Missing Pilates Makes a Difference

The past two weeks have been a bit crazy. The owner of the farm where I live had ACL and meniscus reconstruction surgery, so I’ve been doing more farm chores, like I do when she’s away. As I’ve talked about in earlier columns, I really enjoy farm chores, for the most part.

I’m definitely not a fan of the heat, and we’re currently in the middle of a classic southern Virginia summer heat wave, but other than that I really can’t complain. I mean, I get to spend time with horses, foals, barn cats, dogs, piglets, and a peacock with an attitude.

So far, there’s only been one real mishap (a broken fence and horses in neighboring fields getting mixed up), and thankfully, one of my awesome country neighbors came to the rescue.

Pilates has been a major contributor to my increased stability and decreased pain level in the past few months, but my instructor moved a few weeks ago, so I haven’t done it for almost three weeks. Wow, can I tell the difference! Doing a lot of farm work hadn’t been bothering me that much, but I can definitely feel it a lot more now that I haven’t been to Pilates.

Thankfully, I’m starting with a different instructor next week, but in the meantime, I’m just trying to make do. I was wondering whether I’d made enough progress that I wouldn’t need it as much anymore, but that’s clearly not the case. I think Pilates helps so much because it reminds my body how it’s supposed to move, which is definitely not how it wants to move naturally!

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As I talked about in my last post, Spotty has been doing great and was approved to move on to the next step in rehab. That was great news. Unfortunately, now that we’ve got the go-ahead to do more, the ground is so hard that it’s really been restricting what I can do with him. Since he has a ligament injury in his leg, he is unable to work on hard ground; it causes too much concussion on his healing leg. As a result, I’ve had to cut back on what we’ve been able to do, and he surely hasn’t been happy about it. 

Now that he’s feeling better and doesn’t realize that he’s still injured, he’s really getting over the whole “rest” idea. We definitely had some hiccups this week, but we’ve been working through them. On the last few rides, he’s been fantastic. I’m doing what I can to keep his workouts different and minimize the monotony, which seems to help a bit. So does listening to music; Spotty seems to get into the beat a bit, so we’ve been rocking out to some good workout tunes!

Overall, while life has been incredibly busy and I’m a bit sore, it’s still been going well. There’s a lot coming up to look forward to, and I’m enjoying getting to spend more time out and about at the barn. Now if only we could get a break from this heat wave, life would be even better!

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