaks and conducts workshops and has spoken at national and regional equestrian federation and other symposia. Equestrian clients range across disciplines, ages and competitive levels from amateurs and pleasure rid- ers to Olympic and elite ath- letes. Equifitt methods draw on many fitness areas and sport conditioning principles. Indi- vidualized programs for riders are tailored to your riding priori- ties, lifestyle needs and other fitness goals such as injury recovery, weight loss, strain prevention, or taking your riding to the next level as an athlete.
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