Whether you’ve been riding forever, or if you are brand new to the world of horses, you know that riding properly entails much more than simply sitting astride your horse’s back while he carries you around the arena or up the side of a mountain. Simply sitting there just does not work – in fact, the fitter you are, the better off both you and your horse will be. Here are five tips that can help you gain fitness to ride.

Get Enough Cardio and Do Weight Bearing Exercises
Chasing your horse around the pasture with a halter in one hand and a carrot in the other doesn’t really qualify as a workout, although a traipse through the field might help you to get a little extra cardio. In order to be at your best though, you are probably going to need some intentional exercise, unless you are physically active most of the time. Try to do cardio at least three days a week, and be sure to get your heart rate up. Do weight bearing exercise at least twice a week.

Improve Flexibility
No matter how fit you are, you should spend a little time focusing on flexibility every day. Yoga is a great way to stay limber, and so is regular stretching. When you are flexible, you will feel much more at ease in the saddle, and you’ll find that your endurance improves as well.

Watch Your Waistline
The extra pounds you might be carrying translate to extra weight your horse must carry too. An important part of being fit to ride is weighing the right weight for your height. Eat properly, basing your food intake on vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, and whole grains. Talk to your doctor about how much you should weigh, and if you are overweight, lose the excess as soon as you can safely do so. Not only will your horse thank you, the two of you will look better together and your performance will improve.

Ride As Much as You Can
Riding well is something that doesn’t happen all by itself, and no matter how fit you are for other activities, you still need to focus on riding. Watch your posture and stay alert; and work to improve constantly. Try new things when you are riding, too. Not only does learning different disciplines help keep your horse from becoming bored, it helps to keep both of you in good form.

Work on Mental Fitness
An important part of fitness for riding is your mental preparedness for problems that might arise. Many of us have deep seated fears that hinder us from riding as well as we possibly could; fears that prevent us from pushing our limits and extending our boundaries.

If you want to be the best rider you possibly can be, work on mental fitness. First, be honest with yourself about any stumbling blocks that seem to stand in your way. Second, learn different meditation techniques to aid you in ridding yourself of those mental hurdles that prevent you from doing your best. Third, celebrate each time you make progress in overcoming difficulties. As you become accustomed to clearing problems from your path, you’ll gain more confidence and you will find that your riding improves as a result.

Great riders are not normally created overnight. If you are overweight, for instance, those pounds didn’t suddenly leap onto your body, and it is going to take some time and consistent effort to rid yourself of them. If you are out of shape, it’s going to take work to gain fitness to ride. Be patient with yourself, and be consistent. Soon enough, you’ll notice the difference, and so will your horse.

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You’re not the only one so focused on managing a horse-boarding farm that you have become unorganized, especially when it comes to paperwork.

You know the importance of being organized, but you’re just not very disciplined about it. It’s time to take a step in the right direction and dive into those piles.

When your immediate physical surroundings support what you do, you will spend less time digging and more time doing — be that work or play.

The first area most of us need to tackle is paperwork. Knowing where everything is located can help you keep track of inventory and quickly streamline your routines. Being organized will save you tons of time and give you more freedom to focus on your farm.

Take a few minutes today to remove the clutter from a:
• pile on your desk
• box in a corner or
• drawer in your office

Don’t answer the phone, check your e-mail or allow yourself to be distracted. Take this time to focus on one area. It will involve less time than you think and you’ll feel better than expected when you’re done.

Designate a place for the stuff to go:
• Recycle
• Trash
• File
• Delegate
• To Do

You may find yourself motivated to complete this once a week or every day until every area that has been bugging you is handled. Then, put at least one new system in place to prevent the problem from recurring.

Successful people have a certain air about them and one reason is because they are organized. They are not distracted by recurring thoughts about what they know they need to do.

You deserve the benefits of being organized. Your business will have a stronger marketplace advantage, more repeat business and higher profits.

Share and motivate: What have you done to make your horse business more organized?

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Allow me to introduce you to LaRaedo, horse farm management software designed to save you time and money. Now more than ever, businesses need new methods that will attract and retain happy customers.

Imagine being able to track instantly and share with your boarders some of the everyday care that is offered for their horse,

Such as:

• when they were lunged
• if they were groomed
• when the last time the stall was cleaned
• when the vet visits.

On top of that, imagine also being able to assign tasks with your staff so that you can ensure that no detail is overlooked.

Yes, that’s right. Your employees can also have a personal login, which will provide them with a view of their own list of assignments for the day. For instance, you may have a trainer that is working with one of your boarders to train their horse. LaRaedo will allow the trainer to login and assign themselves tasks. That way, you and your customer will know what has been going on each day.

Then at the end of every month, all billable items that were tracked are pulled into one invoice – ready for you to click submit and send an automated notification to your boarder. Your boarder can log into their personal account online and review all of their horse’s completed tasks for the month as well as preview, print and save the invoice.

My idea for LaRaedo began quite a while ago and just last year I realized that NOW is the most opportune time to take this idea and make it a reality.

As a horse boarder myself, I observed how demanding it is to manage an efficient horse farm and the challenge to stay in touch with all of the customers.

I started researching what was currently available in the horse industry, in terms of a tool that would allow farm owners to improve their relationships with their customers and to organize their information more effectively. I realized there weren’t many options available that provided this service and automated the invoice process.

From there, I interviewed various farms and with their input began putting together a master plan of what the perfect software solution would look like. Over the past year I have worked with experts in software development to design what is now called LaRaedo, a full featured data management tool for horse farms of all sizes.

I am confident that LaRaedo will be of great value to all farm owners looking to increase customer loyalty and satisfaction.

If you have any questions, check out the Frequently Asked Questions page (FAQ) and if the answers are not listed on the FAQ, please feel free to send me an email at info@LaRaedo.com. I look forward to hearing from you and providing information you can use to help increase customer satisfaction on your farm!

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