What gets you going?

Another burning question...What motivates you to get going (and keep going) on your fitness goals?

I've tried here and there to get in better shape in the past few years, but have just never found the proper motivation/reward system. I'm not in bad shape, which is probably part of my lack of dedication to the issue, but I know I could be in better shape. I'm not over weight, but my strength and stamina are severely lacking. As is brought to my attention at every lesson I take with my horse. My trainer makes fun of me, big time. And I don't blame her one little bit. I'd make fun of me too, probably have made fun of people doing similar pathetic kicks in the past. I know I'm pathetic, I just don't have the strength in my legs to do much about it! And usually run out of breath trying.

Despite my weaknesses, Midori was still coming along in leaps and bounds. Her spins were getting more correct, we had a decently reliable flying lead change, her stops were getting better, we had switched to a bridle and were doing really well one handed. I was very pleased!

I was still considering getting a new horse though because Midori just wasn't where she needed to be so I could go play with the big kids this year. After some considering the situation and talking to my trainer about my options and Midori's potential, I decided that putting her in training for a month was my best option. She has potential and the trainer was confident that she could at least get her to a point that I could be competitive at the entry level, which is what I planned to do anyways. So off to training Midori went.

But that still left the issue of my being a weanie. I certainly didn't want to waste that money on training because I couldn't kick and I could definitely see Midori flipping me the hoof after her experiences with the trainer, who has about 10 inches and probably 60 pounds on me. Not to mention riding horses all day 6 days a week. So I decided to put myself "in training" as well. But I knew I needed to figure out some sort of reward/motivation and way of tracking my workouts so I could see what I was accomplishing.

This is what I came up with...

Gold stars. And ya know what? It's working! My goal is a minimum of 3 gold stars a week, totaling 12 for the month of February. So far I'm doing pretty darn good.

It is so satisfying and fun (in a totally pathetic, easily amused kinda way) to get done with my workout and go stick a star on the calendar. The calendar is in the kitchen so I see it often and it's a really good feeling to walk by and see lots of gold stars...

Yes, that is a Twilight calendar. Surprised? I didn't think so.

Anywho, at the end of the month if I stick to it and reach my goal I plan to reward myself with...something. I haven't quite decided what yet, but I'm leaning towards a mini shopping spree. I do love me some new clothes!

Besides the gold stars and looming shopping spree, the best reward that is surprising me at just two weeks in, is a visible improvement in the muscle tone of my legs. Definitely helps the motivation factor! And my stamina at my lessons. My trainer didn't even tease me at my last lesson! I even got my horse to grunt a time or two when I kicked her after she was naughty. Wohoo!

I think I'm liking this gold star thing! Hopefully I can stick with it for a while!

What gets you motivated? Do you post SI swimsuit models on the fridge and treadmill? Hang the bikini that you WILL get into this year where you see it all the time? Do you just have super duper self control and can stay motivated without little tricks?

Boot Camp, Shows and Mister

Midori and I have been working hard continuing with boot camp. Since the last post I have tried a few new things, one of them being switching bits to what I affectionately call my Miracle Bit. It's a gag bit and it's fabulous! Midori is almost soft in it! I'm not playing tug-o-war with her any more! She is way better and any time she thinks about hanging on the bit I can just bump her right off of it, though it does bother me wondering what made her so hard in the first place. I've always thought I had pretty soft/light hands. Regardless, it makes the lead changes so much easier! And of course as soon as we got her head under control other issues that were hindering our progress popped right out, which made it easier to understand why we were having so much trouble. Amazing how that works! Now that I know about those issues, we have been working on them and things are really coming along. Our lead changes still aren't pretty but atleast left to right they are consistant. Right to left, they are still a challenge, but she'll atleast DO them and even in a mostly collected manner (for us anyways).


So our lead changes are getting better. Still have a loooooong ways to go, but we are getting them. YAY! Our spins are looking more like very slow motion spins instead of watching and going, WTF are you trying to do?!? lol Our stops come and go, but I'm not sure that she'll ever slide. Our rating and circles are decent, we don't work on those much. She's spent the last 5 years rating and running in circles in drill, so that's not a concern for us at this point.

