Guest Blog post # 66: "Fit Bit-itis" by Bill Woods

Fit Bit-itis


I began this morning with a roll of the eyes, one which I shared with the instructor who passed this vignette along to me. Seems her student was watching her school a promising 2nd/3rd level horse and observed that she was giving him a lot of short walk breaks during their work. (An approach, by the way, heartily endorsed by Steffen Peters). The student pondered this way to train for a moment and said "Well, I would want more out of my lessons than taking all these breaks!"

We might be mildly understanding of her penurious nature if she were complaining about us giving OUR school horse a momentary rest, but her lessons are all about how best to train her own horse.

Before I drone on about lactic acid building up in the muscles or of keeping your horse mentally fresh and unstressed in his schooling sessions, here's one more indicator of this student's mindset.  At the end of a very successful 55 minute lesson where a major light bulb finally went on for her horse, her indignant comment: "Hey, I still have five minutes left in my lesson!"

My solution-- buy her a sweatshirt that says in bold block letters printed upside down to be read by the wearer: "Ride the horse, not the clock." But that might be too subtle.