United States Eventing Association

Stephen Bradley from Area II tells us how he managed his training program this winter having decided to stay in North Virginia, and Natalie Hollis, also from Area II, offers some alternative ideas for rider fitness that involves rolling around in the mud among other challenges! Listen here or on the podcast below.

Chris: This is the United States Eventing Association's official podcast. Hello and welcome to the program. I'm Chris Stafford. And if you're a new listener and you're listening on the website and would prefer to listen to the show on the go you can download the podcast from the iTunes podcast store to your smartphone podcast app. Just look for USEA in the podcast store. On the show this week Natalie Hollis from Area Two is going to tell us about some extreme measures she goes to to get fit for the eventing season. You won't want to miss that.

But first, Stephen Bradley, who has survived the winter in the frozen north of Virginia, instead of choosing to go to Aiken or further south, tells us how he's managed to do that and get his team ready for the start of the season. Stephen joins me now having returned to his base in Berryville, Virginia. Stephen, welcome to the program.

Stephen: Thank you very much. I appreciated being invited.

Chris: Well you're back home, as I say you did have a little excursion to Aiken but we want to talk about the winter training and how you've survived that very tough winter in the frozen north. Was that trip to Aiken just for a competition?

Stephen: I actually went down just to take some lessons and to get a little bit of a heads up going into my horses fitness because it has been such a tough winter up here. I was a little bit more behind the eight ball than I hoped to have been so I went down to take lessons, to do some fitness work, to do a little bit of schooling. I did compete one of the young horses. The older horses just did some mileage work.

Chris: So otherwise you have toughed it out up there in what has been a very harsh winter. You're probably used to it but give us an idea, Stephen, of your training facilities there and how you've managed to cope with the facilities that you have, presumably an indoor arena.

Stephen: Well I actually don't have an indoor.

Chris: Well my commiserations right there Stephen. You're a tough man.

Stephen: I did this years ago before I started going south when I was quite a bit younger. I thought I did it then, I think I can do it now. You just be the best that you can. We have a nice outdoor arena, we have lots of good hacking, and we have lots of gravel roads. So you have be tough and you have to be ready to tough out the weather, and you learn how to dress in lots of layers and be ready and able to take them off when necessary.

But it really depends on what the weather is giving you as to what you're going to be able to do. The way our arena is situated is on top of a hill and doesn't have any shade around it so most mornings, but middle morning, even if its just in the high twenties, the ring will be thawed out enough to ride. We made use of that predominately through the course of the winter. If the ground is really frozen, if the temperatures are not getting out of the teens, then obviously we don't ride as I don't think that's healthy for the horses. Otherwise we vary our work accordingly to the temperature and how hard we can work, whether we can jump and whether we can do a canter in the ring and just try to use common sense with that.

Chris: So how many horses would you have at home and how many of those would be in training then during the winter Stephen?

Stephen: It varies a little bit from month to month but we have about 15 horses in work and 15 horses in training and all of those would be in work. We've got everything from a youngster that is six months off the track to a couple of, actually three prelim horses, one of which is getting ready to step into the media. So we have various and sundry levels of not only competition and skills but of also fitness that we have to work and maintain.

Chris: So give us an idea of when your winter training would begin then. Does it mean because of the conditions there that they would've had a longer holiday after the end of the last season before you picked them up again in the new year?

Stephen: Well, it actually means that they had a shorter holiday. They had ... The competition horses probably had three weeks off after their last competition and then I put them back into quiet work, whether its hacking, going for long walks, being ponied or whatever because I knew that going into the winter I needed to come into the winter with them more fit than what I normally would because you have to plan on having a few days here and there where you're not going to be able to ride because temperatures are too cold or the ground is absolutely frozen and the weather creates such a situation where you can't get on the road with your rig and go to an indoor and use one.

Chris: So what staff do you have then, Stephen, to take care of these horses and how many of them would be riding so that you can get through as many as possible obviously during the shorter winter day?

