Getting it Right off the Horse: 2025 Edition

Prior years: 2024, 2023, and 2022. This year is a bit different. 

Since I had that "little sprain" when I made the excellent decision to lean at a scary rolltop, running has been OUT this year. I will confess, and note for my future self, I should have done several things differently: not gone to work that night in order to elevate the foot and decrease the swelling; not gone to a horse show 48 hours later; not kept riding for the two weeks following the sprain. It may have been worse than I was acknowledging, and I am actually still dealing with the consequences. My husband is a PTA and has been sooo helpful. First, he created a legs workout that didn't involve pissing off the already pissed off ankle ligaments. Then he showed me multiple exercises to regain the strength in all planes (there are several, and shockingly motion is required in all of them to ride well) with that ankle. Finally when I had a minor whine session the other night about how it still hurts sometimes, first off he didn't say "I told you so" AND he helped trouble shoot where the ankle still weak. It is still weak in dorsoflexion, so my current ankle rehab is eccentric holds at the top of my range of motion using a forward lean with hands on the wall to offload the ankle to the point where pain doesn't increase more than 2 points. 

In my favor with the ankle is that spraining the lateral/dorsal ligaments meant that riding in the jump saddle was pretty alright for it. It's the dressage saddle and a little bit of medial movement needed with a basically flat foot that it struggled with for several months. 

My general philosophy has also changed some this year as I've dealt with added work stress and need for modifications because of my ankle. I don't have a board of weekly workouts scheduled out for each day. Instead my goal is to workout for at least 30 minutes a day, every day. This gives me the flexibility to just set a timer for 30 minutes and do SOMETHING, ANYTHING, if it is a busy/stressful day.

Widest waterfall in the state of Florida, on the Steinhatchee river

The thirty minutes+ every day almost always includes the abs from Athlean X that have been a cornerstone of my program for three years now. Then I'll add on either the leg workout created by DH or some arms/back. I have been doing more straight arm hangs from our pullup bar. Grip strength is a predictor of mortality and morbidity as we age, so maintaining it seems important. I am still pulling up arms/back workouts from Heather Robertson and Sydney Cummings Houdyshell about once a week. 

With my husband's job came a free gym membership to a gym even closer than the one I have access to for work. I mostly ignored this until I sprained my ankle and then really, really missed the mental relief from running. About twice a week I go to the gym, crank the treadmill up to 13% incline and then walk at 3.0 mph for the better part of 30 minutes. The last little bit I drop it back to 2.5% incline and then run at 5-6 mph for increasing amounts of time to finish out the 30 minutes as the ankle tolerates it. I gotta admit, heading into the ACed gym when it is 95 degrees outside and then trudging uphill while watching NatGeo is pretty appealing. Getting started running outside again as Florida hits the usual summer heatwave a bit early, not at all appealing. So I'm grateful for the gym even if it does feel a bit like cheating. 

Umbra gets gabapentin once a month so I can cut her nails. Dolce always takes advantage of her drugged sister and gets some extra cuddles in. 

The part that is DEFINITELY missing from this routine is HIIT. Even though swimming is extoled as a beautiful workout for injuries, you know what you need to be able to swim well? Good ankle ROM and strength. And you know what you need to do HIIT with running? That dorsoflexion move where my ankle is still the weakest and angriest. Rgh. I tried rowing at the gym pretty early on in this and honestly didn't find it that great of a workout even with the resistance all the way turned up. Which is confusing since rowing is talked about as such a great, full body conditioning exercise. I'm probably to the point where I could get on the stair climber and do 45 second bursts of pretty rapid stair climbing that would meet the HIIT criteria. I also could try an assault bike in short bursts. So that's on the agenda next.

The reason I started these posts and something I haven't done a great job addressing in the past few years is how this is working out for my riding. It's interesting, Butterball is not a horse you need a lot of muscle to ride. Goggles was a "man's horse" through and through in spite of his careful and correct start in off the track work. He definitely required finesse as well, but he could be a bully and was a very large and very strong horse. So one minute I'd have to be half halting with my entire body weight and then the next minute I'd have to be light as a feather again in his mouth, a pound of contact in each rein. It was tricky to say the least, but I often felt just small and at his mercy on top of him. 

