Author: Amanda C

Some of you may have noticed that over the past year or so, I have shrunk a little bit. Last year when I sent Presto off for professional training, it really and truly hit me that this horse was going to demand a lot more of me physically, and that if I didn’t get serious about my fitness, I was going to struggle to ride him.

At that point I was at what was probably my highest weight, or close to it, and while I wasn’t as concerned about that part (weight is just a number – I don’t even own a scale), what did concern me is that I was also certainly not at anywhere near my fittest point either. I used to do triathlons and bike racing (back when I had one horse and had time for other very time/resource/energy consuming hobbies) and I knew for a fact, if I was being honest with myself, that I was a stronger fitter rider then. But ya know, I’m also a bit of a recluse and absolutely ABHOR working out in a gym, so I just got myself an amazon spin bike and went to work.

While that worked great to help peel some of the excess weight off, what I was missing was the strength aspect. Especially a strength program geared specifically towards me and my body and my own personal struggles. I found some stuff on the internet (Google is a double edged sword) to try to make up that part of things, which is, uh, how I ended up tweaking the shit out of my back and landing myself in an Airrosti physical therapy program. Whoops.

All of this is to say that, having done it perhaps not the best way, there are things I would change if I could go back and start that journey all over again. One big thing in particular: I would get a coach to help guide me through a personalized program. I am the queen of winging it, but sometimes that just ain’t the way. I will say, back when I started all this, I did look at a few different coaches and online programs, but none of them really grabbed me. First and foremost because if I was going to be coached by someone, I wanted it to be someone who rides and really understands the specific issues/challenges we face. But I knew that I didn’t want to buy one of the self-guided programs, because part of my problem has always been form and I wanted a coach, not a cookie-cutter program. The only other coach I knew then was a big online one that I found to be extremely intimidating and just… didn’t feel like I would mesh with. I wanted someone that was approachable, relatable, and real.

Enter: Laura Crump Anderson of Hidden Heights Fitness. Man on man do I wish I had known about her back then, I feel like my whole journey would have been so much better-executed and I probably would have seen results a lot faster (and, uh, perhaps not murdered my back in the process). If you’re not familiar with Laura, she’s written a book of exercises specifically geared towards riders, she’s got a blog series with Eventing Nation, and she’s actually a rider herself. And not one of those stiff, serious, extremely intense, perfectly coiffed and outfitted uber-thin blonde ladies that seem to instantly make me uncomfortable (no offense to them of course, it’s just not my vibe). She’s approachable, friendly, very knowledgeable, low-key, and easy to talk to. In all the sports I’ve done and various fitness coaches I’ve worked with, I’ve found those to be some of the hardest qualities to find. Laura has worked with some top riders too, including Stephen Bradley and Jan Byyny.

She does her sessions and consultations via Zoom, which is obviously super convenient, and has a pretty flexible schedule so that you can fit something in around the rest of your life responsibilities. She also allows you to book by individual sessions, which I REALLY LIKE, because you’re not required to pony up some kind of ridiculous amount of money up front or worry about losing out if something comes up in your life and you have to take a week or two away. It’s nice to have the option of just booking one or two session to try things out before committing to dropping a lot of money. Her prices for one on one personal training are really reasonable too, with individual sessions starting at $75 and package pricing getting that price down to as low as $55/per.

For those of you who aren’t following her yet on facebook, she launched a new video series last week called “Strong in the Saddle”, which spotlights an exercise each week that she finds to be particularly helpful for riders. I’ve been enjoying following along and doing the exercises she suggests, and in this week’s video she also announced a really exciting giveaway for a free one on one Zoom session with her! All you have to do to enter is comment on her latest Strong in the Saddle video, plus you can get an additional entry by sharing the post as well.

I can’t say enough good things about Laura, so if you’ve been thinking about trying to improve your riding fitness, I can’t recommend her enough!

First and foremost, the question I get asked at least a few times a week: yes, we’ll be reopening for more custom pedigree reports in September. Email subscribers, keep an eye on your inbox over the next few days and we’ll let you know exactly when the listing will go live! I remain absolutely delighted at the response to these and really appreciate those of you who have left reviews – all of them 5 stars to boot. It takes us 4-6 hours on average to complete these (and I have now found myself on WhatsApp calls to both Hungary and Ireland tracking down information, in case you ever doubt our dedication!) so we’re very grateful for the support and the feedback from y’all.

I’m also working on getting the spreadsheet done for Burghley, which really snuck up on me here. It’s my favorite 5* so I’m excited, even if it’s being a bit overshadowed by the upcoming WEG. The Burghley data will be available for purchase on our webstore as well if you want all the details or want to follow along at home.