Stephen: Well the staff I have, all ride. I have three full time people and one part time person. They all have one or two horses of their own. They all help me with the riding, that's the way I set my program up, so that we all share in all of the work, in all of the riding. I set up a schedule every day that we go down and all the horses get run through and we make that happen.

Chris: So once you start the training then, you've got the local roads there where you can get out and do some trot sets and so on. Are you able to canter at all off-road during the winter that we've had? Just put this in context for us Stephen, how does this winter compare to the other winters that you've been there?

Stephen: Well this is the first winter I've actually stayed at Long Branch. It's probably the first winter in 10 or 12 years that I've stayed home. Having said that, at the facility I was at prior I did not have an indoor and so it was very much the same thing. We do predominately our work in the ring and what we do is at the beginning of the winter we'll salt the ring so that gives you about 10 degrees more where the sand will thaw and you can use it in times of it being a little bit colder. That's what we have found over the years. You get about 10 degrees when you do salt the arenas.

We do go out onto the roads but I don't ... I didn't do any cantering on the roads. We go out and trot on the roads. The little bit of cantering that I did would've been in my ring and so its obviously very level. You just make it work as best you can.

Chris: Right, I was wondering about the cantering off road that you ... Is the ground always hard that you're not even able to do any trot or cantering in between the roads and the arena?

Stephen: We actually did have a number of days this past winter that we were able to get out in the fields and use the fields. They would've been a little bit slick and so this time of year the horses don't have stud holes so you have to be smart in where you are riding. You're not going to use big hills, you're going to use much more level fields and when you are on those you're going to have walk down any kind of steep, downhill part. We were able to get out into the fields until early part of February. There again we made use of the days that we could and use the field we did, knowing full well that they were probably, but sure enough there were, some stretches at times where we weren't going to get out of the ring or that we'd be using the gravel roads.

Chris: How about hunting? Do you take advantage of that?

Stephen: I don't. I used to and I love it tremendously. A very very dear friend, Helen Bredel, took me out hunting this winter on one of her horses and it reminded me how much I missed it. I think it is for the young horses, tremendously helpful. I think its great for their fitness, for them learning to go across the country. For them developing their footwork on uneven ground and getting brave, getting the cool from other horses and with their friends. Unfortunately for me time is very restricting and so I have to set my priorities to my riding and teaching and training and it doesn't leave lot of time to go hunting.

Chris: Well we all know how brutally cold stables can be and the big barns in the winter. Is there a way that you combat that? How do you cope with the cold weather inside and, of course, frozen pipes and that sort of thing?

Stephen: Well we do have quite a big barn and it is very cold, especially seeing as how its predominately cinder block, but again we dress against the weather. We are prepared for the barn to be cold. We don't necessarily clip the horses full out when we do clip so that they have trace clip or blanket clip and it wasn't until until we were getting ready to go south that we clipped them out full. We do have to be smart about the buckets because yes they are going to freeze, there's not a lot you can do for that. I don't like using the buckets with warmers in them, I don't like using electric waters. I'm very old school and I like to watch how much my horses are drinking, particularly in the winter time.

So you'll always have to have the water buckets rotating during the day and load them up with water at night and late night before you go to bed, making sure that they're in front of them. So most of it is just using common sense again and good judgement and being prepared to deal with some of these extreme times that we got.

Chris: Going into a Virginia winter, presumably you're planning well ahead in terms of stocking up on hay, and that sort of thing, and the quality of hay, as we know, is all important. Where would you get that from and how much would you buy in at the start of the winter then Stephen?

Stephen: I'm very lucky that we have a farmer who grows beautiful alfalfa hay and beautiful timothy hay and beautiful grass hay and he is literally a quarter of a mile down the road and can keep us stocked even when the weather's bad and the roads are frozen and the snow is covering everything. So I'm spoiled that way. We don't have a great loft in our barn and so to get a large amount of hay in at one time is very difficult as far as loading it into the loft, so we do smaller, more frequent visits from him. He comes about once a week.

I'm a big timothy type hay person but during the winter when we don't have grass then try and keep the horses weight on with a few of them ... We will put them on alfalfa hay and use that to help keep them going.

