The Horse World and the Overweight Rider
As I start to pivot my business into more equine and human topics this is a topic that hits very close to home. A riders weight and their horse. I've had a challenging year this past year. I am a full time student studying manual osteopathic therapy, and I work full time as an educational assistant and tutor for grades K-12. How does that work with also being an equine body worker? It doesn't. Its a lot of long days and sacrifices that I'm not exactly 100% sure I wanted to make. Needless to say I have 3 factors that really limit my ability to keep my weight in check; First I have a sedentary job with tutoring and studying. Two, this is high stress I'm middle age doing things I should have done in my early twenties not late thirties and I have banked my entire life on it. Three, like all horse people I have had my fair share of incredibly nasty falls leading me to believe a couple years ago that I would most likely be paralyzed by my mid forties given that fact that my hips would seize regularly and my legs would on occasion go numb.
These trials have brought out a bigger passion in me then the absolute drive to ride. Since I was young and could say the word horse I knew that riding is all I wanted to do. I wanted to ride and train horses. I rode so hard , and took at one point 3-4 lessons a week on varying horses. I did everything from barrels to jumping to hunters, three day eventing and even tried my hand at vaulting. I went to Germany to train classical dressage over a summer and came back flying high. I felt good, I was fit and in shape and felt amazing. Fast forward to today I have one kid, a sedentary job and I'm falling into the obese category. The funny thing is is every day I still have the drive and need to ride! I need horses in my life, it is my calling, and learning manual therapy for people and being able to help them be more comfortable to ride is now also my calling. I know what it is like to love something but have it cause you physical pain. Most days now, since finding a very good manual osteopathic therapist I am pain free which has given me the energy to start to exercise and really think about riding more.
Now here is the big conundrum that is in my life right now. The safe weight range for horses varies, hear me out. There are some horses that have such weak toplines and back muscles at my weight I would absolutely hurt them. There are some horses that have crazy weakness in their thoracic slings that I couldn't imagine them having to lift me up as well as their thoracic sling. Me riding these horses would be a disservice to them at my current weight AND fitness. I cannot stay balanced for long periods of time as I don't have the stabilizing muscles I used to, so my ability to ride an unbalanced horse and teach it balance has to happen over many riding times. Basically double the time it used to take to account for extra weight and rider incapability (yes I'm talking about myself). So what options do I have? not many, I have to thoroughly assess a horse before I decide to ride it and how often I decide to ride it.
In my youth horses were my main point of exercise, I do like yoga and I am still a bit unsure of the gym albeit I have been showing up at the gym more often this year. My body is not the same body it once was and truly learning it has been frustrating because it is not at all what I want, or ever thought it would be. I'm mad at myself and frustrated with myself and my ability to ride. I used to believe a fat riding instructor was the worst type of instructor and I find I am what I loathed in my youth. Now I only wish I was kinder to the riding instructors that were larger. God only knows what kind of life they lived.
Over the next couple of months I would like to talk about my transformation into being the horse woman I want to be. I will discuss things I have done and really document this transition. To me the ultimate goal isn't losing weight, it is getting stronger and more balanced, to truly ride the way I used too and hopefully better. It's about looking back and instead of seeing defeat, seeing success and effort. I am hoping to post blogs complete with little videos to explain and help people that may be in similar situations. I will also describe what I am doing during the week so my weekend warrior riding is more productive.
Hopefully this helps the out of shape over weight riders reclaim their passion with confidence and hope.
-Kathy