It's very exciting to feel that progress is being made! Unfortunately due to illnesses and scheduling conflicts we have ended up with a couple week break in lessons and riding for the most part. The ponies have all been a bit under the weather for the last week or so, recovering from a day or two of major runs, and with 2-3 shows coming up this month, I wanted to make sure they got a break and were 100% all better before we worked them too hard. Midori especially dropped a bunch of weight in a matter of days, but never got dehydrated or ran a fever and didn't look anything more then unhappy about her circumstances. I got them on Fasttrack and electrolytes to help their guts and make sure they didn't get dehydrated, but other then that I couldn't find much else that I could do for them. Sugar and Mister seem to have gotten over it just fine, but Midori is still not 100%. She was the only one that was ridden hard as she was getting sick and I wonder how much that has to do with it. I'm hoping she gets back to 100% this week! We've got our next show this coming weekend and I need to get a couple rides on her before then! We should still be able to take it pretty easy though, it's just one reining pattern and I don't think a lack of warm up time will be what hurts us. lol

There are two of the winter series shows this month and then we skip December. There is also another show at the arena that has a schooling reining pattern that we are thinking about going to. Practice is always good! They also have a trail class, which I really like so I might have to do that one too. Also happening this coming weekend is the awards/year end banquet for our cutting club. I'm looking forward to finding out if I get a buckle for my second place finish in that series!

In other news, I've gotten a few rides on Mister. We started with a new shoer who is aggressively correcting his club foot. The previous shoer was simply maintaining it and Mister had been pretty much chronically lame with abscess after abscess for most of the past 6-8 months. He's been mostly sound with this new shoer. Very exciting! From so much time off and so many issues though his shoulder was extremely atrophied so we spent a lot of time ponying him around or hand walking and light lunging to build his muscle back up. Other then some soreness, he's been just fine and in the last month or so I decided he looked ready to carry my butt around a bit. I've gotten 3 rides on him, even getting up to loping both directions. He is still, of course, very green, but seems much more confident packing a person around then he did last time I was riding him. He has been such a good boy! Last time I was on him the arena was pretty busy so I didn't want to push him with loping. He took everything going on around him in stride and stayed focused on what I was asking him to do, but instead of loping I decided to work on moving off my legs: sidepassing and pivoting on his haunches and forehand. He's very sticky with moving his shoulders or hips, though he seems to understand moving off my legs while I'm riding. He'll try to shape away from my leg or move over the direction I ask while he's going forward. It was a completely new concept for him when standing still, but after he got those wheels turning, he seemed to pick it up pretty quickly, I was pleased. I'm hoping to get some more time on him soon, but he was sick too and does still have some issues with lameness, so I don't want to push him too hard.

We had a wonderful day outside yesterday enjoying the sunshine and possibly the last of the nice weather. I only had one long sleeve thermal shirt on with my puffy vest! The ponies enjoyed some attention and a little TLC. I'm sure they appreciated having clean butts and tails, even though the water was cold. :) We got another paddock up for the boyfriends sister's horse that we are boarding and that freed up the arena-to-be area and got us motivated to have more sand brought in so we can atleast get the round pen up with some good footing. It would be really nice to have that available for turn out this winter and so that we have some where to atleast get the ponies some exercise on nice days, even if it's not great for getting any real work done with them.

Lots of work to be done, as always. And of course not enough hours in the day, but we'll get there! Atleast there is progress being made on many different fronts!

Hope you all are enjoying fall!

Winter Series and Boot Camp

Well, we started the Winter Series this past weekend. We did the Winter Series last year which is where I won my buckle. I won the Beginner Reining class which meant that I also got kicked up to the next class this year which has a real reining pattern and requires flying lead changes. I'm not really ready for the next class, but oh well. I've started lessons and I'm determined to be competitive in it by the end of the series. We are making progress on our flying lead changes, but they are still rough and very inconsistent. We still do not spin. Midori's head is still up in the air, she is not soft or light right now. We have a LOT of work to do, but we are making progress. I just have to keep reminding myself of that since I am having a hard time not getting discouraged and frustrated.