Chris: What type of bedding do you use Stephen and how do you dispose of that in the winter?

Stephen: We have shavings. We use ... Have a big old spreader and we go out and spread it on unused fields and the fields of the farm are rotated so that some of them are being used for crops, some of them being used for turn outs, some of them are being used for retired horses, and some of them are not being used at all. So we're very lucky in that way and we can follow in the fields that are not being use and just spread the manure there so that it actually decomposes and helps the upcoming year when the grass starts to grow and they start planting crops and things.

Chris: We're just hopefully at the turn of the seasons, it's starting to warm up, a little bit generally. Hopefully it stays that way as we're in mid March now. How do you feel the horses have come out of this sort of winter? What have been the disadvantages to getting them fit for the season?

Stephen: There's several disadvantages, absolutely, in that we started off the winter really strongly and we had one stretch of five days in January where the ground was absolutely frozen and temperatures barely got up into the twenties so we weren't able to ride. However, we had a longer stretch of an extreme temperature drop for a full week in February and then after that multiple snowfalls that really made it impossible, not only to ride but also to ship out. So that two week stretch really put us back as far as having horses ready to compete.

Having said that, I wasn't planning on competing my horses until end of March early April. I knew when I stayed home this winter that it was going to mandate my season starting later. I must admit it was a little bit eye opening and a little more frustrating than I had thought about to keep following events as the season starts and see all my friends out competing and going and knowing that they will be half way through their season when I am actually just getting started.

We all have to get the cobwebs out and the rust off, out of ourselves as well, and so you have to plan on that in your work and your work load. In addition, since everybody not only goes south, I do all of my work up here on my own, so I haven't really had an opportunity to get help, to get lessons, which in part is why I went to Aiken, to get some help for a week and get some of the cobwebs out and get started before the competitions start at the end of March.

Chris: Who do you have help from?

Stephen: I went down ... I work with Mara de Puy on the plaque quite a bit. I'll use her to whip me into shape and to check up on the horses and let her help me with the jumping and be a set of eyes and ... A little bit of everything. That is ... That's who I worked with when I went to Aiken.

Chris: So when does your season start then Stephen? Where are you going and how many horses will you have?

Stephen: I will start in the end of March and will compete the one novice horse that went down to Aiken and competed one time, he'll run again the end of March. The rest of the horses are probably just going to start the following weekend at CDCTA in part because when I got down to Aiken and was riding them and working them, I didn't have them as fit as I had hoped and I realize that, so I'm going to just put off their start until April now. I'd hoped to start them in March, maybe even early than March, like the full gallop before we came home or seven times on the way home or something like that, but they were far from being ready for that.

So I will have one novice horse at Morven and then three preliminary horses at CDCTA and then after that we'll start alternating weekends and those horses will continue going. I have a few up and coming horses that not even done their first competition, so they'll get started going on the off weekends where they can.

Chris: Looking ahead, the long view of the seasons and the year ahead when knowing that you do a lot of teaching, a lot of clinics, as well as the competition season, what does your year look like Stephen? What are your biggest goals competition wise?

Stephen: The season gets very busy. During the competition months I usually not to do any weekly clinics. I'll do week day clinics for a day here and there, and those actually are very well received and are getting more and more popular, so they're easy to do. I try to keep the weekends open for competitions. The really big goals for this spring are for the prelim horses, one moving up to intermediate a little bit later in the spring, two going to their first 1 star and then seeing what happens with all those horses in the fall. Hopefully the one that's moving up to intermediate getting to fair hill in the two star.

That was part of what made my decision not to go south a little bit more easy in that I don't have any upper level horses right now and I'm a big believer in that we have to set the season up for the horses and athletes. They can't be fit 12 months out of the year. They've got to have a season and have a little bit of down time, and have a season, and have a little bit of a let down time. So I've organized my year around doing competition season weekday clinics, leaving the weekends open for all competitions of different levels of horses. In the summer time, dropping the competitions back to a minimum so that I'll pick up more weekend clinics again and that will transfer into the following winter.

