Keeping fit for dressage?

[LS_Dressage]

With the sad injury-induced retirement of my pony, I am lucky enough to have purchased a fantastic, experienced dressage horse.

Although I have been doing 2-3 hours of sport a week, as normal, other than trying my new horse I have not ridden for weeks and was surprised how much muscle I had lost!

My new horse isn't arriving for a few weeks, so in the meantime how can I get competition-fit again? Should I go running, or what exercises can I do?

 

[FrodoBeutlin]

I can't run (because I am rubbish at it and totally out of breath after 50 metres) but I find that swimming (swimming a lot, minimum 1 full hour every day) helps a lot with general fitness.

If you need something which will specifically help you with the riding, I'd say Pilates (though I have never tried it myself)

 

[fuzz]

Swimming, running, going to the gym... really any form of exercise that you'll enjoy will help. The more you enjoy it, the more likely you'll be to keep at it.

 

[j1ffy]

As Fuzz says, any sort of exercise will help your aerobic fitness. If you want to build up the muscles needed for riding, I don't think running helps! I only say that as I did a few half marathons at a time when I was only riding once a week and I still had sore riding muscles the day after a lesson

I've also heard Pilates is good and, oddly enough, was looking for local classes when I saw your post! There's "equi-lates" specifically for horse riders too, but I've no idea how widespread it is.