Breathing

I had a jumping lesson last week that was pretty interesting. Without a dressage trainer, I've been trying to utilize my jumping lessons as a time to get some excellent eyeballs on my position and effectiveness and then also to, you know, enjoy jumping. 

Kate asked me what I'd been pondering for the last two weeks (we skipped last week because Flounder was off being an adorable hunter pony) and I told her my core! I'd worked out the day before and the trainer had asked me if I was doing a bunch of core work. I said absolutely not, I have been doing probably the least amount of core work that I've ever done. Not riding TC much, only sitting the trot occasionally on my client's horses, not doing nearly enough working out between sessions. But he said my core looked strong. 

I thought that was interesting because a few weeks ago, Kate pointed out that I don't use my core over fences, I tighten my lower back and let my abs dangle from my back. 

The one picture I took that day,
Flounder's mane was cute

She had me warm up over a small course of cross rails and I was to growl/make noise a la Mary Wanless to make sure that my core was engaged. I could NOT make my voice particularly loud, like I thought I was being loud enough but Kate couldn't hear me. That and me having to take giant breaths to recover after a short and easy course made Kate ask about my breathing. 

This immediately brought me back to TC. My new bodyworker lady says that TC rarely takes deep breaths and I have been noticing that I, too, do not take many deep breaths, just kind of throughout my life. I don't honestly know why. I get enough oxygen, obviously, I have not passed out yet, but I breathe really shallowly. I've been working hard on breathing more deeply around him and praising him when he takes deep breaths, but it's really hard for me to focus on breathing in a different way than I normally do. 

Back to Flounder, Kate wanted me to canter on a circle over a cross rail and do box breathing with the canter. I was to inhale for four strides, hold my breath for four strides, exhale for four strides, hold my breath for four strides, and rinse, repeat. I was fairly successful until I saw... nothing. Flounder is great and will always jump even if the distance is terrible, but I immediately lost my box breathing. 

We stopped and chatted about that. How when I see things that I don't like coming, I hold my breath, and what that means to the horse. We started talking about holding breath during riding in general, something I see my students do in the dressage during movements (and then they get sloppy between movements as they catch their breath). Why does one hold their breath though?

He was running away from birds and looked fancy

Well, I squatted the day before and I always take a deep breath at the top and hold it during the squat. That increases my internal pressure and therefore provides me with stability because holding ones' breath does to the fascial net the same thing that engaging one's core does. That's super helpful in weight training. 

Except that my barbell doesn't care if I'm breathing or not. It sits heavily on my traps and doesn't think too hard about why I'm holding my breath. Flounder, and TC, and horses in general, DO think about why I'm holding my breath. If a horse is out in a herd and one horse gets super tense and stops breathing, the other horses are going to notice and might look around like "what is he worrying about" so there I am on the back of TC, breathing shallowly, wondering why he won't just relax and take a deep breath. Wondering why Flounder loses confidence in me when I hold my breath when I don't see a distance. 

We ended on a really great note with a short 2'6 course with me aiming to exhale as we took off from the fence and inhale upon landing. The best fences with the best stability in my position were the ones where I got my breathing to coordinate with what we were doing. Flounder felt amazing over the last fence in particular when I figured it out. 

We both need to breathe!

I then went to ride TC and found myself breathing shallowly through the first half of my ride. I stopped and did more box breathing, then went into the canter and did the same exercise I did with Kate. Upon coming back into trot, TC's stride opened up and I could feel his back swinging more and more. 

I must have looked absolutely absurd breathing so aggressively, but who cares, TC certainly didn't! And when we got back to the barn, he took several big deep breaths, one in the cross ties, one while getting hosed down, and one when I put him back into his stall. 

I'm definitely super interested in continuing to see how this affects TC. I've been clicking for deep breaths from him but I think I need to figure out how to get myself used to breathing deeply too! I think some yoga or meditation or something that forces you to think about breathing is in my future. And hopefully that encourages TC to find his breath too. Poor guy, I might have been low key telling him that the world is a scary place when I really was just trying to find stability in my position or trying to focus on something.