Chris: So the big question I'm leaving you with Stephen is would you do this again? Winter in Virginia?

Stephen: You know if things necessitated this happening I would and could do it again, but I'm hoping that next winter will be a little bit different and I'll have some horses moving up into the upper levels. I will have the opportunity and will make avaliable the opportunity to go south again. Having said that again though, there are always things that come up in day to day life, with and without the horses, that sometimes make the decision that, you know what, you're not going to be able to go south this winter, you'll have to stay home. And if that happens I will definitely be able to make it work and we will see where it takes us.

Chris: Well hopefully the thaw will continue as I'm sure you're all ready to warm up there. I want to wish you the very best of luck when the season does get underway for you Stephen and thank you so much for coming on the program.

Stephen: Thank you very much. Like I said, I appreciate being invited and being included.

Chris: And now for those women riders who have been listening and have been telling themselves they really should do more to get fit for the season, Natalie Hollis from Area Two is going to give you some ideas to mix it up a little bit. If you think falling off in the mud is bad enough, take a listen to this. Hi Natalie, welcome to the program.

Natalie: Hello.

Chris: We're going to talk about women's fitness for riding because it becomes even more important these days to maintain a level of fitness, especially if you're an amateur and you're doing a full time job. But when you're a professional you have so many horses to ride it's a question of finding time. Then as we get older it becomes more challenging to maintain that level of fitness and combat the injuries we pick up along the way. Let's start by saying that you were really in some ways going to the extreme, but you're not yet 40, and you've maintained a level of fitness to ride quite a lot of horses each day. You've got a full stable of horses. Tell us a little bit about your business first.

Natalie: Well we're located in Dickerson, Maryland. It's in Area Two and have a facility with 30 stalls. It's about half our horses, staff horses and breaking students. Mine is a sell horses and the other half is clients. So we've got everything from three year olds up to the upper levels and everything in between. Definitely a full busy schedule with the horses and with our own students and clients as well.

Chris: So how many horses would you be competing with this season then Natalie once it gets underway in the north there?

Natalie: Three of my own, and then probably, just depending on how the schedules go, a couple of our horses that are for sale as well. We kind of alternate with who has more time to show those horses.

Chris: So you have quite a team of friends there really, with other people with whom you can exercise and do your fitness program and your various activities. What did you start to expand on the things you were doing to keep fit Natalie? What was the catalyst for this?

Natalie: Well we're all busy enough with just taking care of the barn and doing things like that, but even if you're riding one horse a day it's not going enough for everything that you need with the sport, especially as you move up the level. Even if you're riding several horses a day you still need to have something that helps you build your stamina and strength to enable you to do that well. So we started looking at other things to do that wasn't just boring, I'm going to run or I'm going to go to the gym. I get very bored running and I get very bored ... Or I just don't know what to do if I go to the gym.

So we started with just a group of us doing mud runs, doing tough mudder, super spartans moves, things like that. We joined a boot camp class that was called Soldier Fit and did that several times a day. A lot of us went and started doing yoga to help with the flexibility and it helps your position and helps everything loosen up and just gives you that extra bit there too.

Chris: So tell us about these different activities, not exactly conventional because you wouldn't expect an eventer to willingly go and roll in the mud unless they fell off, so how did that come about?

Natalie: A friend of mine who has a different barn, Carrie Blackmere, had done a couple of tough mudders and she asked us if we want to do one with her. We got in the first time not really knowing what we were getting into completely. We had an idea but didn't completely know what it was going to be like. It was actually a lot of fun. You're working as a team, you're helping each other get over walls, you've got a few things like jumping ice water, go under electric shock and some other crazy things and all this sort of stuff that's the same sort of mindset as most eventers, you're like, sure, why not. They were just a lot of fun and then we started getting more and more people to come and do them with us and it would just be a big group activity and just a lot of fun to do.

You definitely will feel it the next day or two though. 12 miles of doing that, you felt it the next day.

Chris: Those two, three letter words don't exactly go together in my mind. Mud and fun. What makes it fun Natalie?