Just along for the ride here

Size appropriate friend

                              

Channeling that power for good was tricky

Again, size appropriate

                             

Butterball is more size appropriate and a more sensitive dude in general than Goggles. But since he is the smallest horse I've ridden consistently, I have had to be ultra careful about doing weird things with my own weight. He's also very, very sensitive so any little shift means something to him, whether that's good or bad. And he's quite athletic and does require core strength to stay with him. It is immediately obvious when I've influenced his balance in the wrong way. My own asymmetry is also immediately reflected in him. Which means I need an even and stable core potentially even more than I did with Goggles. I certainly need less of the upper back/traps and even leg strength than I needed with Goggles though. 

Ben fit into this in an interesting kind of way. He had a long history of being ridden by amatuers, myself included, so had some... semi-helpful dullness. He was very, very sensitive and one of my favorite horses to flat by a long shot, but he would... cover up mistakes? It was like he knew the game well enough he wouldn't do weird things that reflected the weird things I was doing. He also had eight inches on Butterball so was a bit less sensitive to every weight shift just became of that. And his jump was a lot of fun to ride, but not nearly as round as Butterball's, making it easier to stay with. 

Okay, maybe it's not strange this is hard to stay with #doingthemost

Side note, typing about Ben and looking at pictures makes me miss him a lot. He's doing great in Cali and is living a life of luxury there with minimal travel, which is something his owner and I decided contributed a lot to his general stress/anxiety/ulcers. But I still miss seeing his always chipper face over the fence every day when I pull in to the barn. 

Butterball is sorta-kinda following the weekly reservations post that I made in January. We do take a jump lesson pretty much weekly. I don't lunge him in the equiband, but he is doing a hack walk in it every few weeks. Lunging him... didn't turn out to be great. The way he wants to get flat and then feel like he can't possibly use his hind end under saddle? Yeah, that's exacerbated on the lunge and it just didn't seem productive. So if I don't have time to ride then we don't do anything. And since he's fine to hop on bareback and tool around, we do that on the days I'm short on time and it is just as fast as lunging. We're also only doing trot and canter sets about once a month... the ground is harder up where I am and I've gotten a bit more protective of his feet since our January-February experience when he was barefoot. Which means that unless I have time to haul out somewhere with softer footing, he doesn't do trot/canter sets each week. And honestly, I've become a bit less competition focused/driven. I'm not sure when/if we're going to move up to training level, but I'm not bothered by that. I want to have a happy, sound horse who enjoys what we're doing as much as I do. 

Getting it right off the horse: 2024 Update

For reference: 2022 and 2023 posts detailing my fitness routine with small updates for the horse as well. 

The same pesky whiteboard of shame still exists to log the weekly workouts: 

 

But there are a few modifications to what is on it. For starters, I am less and less able to call myself a runner these days... my "long" run is down to four miles and my pace is slower. But I haven't noticed a decline in my overall fitness level. Even back in the fall when Ben and I were still galloping training level courses, it didn't seem to matter that I'm running at 9-9:30 pace most of the time vs. 8:30 pace. 

The new addition this year is weight training. I asked a friend what her routine is since she always is so strong and steady in her position, no matter what her horse is doing underneath of her. She recommended a few different youtube channels: Heather Robertson and Sydney Cummings. I think she does these three or four times a week (I've purged that information from my head) but I do them once a week. There are a few favorites that always light up my entire body, but sometimes I'll also let whatever the most recent suggested video is just roll. Sydney does much more cheerleading during the routine while Heather lets music play silently. Pick your poison. 

While Goggles is still sometimes exhausting to ride, I think the dedicated 30 minute strength training sessions each week have definitely helped. I still do a few of the workouts from the Ultimate Exercise Routines for Riders, but I've outgrown most of the exercises in there. I was able to modify a few (ie clamshells with a band vs. without), but often they don't give me the same satisfying burn that weights workouts do these days. I do need to circle back to the stretching routines because that is certainly an area of weakness. 

Also with Goggles specifically in mind, I do deep neck flexor strengthening once or twice a week. His propensity to do those giant spine wrenching trips that feel like an entire car crash worth of whiplash motivated me. He's doing those much less these days and my neck is stronger, so it's been quite a few months since I've woken up unable to turn my head ::furiously knock on wood::. 

As far as the horses go, both of them benefit from raised cavaletti, so I've been doing that multiple times a week with Ben and once a week with Goggles. Ben is limited to what he can/should do at the moment, so he's got more low impact ways of strengthening. I've also been doing acupuncture on Ben once a week to try to help with ulcers and now with foot pain. It certainly can't hurt and he seems to like it quite a bit. They also both do at least a minute of belly raises every time I see them. I do 6-10 seconds and then reward with a treat.