The boyfriend and Sugar are coming along fabulously with their lessons. Sug was a futurity flunkie and came to us as a 3 year old fairly broke reiner, though slightly neurotic. Sug knew way more then we did and we have since done a fantastic job of totally screwing her up. It isn't taking much for Sug's training to come back to her though. She is already back to doing beautiful flying lead changes, trying to slide when she stops, even though she doesn't have sliders on right now, and loping very nice circles framed up. They are improving in leaps and bounds, while I'm still struggling with flying lead changes and playing tug-o-war with my horse while she goes mach 5 around the arena refusing to change leads. It's hard not to get frustrated. I want a broke horse. I haven't had a broke horse since I was 12 or so and was riding my mom's QH Jingles. I'm pretty sure she was broke, even by my standards today. Every horse that I've had since then I've had to train to do what I wanted. Usually I enjoy it, I think I'd get bored just hopping on a finished horse all the time, but sometimes it just gets frustrating having to be patient and appreciate the baby steps.


After a particularly gruelling and unproductive lead changing attempt last week I was seriously writing up a sale ad for my horse, wondering how much I could get out of her and if it would be enough to buy a more broke reiner. One that at least did flying lead changes. Yes, I do have quite the hang up on flying lead changes. I have struggled with them ever since I've had Midori, they have always been an issue for us and they are the only goal I have repeatedly failed to accomplish with her.


We had another lesson together on Friday (me/Midori and the boyfriend/Sug) and once again I sneered at the boyfriend and Sug the whole time. They are such showoffs! Since it was the night before the show Midori and I didn't even attempt flying lead changes. We didn't want to start that battle and blow our mojo for the show. We still managed to get in a pretty good brawl over sidepassing. Sidepassing!!! She has always been good at that, it's practically second nature to her. She was being pissy and ended up throwing a major tantrum, which I just had to laugh at. Really it was pretty darn comical. When she finally got over it, we went back to work and the rest of the lesson went just fine. She was still a little bent out of shape when I was untacking her though. Mares! lol


The reining was Saturday morning and all I wanted was to complete the pattern correctly and as respectably as I could. I knew I was going into it with 4 penalty points already since we were going to do simple lead changes, but I figured we could at least do the pattern clean. And we did. I had a moment of panic wondering if I did 4 spins or had stopped early at 3, but I had counted right. Yay! They weren't pretty at all, actually they felt absolutely horrific, but we did them. I felt pretty good about the rest of our pattern, it was a respectable pattern for where we are at. That was all I asked of the day so mission accomplished.


There were 8 people in our class and when they announced the placings, usually from 3rd up, they only announced 2nd and a tie for 1st. I was 2nd. The boyfriend tied for 1st. What the heck?!? I couldn't believe I had 2nd place! We ran over to look at the score sheet and found that out of 8 people in the class 5 had gone off pattern and gotten zero's. Oops! My score was not good, I got a 62 1/2, but I was only 1 point behind the first place tie. They both did flying lead changes, so considering I had 4 penalty points for that and was still only 1 point behind them I was very pleased with our pattern!


I made sure our pattern was video'd so that I can (in theory) look back on it down the road and see how much progress I've made. I've decided to post it here, for your viewing displeasure. Feel free to skip the first minute or so, in fact, I highly recommend it. Seriously, our "spins" are worse then watching paint dry. They are baaaaad. And try to ignore the jibberjabbering. I couldn't think of a good song to put over it.






Overall it was a fun day, Midori behaved herself and didn't get pissy. We did turn back for a little bit while the boyfriend was cutting in the afternoon. That was fun! I've never done turn back before and Midori seemed to be totally diggin it. We have our next lesson tonight and a month to the next show so plenty of time for some major schooling without blowing our mojo. I'm still planning to be doing simple lead changes at the shows for probably the rest of this year. Yes, that is how bad we are. I'm going to shoot for having consistent, solid lead changes by the first of the year for the rest of the shows. Wish us luck!