The big announcement this week is that I’ve finally rolled out the Sporthorse Breeding Consultations, a service that has been highly requested. It took me a while to get my PowerPoint just the way I wanted it, and to create all my supporting PDF documents, but I finally finished everything. All the info and details are in the listing if anyone is interested in that.

That’s all the news, now it’s time for the “pondering” part of the post.

I remain highly frustrated by a lot of the live stream commentary for US events. It’s… not good. We’re missing so many opportunities to mention US breeders (there were two horses from the same US breeder in the 4* at GMI but not a peep was said), information being given about horses is wrong a lot of the time (like… really wrong), and it all just seems very disorganized and not particularly educational. For comparisons sake, go watch some of the past live streams of events like Millstreet in Ireland. THAT is what we should all be aiming for. It’s so well done – a riding lesson and a breeding lecture all in one go, and they’ve got all their stats and pronunciations down pat.

What frustrates me the most is that I can help with this. It’s one of the BRC services – providing breeding data and facts to live streams and events. What I’m struggling with is 1) getting it to the right people 2) getting some commentators (a couple popular ones in particular) to use it. Or even look at it.

Live streams are just so incredibly expensive to put on (like, can be mid-5 figures) it baffles me that very little effort seems to go into a majority of the commentary. Hire people that genuinely want to do a good job with your event (I know a few!), not people that want to get on air and talk about themselves and/or talk over their co-commentators the entire time. And if you’re hired as a commentator, show up prepared. Know how to pronounce things so you don’t spend 2 minutes arguing over a name on the live stream. Have talking points. Try your best to be accurate with what you’re saying. Live streams are such a massive opportunity to educate the masses and get people excited about what they’re seeing, and I can’t help but feel frustrated every time the commentary is subpar. We can do better!

The only way I can think of to really help prioritize this with organizers is to give them feedback. Like… any of us who have something relevant to say about it (positive or negative), or suggestions, or requests, I think we should be giving it. Every time. So many of the people I talk to agree with me in thinking that a lot of commentary really leaves plenty to be desired, but I don’t think any of that ever reaches the organizer’s ears. The audience for these live streams is so huge though, I can’t help but feel like we’re really missing the boat here as a sport. I’d love to find a way to change that.

Okay, I’m willing to concede that when people say summer is monsoon season in Florida, they are not joking. In the past week we’ve gotten about 10″ of rain. The evening deluges are impressive… it just pours like hell for hours, with rivers of water running across the top of the ground.

These storms have a lot of lightning too, so my horses have been spending their evenings and overnight in their stalls. Which has made them a bit more… fresh… than usual. Gemma’s sass level has been dialed up, and Presto seems to be stuck in SupremeDingDong mode. He’s been alright to ride (I say that before we head off for our jump lesson this morning… hopefully I don’t get murdered), but sometimes he’ll just start galloping circles in his turnout, screaming his fool head off for absolutely no reason. Just funsies. And every morning when I go get them from the barn to turn them out, he plays shark attack with the halter, and it turns into a battle of wills to get the halter out of his mouth and onto his head. He’s a fast mofo with that mouth, man.

Even the field, which had yet to be too wet to ride in even a single time since we got here in early May, has leaped right over “squishy” and into “there is literally a lake in the middle”. Thank goodness for the arena or I wouldn’t have anywhere dry enough to ride. And I have to say, compared to a lot of farms around here this place does drain pretty well, and all the vital infrastructure is on higher ground, so thank goodness we’re not having problems that others around here are having, with flooded barns and water up to the top board of their pasture fence in places. There’s standing water in a few spots, mostly down by the pond, but we aren’t flooded and the turnout footing is still fine since it’s so sandy, so considering how much rain we’ve had it’s not bad. If the rain could pump the brakes for a few days that would be great, but according to the forecast it’s just going to rain every day forever. I’d been thinking about getting a kayak, maybe I should…

In other news, the SO decided that since he moved to a super horsey area, he should learn how to ride a little bit. He’s ridden Henry 4 times now, and this past time was his first time trotting. It’s always very satisfying to me how people think riding can’t be that hard and then they do it and they’re like Jesus Christ. He’s a cyclist so he’s at least starting from a good place athletically, but it sure is a lot different from riding a bike.

To all of Henry’s eternal credit, he’s been an absolute fucking trooper for this. He’s kind but he is not what I would call a total beginner lesson horse type by any means, so his patience and tolerance for this is earning him yet another golden crown (how many is he up to now, like 300?). Don’t get me wrong, Henry absolutely 100% takes advantage of the SO… yanking his head down to graze whenever he feels like it, pretending he doesn’t know how to walk faster than a crawl, whipping him in the eye with his tail the entire time he’s being groomed, etc. We wouldn’t expect any less of Henry would we? But the fact that he will tolerate a floppy bouncy beginner all over his back is pretty damn stellar. Just when you thought the best horse on the planet couldn’t get any better.

