If going to the gym has taught me one thing, it is that no matter how tired and unmotivated you are… you must do it!

As the weather gets colder and the days shorter, it is easier and easier to skip going out to the barn.
“I have so much shopping to do before everyone comes over!”
“This isn’t the show season, so I can get away with riding 4x a week.”
“It is too cold, we won’t get anything done in 35 degree weather.”
“It is too dark to find my horse in the pasture.”
“I am tired from work, my horse can have just another day off without killing him.”
and the list goes on…

Think of how much you lose every time you skip a ride. After a while, it really adds up!
Before you know it, spring will get here and you will be less prepared for the dressage tests you rode so nicely at the end of last fall!

I have put off going to the gym for a long time, because I was to busy/tired/intimidated. On my first day, the exercise class played a song with the lyrics “It’s all your fault”. The teacher kept telling us “It’s all your fault!” and added, that we wouldn’t be tired if we had started doing this last year… It’s all your fault!… you wouldn’t have to work so hard if you hadn’t had a muffin for breakfast… It’s all your fault!

What I learned from that “lecture” was that fitness and riding have a lot in common – you get out what you put in.

So next spring, when you have been working your horse(s) at your chosen, winter pace. Just think of that song.

Whether you nail that change you didn’t have this fall or you can barely sit the trot you had mastered this past spring… It’s All Your Fault!