Hibernating Already

Well, as I've been trying to make my rounds and get caught up on the regular blogs that I read it sounds like the general consensus is that this time of year is just darn busy! I know I've been pretty busy lately, getting summer stuff wrapped up, getting going with boot camp, trying to take advantage of the nice weather while it lasts, soaking up as much sun as I possibly can while it's here. I know it won't last me thru the winter, but a girl can try, right?

I've got a long list of Summer Projects that I really wanted to get done this year, but just didn't happen. I'm trying to figure out how many I can squeeze into the next few weeks. It's not looking promising.

I still owe my friend a trail ride that I promised her for her birthday. In March.

We still don't have stalls. That's all I'm going to say about that.

My main issue, however, is that I'm already going into hibernation mode. I can't seem to help it. I got sucked back into the black hole of reading and it may be next spring before I come out of it. I guess I'm already preparing myself for another long winter. One thing that I really loved about last winter (quite possible the only thing) was how much reading I did. I loooove to read. I really haven't read much in a really long time, like years, but last fall I got sucked into Twilight and it was all down hill from there. I read a lot. I can't even remember how many books I plowed through, but I know it was quite a few. Probably atleast a dozen, and I read some of them twice. It was fabulous! I tried to keep my nose out of books this summer so I could ride my horse, do laundry, get some yard work done, maybe tackle a project or two around the house, you know...be a responsible adult. It's so hard to be productive when all I want to do is finish whatever book I'm in.

The weather was pretty nasty around here for a week or two: cold, gray, rainy...I think that was what got me thinking about hibernating. I couldn't help it. After a crazy hectic summer, I was perfectly happy to grab a book, a blanket and my fleece yoga pants and park my butt on the couch for a bit. The weather has cleared up again but I still seem to be in hibernation mode. I'm still perfectly happy reading, though I do feel a little guilty when the sun is out. Ok, a lot guilty. I've discovered that reading in the rocker on the porch or stretched out on a blanket in the backyard to soak up some sun while I'm reading does help with that guilt though. Still not getting anything done, but atleast I'm enjoying the nice weather while it's around.

I've stocked up my "to be read" shelf, it's good and ready for winter. Amazon makes it WAY too easy to order stuff, those butt heads. And then the free shipping with a qualifying $30 purchase = trouble! I love free shipping. And those bastards even send me emails with suggestions of books to buy based on what I've ordered in the past. The nerve! So many books to read, so many other things I should be doing instead!

I'm also really looking forward to reading Twilight yet again. I'm thinking if I start it around the beginning of November, I should be able to get through it just in time to go see New Moon. I'm excited for that movie! I'm trying not to be because I really don't want to be disappointed, but it's really hard because there seems to be a lot of hype surrounding it. I hate hype. I would really rather have low expectations going into a movie and come out totally enamored, then be let down from listening to all the hype. I may, just possibly, be planning to be a total Twitard and go see the midnight opening night show. Maybe. You didn't hear that from me.

In other news, boot camp is going well. I've been so busy with other things and since we still don't have an arena at our house (another epic fail for us this year) I haven't been getting a lot of saddle time on my own, but our lessons are going very well. We're making progress. Midori is getting more responsive and I'm getting better about not being such a control freak. I know, I know...me? Control freak?!? Who'da thunk it?! lol

We have one more cutting show for the summer series. I'm hoping it goes well! I would like to end on a good note. After that I'm really going to focus solely on our boot camp. The winter series starts the weekend after our last cutting show. I plan to do the reining portion again. The boyfriend is still deciding if he wants to do reining or cutting. Or both. Since I won the rookie reining class I was in last year I have to move up to the next class. It is still two handed, but requires flying lead changes. I'm not expecting anything out of the series this year as I've got some pretty stiff competition. The classes are $12 and it gives me an excuse to get on my horse and have something to work for all winter. I plan to use the series as a way to measure my boot camp progress. That is all. I certainly wouldn't mind winning, but that's not what it's about for me this year. I'll have to bookmark that statement and keep referring back to it after every show. ;o)

Other then that, I think the summer craziness seems to be winding down. I'm looking forward to fall and all it's glory and hoping the sun sticks around for a while. I'm excited for pumpkin flavored anything, hard carmelled apple cider and all the brilliant fall colors. I really do love fall.

