SNAFU...

Sometimes things get a bit bassackwards around here...

I have control issues.  Lots of 'em.  If you've read this blog on a regular basis, or even once or twice, you're probably sitting in your chair thinking, "Uh, DUH, Amy. No earthshaking revelation there!" 

Anyway...years of therapy, scads of self help books and hours of introspection later and I can occasionally surrender my need for control and attempt to roll with the punches of life.  As my father has said on more than one occasion, "The boat of life has a tendency to go tits up.  Better be ready to grab a life preserver and start swimming." Frank is a font of pithy idiomatic statements like that.  I shoulda saved all that money I spent on therapy and those silly books and just listened to Frank.

Anyway, on to today's topic....Nothing serious, just by this point in the year I'd hoped to be confirmed at 3'3" and winding down my show season with a few 1.0m classes.  I'd also hoped to have improved my riding by improving my general fitness level.  Instead, as a result of (thankfully minor) injuries sustained during a fall, work insanity, family commitments and other unforeseen incidents such as Dad's recent minor heart attack, I'm stuck at 3', saddle time has been limited at best and restricted to flatwork. Workout time hasn't fared much better.

Given what other people face in their lives, this is NOTHING.  I get that. About 5 minutes into my ridiculous pity-party I put a quick halt to the festivities with a very stern self-administered Come to Jesus session. Really, Amy?? You have a healthy family, a roof over your head, a job, and you're complaining about WHAT, exactly???  Really??  Silly cow, get over yourself. 

The thing is, the riding is what helps me deal with the fact that the rest of life is so out of my control.  So when the riding thing gets wonky, I get a little goofy.  Hence the self-talk, where I breathe in and out and tell myself, "Life can't be controlled.  The only thing that CAN be controlled is how I react to what happens."  You can make a plan to get to where you want to be, work the  plan as best as possible and, when things don't go according to plan, you need to be able to pull your big girl pants on, deal with the disappointment, and come up with Plan B.  Or, as my Dad says, grab one's life preserver and get swimming.

One sees that in horses as well as life.  How many times has your trainer given you a plan, and you enter the ring with every intention of riding that plan, but for whatever reason things go cattywumpus. You can either react positively and readjust to riding plan B, or you can go to Control Freak Default Setting and micromanage and nitpick the situation until either the horse stops in confusion or something worse happens.   Do you "just ride, dammit" or do you panic and go fetal because your need to control the situation has been surpassed by your ability to control it.  Again, you can't control the situation, only how you react to it.  (Can you tell I'm hoping that the more I write that, the better I'll get at it?)

So what do you do when your life has, for the moment, gone a bit sideways and your #1 stress reliever is no longer as much of an option?  What's your Plan B? (Hint: Imbibing copious amounts of your favorite adult beverage and freebasing Oreos may NOT be an advisable option. Just saying...)

What's wrong with this picture?

For me, at the moment Plan B looks like doing what I can for Dad and what I need to do for work (after all, the job is what pays for Princess Sugar Britches' Jimmy Choos). It looks like accepting that the horse thing will have to happen in a different way than I am used to for a while. When I can get to the barn, we'll work on our flatwork, which is always a good thing. When I'm unable to get out there, I'll need to rely on my trainer and friends to keep her in work.  In the meantime, I can use my new subscription to Equestriancoach.com to fill in some of the gaps in my learning.

As for the fitness thing?  Certainly Dad's recent heart attack demonstrates the importance of diet and exercise in overall health.  So what if I'll be doing more walking and yoga than running and weightlifting, and it'll take longer to reach the fitness goal I had for my riding.  I keep telling myself, it's all about the journey, right??

My Nana had a saying she'd trot out anytime life got crazy.  She'd say, "This, too, shall pass."  Back then I would ask, "When?? When will it pass?  How can I make it pass faster?"  Nowadays, my Inner Control Freak still wants to ask that, and to try to figure out 80 different ways to make it pass more quickly.  However, now I've gotten a little better at telling that Inner Control Freak to hush for a moment. Now I can sometimes tell it to just let me sit with the situation, figure out what I'm supposed to be learning from it, and then grab my life preserver and figure out where to swim to.

What can I say?  I'm a work in progress.  It's slow going, but it's progress none the less.

My Name is Amy, and I Am An Addict...

Whoopie Pies. YUMMY!!!
(I Make a REALLY Fabulous Version.)

Or maybe I'm an Obsessive?  I'm not sure.   After a bit of researching on the Internet, I learned that addiction is a chemical dependency on something, while obsession is an intense mental preoccupation or fixation.

Okay, so the cheese, wine, Whoopie Pies, and Oreos thing is an addiction, and the horse thing is an obsession.  Glad we cleared that up.  (What can I say, I'm an American.  As such, I have a compulsive need to label things.) 

So... I have a brand new obsession.! Yippee!!  (Cue call to therapist! We've got a visible manic high!) For my anniversary present I asked for a year's subscription to Bernie Traurig's Equestriancoach.com.  Don't know why I've never subscribed before.  When I counted how many equine related DVDs I've purchased over the past couple of years, I could have gotten a five year subscription.  The site is the brainchild of Bernie Traurig and is a compilation of videos from the best trainers in different equestrian disciplines.  So no matter where you are in your riding or geographically, or what your budget is, you have access to the best equine knowledge on the planet.  Count me in!!

