JUNE 2014 THE RIDER /23 Fitness For Riders:Spring Tune Up
ness, awareness and readiness for the task, I thought it might be a nice change to suggest an easy routine you can do every other day for a few weeks, and a little bit of a plan to help you get started. To keep it simple and short, I’ve picked just three exercises for each day. Some of the exercises are taken from my Gentle Work- out for Mature Riders, which you can download at
www.equifitt.com/resources.html .
Days 1 & 3: Go for a walk for 15 minutes, swinging your arms and really moving your hips, keeping good posture and some tone in your core. Alternate between fast short steps (like speedwalk- ing) and big long stretchy steps where you can feel your hip flex- ors stretching. Start and finish with a basic stretch routine repeat- ing the stretches 6 times, gently.
Stretches: 1. Side Bends: Standing with legs shoulder width apart and knees slightly bent, keep your hips in place while curving your spine and reaching up and over with your arm to stretch the muscles between your arm-pit and your hip. You should feel muscle along your ribs stretching. At the most stretchy moment, you should feel you are reaching your fingers as far away from you as you can for just a second. Then change and do the other side. Some- times imagining you are curving around a ball helps. 2. Side lunges: Spread your feet so that they are quite wide apart. Shift your seat back and to one side, bending that knee. Keep your knee behind your toes at all times, and drop your seat (bend- ing the knee more) so that the muscles on the inner thigh of your stretched leg, start to stretching. Gently move from side to side, gradually getting slight increases in your stretch.
the swing of things, loosen up and put some emphasis on train- ing your body for more straight-
topic for the month and get pret- ty detailed. Now that spring has started, I’m finding that that a lot of people are caught between winter schedule, and regular summer schedule. Winter in my area drives a lot of people indoors and they are just itching to get outdoors. Well, they are itching anyway because the horses are shedding. To help you get back in
By Heather Sansom Normally, I pick one key
3. Rounding and Hollowing your back: Stand with legs shoul- der-width apart, knees slightly bent and core engaged. Next round and hollow your upper back, feeling a stretching as your round, and scrunching your shoulder blades together as you hollow. Make sure you keep some tone in your abs so that that your lower back is stabilized and not doing the bending for you.
Days 2 & 4: Build your straightness by working on some of the muscles that tend to atrophy with sedentary desk-based jobs and riding…but which are really important to stabilizing your body in riding. Do the exercises 10-15 times, and then repeat a second or third time, if you have time. The entire routine should not take you more than 15-20 minutes.
Exercises: 1. Standing side leg raise: Start with legs slightly bent, then shift your weight onto one leg so that the other is free. You should have a slight bend in knee, hip and ankle, and a feeling of tone in your abs as you support nice straight spine posture. With your toe fac- ing forward, use the muscles on your sides (obliques and gluteus medius on the side of your hip) to raise your leg. If your toe and knee are correctly pointed forward, you will not be able to raise it very high, but you will feel your muscles on your waist and side of your hip and leg at work. Do 10-15, or as many as you can before you feel a little burning sensation in those areas. Then repeat the exercise on the other side. 2. Lunge on the spot (drop up and down): Step into a lunge posi- tion supporting good posture in your torso with remembering to keep tone in your abs, and to keep a feeling of dropping your shoulder blades down your back. Next, raise your body up and down until the burning in your leg muscles tells you to stop. Then switch your lunge and do the same on the other side. Do not go quickly. If you find you are challenged by balance, do the lunge near something you can touch to help keep your balance until you are better at keeping it on your own. 3. Plank with mini pushups: Get into a class plank position with a feeling of lengthening your body from your feet to your head, and of tucking your tailbone down while pulling your stomach and lower back up somewhat. Next, bend your elbows about 20 degrees to drop your torso a couple of inches. Not a full pushup. Just a series of rapid short ones until you can’t any more. Holding the plank will really work your deep inner core supporting mus- cles, and the mini-pushups will strengthen the muscles and liga- ments around your shoulders. I see so many riders with shoulder injury from chores or other incidents, that I find that it’s really important the older you get to do work that stimulates strengthen- ing of the shoulder joint. If you can, feel for your shoulder blades squeezing together with each mini-pushup. This will help build
Plank - Elbows on Ball
Plank - Feet on Ball
strength in the muscles around your shoulder blades, and will help you with improved shoulder and upper back posture.
Happy Riding and Training!
© Heather R. Sansom About Equifitt and Heather: Equifitt training draws on multiple sport and fitness disciplines to help riders of all ages and types balance their bodies and reach their riding and fitness goals. Heather is a certified personal trainer, Level 1 Centered Riding® Instructor and Equine Canada Competition Coach. Heather does rider fitness coaching with clients around the world via Skype- bring the trainer to you.
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