Boot Camp!

Boot camp has commenced. I decided last spring that as soon as drill was over this season I was going to begin intensively working on getting my horse really darn broke. I want her light, responsive, soft, supple as well as doing flying lead changes, spins and stops. I'm sure our backing and roll backs can be improved upon as well, among other things. I want her to be able to do all of that framed up and on a loose rein. I want to feel like I deserve to wear my "Reining Champion" buckle, not laugh at myself when I put it on because I still cannot do a flying lead change, which, to me, is part of being a reiner, like needing oxygen is part of being human.

So as soon as drill was over mid-July I got to work. At first it was just working on my own, when I could manage to get on my horse. It was a busy few weeks so I didn't get as many oppurtunities to ride as I would have liked, but when I did I thought about where I wanted my horse to be and what I needed to do to get there and worked on it. I made progress and I was happy with it.

While I do love drill and it was very instrumental in getting Midori to where she is today, it has seemed lately that it is a little counter-productive to getting where I wanted to go with her. I had always drilled with Midori. With the exception of our end of the season break from mid-July to Labor day and holiday break from Thanksgiving to New Years and a hand full of skipped practices here and there, I've drilled Midori pretty darn faithfully every single Sunday for the whole 4 years that I've had her. I don't regret it. Not one bit. I think drill horses are amazing athletes and some of the most rock solid horses out there. But I am to a point where I want to really fine tune Midori and it needs consistent, dedicated work. I can't just forget it for practice every Sunday. I don't think that's fair. So I made a deal with myself that as soon as drill was over this season I would begin boot camp. And I did. I even enlisted some help and I'm pretty darn excited about it.

There is a trainer at the arena that we ride at. I finally got up the nerve to see if she could fit me in to her seemingly very hectic schedule. She found room for me and I had my first lesson in years last week. It was great! While I was a little disappointed that we ended up working on spinning and flying lead changes, I was still very pleased with the difference I could already see in Midori's responsiveness. I was amazed. It didn't seem like we had really done a whole lot, but I could definately feel progress was being made.

I feel like there are a lot of holes in our training, steps that we skipped, building blocks that we missed. I'm also aware that most of the "issues" we are having with progressing like I want to are just my lack of knowledge and experience. I've already gotten Midori further in her training then I thought I knew how to. I have to admit, I'm pretty darn proud of the little horse that I've made. Of course she's just a rock star in her own right, so I've had good help in the matter. But back to the holes....I wanted to kind of go back to the beginning and fill in those holes and gaps and work up from there, which is why I was disappointed that we ended up getting to work on flying lead changes on the first lesson. I did mention to the trainer that I'm doing the winter reining series, which starts in one month, so I'm sure she registered that and realized it's crunch time. Or maybe, and this is my reaching for the stars here, she just figured we are more ready for the big stuff then I feel like we are. I guess time will tell. Ultimately my goal is for my horse to be as close to a finished reiner as we can get with our limited resources, both financial and available local trainers (good trainers are hard to come by around here) and I'm just happy to have someone helping me learn how to reach that goal.

So for now I'm pleased with my new trainer. She is nice and seems to know what she's doing well enough. I'm happy to pick her brain for a while and it's way better then continuing to flail around on my own. I'm excited to see how we progress this winter! My next lesson is tomorrow and now that I've had over a week to digest the last one I've got all sorts of questions I want to ask and things I need to understand better. I'm excited. Progress is being made!