Natalie: I just think its something different. There's definitely some mud involved but it's not just all mud. There's climbing over ropes, there's doing monkey bars, there's carrying things. There's a lot of different activities within it. Basically its all set up to challenge you and see if you can make that challenge. It just gives you a little sense of accomplishment, like yeah, I did that. Then go on to the next obstacle and think, oh, I'm not sure I can do this or not and then you do it. It's just a nice little challenge, feels quite accomplished when you're done with it.

Chris: Well certainly an accomplishment because it's over quite a few miles isn't it?

Natalie: Yes. The tough mudders are around 12 miles and the super spartans are about 10 miles.

Chris: And how often would you do that?

Natalie: Depending on how they fit in with our show schedule, we've done usually one in the spring and one in the fall for both of those and then add in some short 5K fun runs as they fit in. Those will be several times a year, there's a warrior dash and block races, color runs, mud dog runs. Little things that are just an easier short one as well.

Chris: Tell us about the warrior rush and those names that you just shared with us just then. I'm sure unless you do this sport you're not familiar with the different divisions you obviously have.

Natalie: Well the warrior dash is a 5K. It's pretty similar to the tough mudder as far as what the obstacles are like. The rock race was one that we did that was actually a lot of fun and a bunch of even the kids from our barn came so it was kind of the 14 year olds through to the 50 year olds that went to this race. It was a lot more just fun activities. They had big blow up water slides and a big bouncing thing. There's bubbles. It was just a more ... Kind of thing like Wipeout where you tried to walk across something and there's a big ball going back and forth that's going to knock you into the water. That one was just a lot of fun.

So its not as physical but it was just a good way of getting a lot more people involved in doing things besides the ones that are like 12 miles long.

Chris: OK. So you do all of these other things for fun, as you say, rolling in the mud, but you also do strengthening exercises like yoga. There's another one which is a cross over between yoga and Pilates, tells us about that.

Natalie: Yes there's a group of us, it's my business partner and our barn manager, one of the working students and then a couple of clients that we all meet and do yoga twice a week at a studio that's local to here. The yoga is great. It just really helps you stretch out everything. I've got a lot of old injuries from bones I've broken and injuries I've had and I feel like it just really helps stretch out that scar tissue and also helps you prevent new ones. All of it just really helps with your position, even riding, because if everything is a little bit looser and more open it's easier to sit and do things.

The other that's a cross over is called pi-yo. One of the working students and I do that on the off mornings that we're not going to yoga. So it's a combination of Pilates and yoga and its a half an hour DVD but we'll do those in the morning before we start the barn.

Chris: We all know that core strength is very important to riding and those exercises will of course help build that. So what kind of things have helped you with your riding since you've been focusing on these. As a woman its different then for a man. Have you found that its given you any strength in riding that you didn't have before you were focusing on core strength building?

Natalie: It definitely just helps with my riding. I think it helps my back so much more because the stronger your core is the stronger your back is. And I had broken my femur when I was a kid and had a lot of stuff that messed up my back from breaking my leg so I feel like as I've gotten my core stronger the soreness in my back has went away, which helps me be able to gallop better and just sit the trot there and not feel like I've got these nagging back pains because everything's so much stronger. Especially, I would tell all of our working students when they're doing track sets, do the whole thing in two point. Make yourself stronger that way.

Besides doing that the pi-yo really just helps build up that extra core strength so that you can do all of that and be able at the end of a cross country course to keep yourself up and in a nice strong position where you're able to help your horse out.

Chris: Now one of the subjects that's been taboo very much in the media but a British tennis player brought it to the fore recently when she admitted for the first time publicly that that time of the month for women, during menstruation, can be debilitating when you're a professional athlete and its no different for riders either. Do you find that the exercises that you have done, and with your friends, have helped you with those issues?

Natalie: Yes, for sure. With that, exercise is one of the best things you can do. I do think if you get up and you're feeling crampy and achy and whatever, that if you get up and start stretching and moving and doing, all of a sudden your whole body feels a lot better.

