46/ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 THE RIDER


Fitness For Riders: Positive Goals with Fitness Psychology


be hard for you to achieve your goal if you are looking at the problem. That is like looking at the escape route around a jump instead of over the jump (where is the horse going to go then!) or starting a dressage test ob- sessed with the thing you don’t want to happen at C. When it comes to organizing


By Heather Sansom


Rider Fitness 2018 01: Positive Goals Change Everything Early in the season it can be


tempting to be overwhelmed with goals and guilt. You have goals for your personal and professional life, and of course, your riding. You might also wish you didn’t have some little guilts: maybe too much food and not enough movement over the holidays, less time with your horse than you wish- or less time with your important people. You are probably aware of the phenomenon where gyms and fitness classes are packed in the first months of the year. Whatever your goals and guilts are, you will be much more suc- cessful if you identify positive goals that help you get there. Positive in this case does not mean encouraging or patting your back. It means having a target that is a thing you do, rather than a negative target (absence of some- thing, i.e. less fat/weight). You can read more about positive goals here in this article I shared in my New Years’ message on the Equifitt.com Facebook page.


For example, you might wish to


lose some weight. You know that weight (or some other problem) is connected to why you aren’t riding quite the way you want to. However, you need to be counter-intuitive here: even though you might be right, it will


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your fitness plan as a rider, I like to suggest that people do quarterly re- sets. Instead of worrying about resolu- tions and everything that is on your plate for 2018, use the season to eval- uate your most important goals, and the most critical things you can do to move yourself toward them. With fit- ness for riding, of course, everything is fair game: your nutrition, sleep pat- terns, amount of time and frequency of your physical training (and of your rid- ing), and then the detail: specific is- sues with your riding or physical condition. Even all of my books and workout plans cover as many bases as possible according to the Rider Fitness Training Scale I developed years ago: flexibility, balance, core, then strength and stamina and finer movements.


Rider Fitness Training Scale © (published by Trafalgar Square in Fit to Ride


in Nine Weeks


(www.equifitt.com/fit2ride/ ) Using the Training Scale to iden-


Rider Fitness Training Scale ©


tify your fitness focus involves thinking about what is going on in your riding right now, what your goals are, and what the ROOT source of improvement might be. Even though your rid- ing might be quite advanced, issues and weaknesses usually come from compensating patterns that have developed over the years. In fact, the elite riders that I have worked with are the ones that often have the most stubborn compensating patterns because they are so successful without having addressed cer- tain issues earlier. The patterns have had more reinforcement due to more hours in the saddle than an amateur rider. So, you’ve used the training scale or some other source


(i.e. weight loss goals identified above) to find one root issue that you want to work on. Now, to implement the positive goals approach you need a two-step process. First, clearly identify the outcome goal that you want, such as the jump height, dres- sage test, competitive level, event, or other task that you would like to be able to do with your horse. Describe the conditions and criteria involved so that you can objectively acknowledge when you have achieved the goal. In competition, placings are not a good goal for this ex-


ercise because you can’t control the performance of other peo- ple. Instead, have markers that indicate clearly to you whether you have done a respectable job on that task with your horse. An example could be ratio of attempts to rail knocks, a range of dressage scores, or if you are at home with your horse, a 1- 10 scale on efficiency of performance on a task, x out of 10 times. Your description of criteria should be so clear that you can give it to a non-riding friend and have them observe you doing the activity, and rate your achievement. Sometimes, that is exactly what you may need to do so that someone else can be more objective about your progress (a main reason many amateurs compete). The second part of the exercise is more important than


even the big goal you’ve identified above. The second part is your process goals. Set objectives each week or day that are based on task performance: things you do that bring you closer to your bigger goal. These process goals do not need to be performance oriented. Take that pressure off yourself, and give yourself a chance to be successful. That is one of the points of having positive goals. A good example is a recent


strategy I used with a riding client who feels like she’s gained weight over the holidays, and wants to be stronger and have more stamina for her riding. I gave her a target of accumulating 16 ‘points’ of exercise per week, where 15 minutes equals 1 point. At that rate, that is 4 hours of some form of exercise per week, where walking and stretching (anything really) count. Very intensive exercise is double its value. Other times, she has had a precise exercise


routine, but right now what she needed was a positive goal that could be flexible as she got back into her routine. So now, instead of potentially berating herself for how


much or whether she did her workout plan (or for whatever personal weaknesses she wishes weren’t there), she has the task of getting up every morning and figuring out creative ways to accumulate her 16 points. To be really transparent: I use a vari- ation of this system myself lately, because I’ve had to balance my own training with so many other (mostly desk based) re- sponsibilities. When she is ready, we’ll implement more planned work-


outs which will be focused on actions she can take to achieve positive goals. Framing the goals in positive terms also helps. For example, instead of telling yourself you are trying to fix a problem with stiff ankles, make sure your ‘story’ is about in-


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creasing your flexibility. That way, you are always winning something on your route to bigger things.


Happy Riding and Training! You have more potential than you realise. Happy riding


and training!


© Heather R. Sansom Equifitt offers coaching for riders that includes fitness and bio- mechanics, as well as mounted riding instruction- wherever you are as long as you have internet! You can also get rider fitness books at www.Equifitt.com.


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