Friday Video from SmartPak: Get Fit for Riding, Part One

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve never been a natural gym-goer. For years, this wasn’t much of an issue – or so I thought. To my mind, working full-time with horses, doing hours of physical labour and riding three to eight horses per day was more than enough. And it was, kind of – but it took changing careers and having to come to terms with my loss of fitness to understand that by neglecting to give my body regular help in the form of workouts, I was actually only contributing to wonkiness and uneven strength through my body.

Now, I’ve decided to try to find the fun in fitness, by going for a run to Starbucks before my first Zoom meeting of the day, scheduling in some yoga me-time a few times a week, and picking things up and putting them down again now that the gym has reopened. But I’m not yet ready to say goodbye to the in-house personal trainers I used while in full lockdown and forced to attempt to fit a set of burpees in on my living room floor. While YouTube has been a great resource for general workout routines, this super new series from SmartPak is my recommendation of the week if you want to follow along with a great fitness plan that’s designed for equestrians of every age, shape, and fitness level. Just get it up on the big screen, grab your water bottle, and get sweating. Like me, you might just find that in a couple of weeks times, you’re seeing some serious gains in your riding.

Go Eventing!