The perfect Horsemanship top

Grace, elegance, art, sacrifices, muscles soreness. This is Horsemanship.

You need a great technique but wearing a perfect outfit is fundamental too.

The most important thing is the fit. A too large outfit doesn’t look good. You would look clumsy. Your Horsemanship top must be tight.

You should decide the design of your outfit together with your trainer and your designer. You should choose a pattern and decorations which valorise your figure and your body type. The colour combination is also really important. You should take into consideration your horse colour, your hair colour and your skin tone. Black is the most popular colour. Many riders wear chocolate and dark blue too. If you want to be noticed and hit the stage you can choose a red outfit. Light colours can be difficult to wear.

I prefer to wear a top in the same colour of my chaps. You can see some riders “breaking” that colour block, but I think they destroy the harmony of the rider.

My horsemanship top has a chocolate base and it is loaded with white, gold and fuchsia decorations. I love it! It looks beautiful under the arena lights and under the sunlight.

I match it with chocolate chaps, trousers and boots. My makeup reflects the colours of the top: fuchsia lipstick and brown and gold eye shadow.

My sorrel mare wears a brown, white, gold and fuchsia pad.

It is a graceful and timeless outfit.

Which outfit do you wear for Horsemanship? Which colours do you prefer?

The new hat drama

This is the period of the year in which, unfortunately 😛 , I make my “ wish list”. I think to what I will need for the next show season and I write it on a paper. Once I made a list, I set my priorities. This time it looks like I will need a new hat.

Panic.

Many ideas came to my mind: lace, stones, leather, laser decorations, whip stitches and so on. That’s obviously too much.

I started to set a range of colours: grey, black or white. Black is too dark and my face would look like a mozzarella. I can’t have a white hat, I would make it dirt in less than five minutes. So I decided for grey (I still don’t know if I will choose a dark grey hat or a light grey one).

Now comes the hard part. Which decorations do I really want? I ended up with three choices: lace and whip stitches, silver leather and whip stitches or just whip stitches with crystals. I excluded leather because I think it is to “cowy” for Performance classes. So now: lace or just whip stitches? This is the question…

In my opinion the most important thing is the hat’s shape. The first thing the judge will see in the show pen will be my hat. I want it to have a great shape in order to make a good impression. My new hat has to valorise the shape of my face. And of course it has to match my outfits.

Do you have any suggestion about my next hat? Which kind of hat do you like to wear?

Are you horse show fit?

Some girls train to look good wearing a bikini. Some others train to show horses. I am part of the second category. We treat our horses like athletes but, often, we forget that we are athletes too. We don’t run 100m, we don’t swim or jump but we use a lot of muscles and we need a lot of endurance. The exercises we do on the saddle are not enough to strength our muscles. So I tried to find my “way” in the fitness world to improve my riding.

At the beginning it was a disaster.

I tried several courses at the gym. Step was really cool, it helped me to improve my coordination but I had too much pain in the knees. Than I tried Spiderap (or something like that) and it was not for me. In Zumba I was a disaster.

Finally I decided to try Acquagym… And, sim sala bim, I found the perfect workout for me. As I move in the water I don’t have pain in the knees and in the lower back. Moreover it is really nice to do sport in an outside swimming pool in summer. I combine gymnastic in the water with running. I try to run at least two times per week to stay thin and to be fit enough to run in a Showmanship class (especially in summer, wearing a black showmanship suit, a felt hat and makeup 😛 )

I love Yoga too. But I have no time (and I am too lazy 😛 ) to practice it regularly.

Food is also a really important part of my daily routine. I try to eat clean as much as possible, I drink really a lot of green tea (without sugar) and I don’t drink alcohol . I have two cheat meals per week. At the horse shows I eat what makes me feel good ( so biscuits, chocolate, pizza, sandwiches, etc. ). When I show I want to have a great time, so I don’t really mind about eating the right amount of calories.

With your muscles getting stronger, you will feel better in the saddle.

Which exercises do you do for improving your riding? Do you have any tip?