SO already decided that he needs some proper riding clothes because riding in jeans sucks (you are correct sir), so we went around to some tack shops last week to let him try on breeches. It will surprise precisely NONE OF YOU that he didn’t like any of the ones in the sub-$150 range, and indeed the only ones he liked out of the 10 pairs he tried on were the $300 Ego7’s. To be fair, they really did fit him the best. So now we’re on the hunt for a good deal on some of those (they have to be black, naturally, which the store didn’t have in his size). Next we’ll get him a proper riding helmet, but he was so irritated with trying on breeches that he Could Not Even with the helmets. Now he knows how we all feel when trying riding clothes…

Ok this time I am actually aware that it’s Saturday. I tried to post this yesterday and WordPress barfed all over itself and deleted the post, and I didn’t have time then to redo it, so here we are. Just do me a favor and pretend it’s Friday.

I’m not the only one on the strugglebus, because Baby Quinlee also had a bit of an oops this week. Y’all don’t even know how hard it is to be a baby horse. One minute you’re yeehawing around the pasture, as one does.

And then the next minute… uh oh. Oh no. Too much hay. Too fast. Too many legs.

Next thing you know you’re riding the Lawn Dart Express down to get a Dirt Sandwich.

The real question is, though… did she learn her lesson?

Of course not.

Happy weekend!

Guess what we did on Monday?

I mentioned last week that I wanted to take Henry out for a little XC action, just for funsies. It makes him happy, it makes me happy… why not. That’s the beauty of living here in Ocala where I can drive 10 minutes to any number of places for a quick pop-around, and it’s not an all day thing or a big expense or a big deal. Still blows my mind. I schooled two horses and was home by 10. Badabingbadaboom. Have I maybe mentioned a time or two that I love Ocala? No? I do.

I figured if I was taking Henry I may as well take one of the kiddos too, and since Presto had had a jump lesson the day before, he’d earned the day off and Gemma was the winner. I opted to take them to Majestic Oaks mostly because they’d just had a show there and I wanted to ride the whole Starter course on Gemma to see what she thought. She’s been the Majestic to school once already with Hillary, so I figured it would be a relatively easy outing for her and a nice repeat.

Since it was getting hot fast, I started with Henry. I soon as we walked out to the XC he was in absolute Game On mode and warmup up like he thought he was at the Olympics. It really isn’t hard to make this horse happy… food and XC. Done. I didn’t do a whole lot with him, just warmed him up and popped him around a handful of the Training level jumps. Ok well perhaps I did encourage him a bit because I went to the startbox and gave him a countdown and let him come out of there and gallop over the first few before we went and did some combos. I love both of the babies but it sure is fun to get back on my long-time friend and just go enjoy ourselves. Henry was very pleased with all of his efforts, as I’m sure you can imagine. I was on him for all of 25-30 minutes but that was all he needed for an ego boost, and all I needed to put a smile on my face. He’s still the king.

After that we went back to the trailer and I switched over to Gemma. She was a little bit ants-in-the-pants, as she tends to be a lot of the time anyway, but overall pretty calm. She’s not upset or frantic, she just needs to move her feet sometimes. Not a big deal. At that point we were also quite literally the only trailer there, so we had the place to ourselves.

We did a quick warmup, mostly making sure she was listening and relaxed, and then I started trotting some little logs. She always, without fail, jumps the first handful of fences like they’re 4′ high. I’ve just come to expect it by this point. So we trotted and cantered some little stuff until she was being less dramatic, made sure we were adjustable and straight, then I took her over to the startbox. My goal was to just ride her around the whole Starter course, a chunk at a time.

By the time we got like 3 jumps in she was already bored and just loping over everything, but that’s exactly what I wanted. I know she’s brave, I know she’s careful, but I need her to also be relaxed and confident and rideable and using her body correctly. I have no doubt that I could point her at bigger things and she’d jump them no question, but I care more about the how right now than the what. If we take the time in the beginning to establish the how, the what will be a lot easier later.

Gemma really is a fun little horse to ride, she’s quick and catty and athletic, and super adjustable. A different type than my other two for sure, but she’s so game and tries so hard, it’s really adorable.

She was definitely more unsure of herself when she got farther away and was by herself, so that’s good information to have for whenever it comes time to actually horse show. Really the only “bad” thing Gemma did the whole time though was spook at a flock of birds that were directly beside a log and decided that the perfect time for all 9000 of them to fly away was when she was like 3 strides out. She teleported sideways at that, and I don’t really blame her.

Honestly though, not a bad way to spend a Monday morning.