rethinking charlie's "fitness" (again)

I'm constantly reevaluating how I think about Charlie's overall health, wellness, and particularly, fitness. Case in point -- I've written about my evolving understanding of conditioning Charlie for sport quite a few times over the years. Long story short: it's complicated. 

Charlie is a large heavy horse with a high mileage body on slightly small feet. Not only is it entirely possible -- it's downright easy to lame this horse through well-intentioned and generally accepted fitness and strength-training routines. 

"conditioning" is basically my favorite excuse for a trail ride with friends haha. long slow miles, amirite ;) 

It isn't enough to read a book on horse fitness and apply those practices directly to Charlie. I learned that lesson the hard way once, and have been a bit gun shy ever since. To the point where.... We've maybe gone too far the other way, with not quite enough baseline fitness and strength training to support Charlie's physical needs. 

There's obviously no shortage of research (and opinions) in this field, but I recently got a fresh perspective from a long distance runner, of all places. His approach to fitness and conditioning is basically, "everything I do in the gym is intended to support my goal of running." Meaning, he's not there for the #gainz, not there to increase mass. Only to support his running goals. 

brief interruption for a shoe update: leather pads are officially on, and we're *still* growing out that overreach crack from last year

Obviously that's obvious, but then he kinda veered off in a different direction than I expected, observing that runners tend to over-develop some areas of musculature (hamstrings) while under-developing others (glutes). And that he uses his gym time and strength training to counteract these musculature imbalances. 

His point was that these imbalances are ultimately unsustainable and will eventually lead to injury. And since he can't run if he's injured, he prioritizes "injury prevention" as his number one objective in strength training. Anything else -- specific exercises to improve stamina or quickness or whatever to improve competitiveness -- is secondary to this pursuit of risk mitigation. 

obviously gotta give this ridiculous wannabe mountain goat the footwear he craves omg

Now. I've never really been what you might call "an athlete" (har har). I didn't play sports in high school or college, never had any sort of coach work me through a routine or regimen. So for those of you who have had that experience, this might not be anything new to you. But... To me, it seems like a really important distinction. 

switching gears again to some snaps from charlie's chiro / acupuncture appt this week

Horseback riders always talk about how "dressage improves the jumping," by getting horses more off the forehand, or more adjustable, or whatever. That, doing *this* set of exercises will improve your ability to execute in *that* arena. Or we always hear about how dressage is kinda the "weight lifting" (or anaerobic exercising) complement to the "cardio" of trot or gallop sets. 

he gets basically the same spots jabbed every time but the urge to document is strong lol

All of that makes sense to me and whatnot, but it's easy to miss that foundational point of "balance." Of ensuring that muscles developed through one type of work (running) are physically balanced and stabilized on the body. Not bc it makes you better or faster or whatever (tho, it probably does), but bc *this* is our basic protection against injury.

That approach to conditioning is, to me, very attractive. To the point where literally the most expensive lesson I've ever taken in my riding life (which, notably, includes lessons with various Olympians and 5* riders...) was a "Solutions for Soundness" clinic that was basically billed to be this exact sort of experience. 

bonus shot of charlie's puffy fetlock bc he got caught up in something and dinged up the ankle, ooh ooh and *also* added a NEW overreach before the old one had even finished growing out! 

The idea was an experienced riding coach and an equine sports massage expert would tag team the lesson to identify specific exercises to improve conditioning and promote soundness in the horse. Sadly the *execution* of that idea was... er, underwhelming lol, so I kinda put the whole thing behind me and moved on, with the exception being that it was the genesis of my idea to ride with a metronome. 

flashback to 2019 lol

But ya know. Everything old is new again, right? And spring time is my favorite time to take a fresh look at Charlie's overall health picture and make sure it aligns with my ideas and goals and dreams for the year ahead. 

and back again to today. goddamn charlie LOVES this practitioner tho. that is the face of a horse who is focusing every last shred of his attention on that pink-sleeved hand in the background

Step 1 was going down the laundry list of "housekeeping" items for Charlie, inserting literally *ALL* the quarters into the machine.... We slapped the leather shoe pads back on this past cycle. The horse got his hocks freshly lubed. We followed that up with a visit from his favorite chiro / acupuncturist to help work out and release any lingering compensation issues from the hocks. Plus, I picked up a box of Adequan for good measure. 

time to go back to work, sir! 
also his dweeby forelock center part will never not kill me <3 <3 <3

And? Guys. The horse feels good. It's almost like he's going out of his way to show that issues we had under saddle were 100% related to his physical condition. And now that his hocks are taken care of, he's back to stretching and swinging, back to drama free left lead departs, and even volunteering lead changes despite the fact that we normally never practice them.

So the next step is making sure the work we do is additive to Charlie's condition vs corrosive. Which, it turns out, is not quite as easy as writing a check to the vet to stick a needle in it. 

I've basically got a sense of some of the work we'll do to try to improve the overall balance of Charlie's musculature. Namely -- just more of the same that we worked on with Molly. And I'll probably start riding with a metronome again since that was super helpful to work on rhythm. 

But... idk, what all do you do to build up hind end strength? Anything glutes-specific? I know there isn't like, a magic bullet or anything (I wish... ugh), but anything reasonably fun and not too likely to piss the pony off is worth a try!