I've been watching videos after the kids go to school and before work.  Also before bed.  Sometimes at lunch.  If I had one of those doohickeys that plugs your laptop into your TV, I'd watch while I was on my treadmill, which is what I do with my DVDs. (PSA - Do NOT attempt to count strides while watching show jumping and running on treadmill! Can result in one going a$$ backwards off the back of the treadmill.)

Yup, I'd say we've got an official obsession here. My husband calls it my "horse porn."  He made that comment in the grocery store, and we got a LOT of funny looks.  Lovely. It's not as if I didn't already have a rep in this town.  Show up in public in my town sporting breeches, boots, and spurs, and you'll get asked what "industry" you work in.  Seriously, people talk.

Today I headed off to the barn determined to work a plan from the Controls Of The Horse Part Two - Leg Aids video on my lazy mare. Well, maybe not lazy. She's apparently "electric" off my trainer's legs, decidedly less so off mine. 

We warmed up on the buckle for 10 minutes, and per Bernie's advice, I kept her marching.  If I didn't get a response from a light leg aid, I'd give her a tap.  If that didn't work, I'd "nudge her up" with my spur ( a very blunt Prince of Wales).  If that didn't work, and a couple of times it didn't, I'd do what Bernie called a "hook" with the spurs, which is a quick upward motion with the heel.

What the heck???

Well, Sug, you weren't listening. Hence the "hook."

I was too listening.  I just didn't think you really meant it!

We repeated light aid, tap, and nudge if necessary at the walk, trot, and canter, aiming for consistency, and lo and behold (cue sound of heraldic trumpets) I soon had a very forward going mare underneath me.  Also per Bernie's advice, I did my best not to nag her.  If her rhythm stayed consistent, I kept my leg steady.  If she slowed, I added a forward leg aid.

We paid particular attention to our downward transitions, making sure to absent the leg as much as possible, sink into the heels (as much as possible with my concrete ankles)  while using the direct rein aid.  The problem with Sug is she drops completely behind the leg during downward transitions, in an "Oh thank God, we're done" kind of way.  This meant I had to figure out the right amount of direct rein aid to apply and then when to apply the leg aid, and how much leg aid to apply.  Let's just say this took a few go-rounds to get to point where we both could live with the results.

Speak for yourself.  I could have lived with the results a LOT sooner.

After I'm done with this post I'm going to re-watch the video to go over canter transitions, flying changes, counter canter, and where, when and how to use the displacing leg to achieve them.  That'll be my next session. (Hopefully. Depends on where Sug's at that day.)

I've also been enjoying the Team Karazissis' videos on Bending Lines and Setting Up the Lead Changes on Equestriancoach.com.  Watched both of those 2x each -- love their teaching style!  They break things down and make it VERY SIMPLE, something my aging, overtaxed brain appreciates!  Am planning on using the lead changes exercise with my daughter's pony.

Clearly this is one obsession I'm not going to take steps to eradicate!

Confession Time: Fell Off The Wagon Already...

I TOTALLY Want To Find This In A T-Shirt!

And by that I am referring to the fitness wagon.  Or, rather, treadmill.  I suppose that's a more accurate metaphor.  I'm not sure.  I'm not thinking too well at the moment.  Sigh....

I have a good excuse.  Don't we always have good excuses?  Rationales?  Reasons?  I have a doozy.  See, my Dad had himself a mild heart attack on Thursday and I've been spending most of the last several days at the hospital.  He's doing well now, thankfully. Doctors found a 99% blockage in one artery, an 80% blockage in another, and 50% blockage in a third, and decided to perform an angioplasty to insert a balloon tipped catheter into an artery in his groin.  They snaked the catheter up through the veins to his cardiac artery, used the balloon tip to widen the clogged artery and then inserted a stent (kind of a mesh frame that looks like the spring in a pen) to act as scaffolding to keep the vein open for blood flow.

Pretty cool stuff, huh?  Way more than I ever wanted to know about this kind of thing, really.  Anywhoooo,  with all the excitement, there wasn't a lot of time for serious exercise. I did manage to hop on the treadmill for a bit each day, but there was no time for riding, weights, or anything else.  I'm pretty sure trips to and from the last possible parking spot and up and down the cardiac wing's stairs don't count.

Not only did I NOT exercise like I wanted to, I ate darn near everything in sight.  Including most of my daughter's birthday cake.  At one point I made a family member hide it.  Really.  I'm a compulsive stress eater.  Thank God there were no Oreos in the house.  Add a couple glasses of wine (liguid de-stresser!) a night to the all the crap I was eating, and let's just say I'm gonna be climbing out of a big hole!

And believe me, even though this fitness thing started as a way to gain strength to ride better, after seeing what my Dad went through, and what others in the cardiac wing were going through, it's become much more.  Maybe I'm having a knee jerk reaction, but seeing how much a poor diet, lack of exercise, and excess weight has compromised my father's health, I'm a little scared of my own bad habits.  We have similar demons that way, Dad and I.

The good news is I did get some exercise in.  The "other" news (I'd rather not look at it as bad news) is that, like my Dad,  I need to get a more organized fitness plan in place, and coping mechanisms other than food for when things get rough.

Am not 100% sure what those will be, but I'll be thinking about it while I'm doing my 5 minutes of two point, up-up-down posting, and posting without stirrups tomorrow.