Tuesday, February 23, 2016

RTR Blog Hop: Training Exercise of Death

Racing to Ride wants to know: What's your least favorite exercise?

Sigh.

This is an easy one.

Warming up.

I fucking HATE warming up.

Tristan needs a long warmup, at least 20 minutes. He's old. He's lazy. He's creaky. He's usually pretty pissed off to be under saddle.

this picture was taken 9 years ago. it still applies.

The first 10 minutes of any ride, ever, no matter what, are really frustrating. He balks, he flips his head, he crawls along like a slug, he flings his shoulders everywhere, he slams me into walls and trees, he tries to turn back toward the gate or the barn, he sighs heavily and dramatically.

At 15 minutes, I see glimmers of hope, a little bit of softness, a little bit of responsiveness to my leg.

At 20 minutes, I have a normal horse, if lazy and not always thrilled.

Please understand that he has been this way since I first swung a leg over him. He's not in an undue amount of pain. He's certainly not being tortured. He's getting a basic amount of exercise that, once he gets into it, he really enjoys. Once he is warmed up, he can really be a ton of fun, and as the work improves and he gets better, he gets a certain swagger of confidence and pride. Trust me on this.

But for whatever reason, Tristan's outlook on life has always required spending the first 10 minutes of every ride telling me I can go to hell.

I admit, it really tests my motivation some days. Ok, lots of days. I often put on music and set my emotions aside and just KICK. And then we get to the other side and it's fine. But I do have to pause for a moment and grit my teeth before I swing a leg over.

8 comments:

  1. Fiction is the same way. Usually 20 minutes of warmup. 10 minutes if I'm lucky. So frustrating. And then he usually decides he is done working 45 minutes in.

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  2. Haha. Well. I don't have that problem, but I'm stuck in this cycle of lunging 20+ minutes before every ride. Kind of hate it. Want to stop.

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  3. The older gentlemen seem to be the most opinionated ;) probably because they know all

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  4. That is a long warmup time! He's like a diesel truck ;)

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  5. Thanks for joining in! I can completely relate to the rough warm ups. At least he works through it, so it's worth all of the initial headache.

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  6. Warming up is my least favorite! I love that picture of Tristan giving the camera some SERIOUS side-eye.

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  7. Sometimes I really have to force myself to ride through the warm up and not just get off in despair that my horse is a useless crippled llama. There is light on the other side! Warm up is definitely the worst!

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  8. ha he sounds exactly like a pony i just rode...

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Thanks for commenting! It's great to hear from you.