Chris: What about after competing now that you're that much fitter. Are you finding that you're able to gallop more horses a day or compete more horses? Has that helped you with your stamina as well as your core strength and your aerobic fitness?

Natalie: Yes, absolutely. The size of the horses that I have that I'm competing I generally ride several students horses every day too, just to give them training rides and different things like that. All of the extra stuff we've done with the running just definitely helps your cardio and your stamina. The other activities we've done, like our soldier fit, even involved with yoga with all the push ups you do in yoga, just gives you a lot more strength along with the flexibility with the yoga and the pi-yo. I think all of that definitely helps do this to build not only where you can ride more horses a day but ride them better all day because you're not so tired by the time you're on the fourth or fifth horse. You've got ... Your muscles can keep going a lot more.

Chris: Well you mentioned that injuries that you've had and we know that the sport does come with its own share of injuries for most of us, and some of them can be career changing and career ending in some ways. Can you talk a little bit about what you've gone through Natalie and how these new activities have really helped you combat those injuries and hopefully prevent injuries in the future of course if you're that much stronger.

Natalie: Right. Two of the worst injuries that I've had that have affected me all over was one definitely was when I broke my femur. Basically to fix it they put a metal rod in, they pin your knee, they pin your hip and then you go on crutches for a long time. They take out all that metal eventually later on but there's still scar tissue from the surgeries from the surgery, so the scar tissue gave me a lot of back issues. I also had on that same side my left knee was stepped on by a horse in a fall several years ago too, so that knee has caused me a lot of injury and just pain when you're trying to keep stuff short and gallop and jump and things like that.

I've got to be careful with the running in that I don't do too much and put too much strain on my knee but I've found that the stuff with the yoga and pi-yo, being low impact but still muscle building, and strengthening and stretching really helps to support those injuries and make the tissues and the surrounding muscles and ligaments stronger around my knee. That really helps with that.

Everything that I've done with yoga and the pi-yo for my back has made a huge amount of difference. I'm definitely in a lot less pain than I used to be from it.

Chris: So what would you say to anyone that's thinking gosh these all sound fun, even rolling in the mud. How would you suggest they get started in any of these activities Natalie?

Natalie: Especially for the mud run, if you just Google search that you can come up with tons of literature in every area all over the country. If you start out slow, go to something that's a 5K one before you're silly and jump straight into a 12 mile tough mudder. Luckily everybody is fairly fit and can do it but you also ... Being riders you want to make sure you're not going to do something silly and hurt yourself either. We're always very careful when we're doing those to make sure we're not going to have a silly injury and then miss the whole season because we went out to have a little fun. Start slow and start with a 5K, work up to it, make sure you got a little bit of a base of fitness, it gives you something too to work towards and to train towards.

Its so much easier to be goal oriented and say, okay , I'm going to do this on this date so I need to start running now to be prepared for that.

Chris: So lots of opportunities to roll in the mud well into your middle age then Natalie.

Natalie: Absolutely.

Chris: Terrific. Well you should be absolutely fighting fit then for the start of the season there in the north, which hopefully will be sometime within the next few weeks. Despite the winter that you've had up there are you ready and confident for the start?

Natalie: Pretty ready. We've been keeping all the horses going as best we can with the weather. We just really need to get out and have a cross country school and do some things like that to get ready but I'm hopeful that at least all the pretty seasoned campaigners can at least get out and get going. The young horses might just have to wait longer if they can get out and do a little more first.

Chris: Well done. Well the best of luck to you for the season and your continued fitness. Hopefully you survive all that rolling in the mud and have many good seasons to come.

Natalie: Thank you.

Chris: Well who knew that fun and mud could go together. If you take part in any extreme sports to get fit for the season we'd love to hear about them. You can post your stories on the Facebook page. A reminder that this podcast is available as a transcription on the website at useventing.com. The podcast, as I mentioned earlier, is available on iTunes. You can download it to your smartphone podcast app and listen to the show on the go. Until next week, thanks for your company and enjoy your eventing.