I feel like I'm 17 - the age I was when I got my first horse!

What an amazing sport that just makes you feel ageless!!!

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Me too! At 57,I feel old and very rickety,till I'm totally absorbed with my ride!

I finally remember when I feel young on a horse.

It is when I first get up on a horse and the horse does not understand my aids and I wonder what in the world I should do to get what I want.  Yes, my confusion, my despair, my fumble fingers, and me wondering how in the world I will get through to THIS horse, ah yes, it brings back memories of being 19 on my first horse!

Except when I am feeling a lot of pain, then I feel old.  It makes me very lethargic and I don't feel like doing anything because it hurts.  I am resigning myself to Xtra Strength Advil and a lot of stretching. 

I don't feel old when I ride. I only got my first horse when I was in my 50s and then he was foal. So did not actually ride him until 3 years later. He keeps me young that is why I love this sport and this animal so much.

i never feel old when i am riding and i can beat elayne's 57 by four years (guess i should be in the over 60) - well i never feel old except when we cannot hear our instructor! "what did she say?" "did  you hear what she said?" "was that trot or walk?"

sigh.

Well, unfortunately I feel like I'm 100 years old when I ride now!  I have soft-tissue damage in the large muscle that runs from the outside of the hip around through the groin and down into the knee (sorry, I should know the name of it but can't recall it at this moment.)  The last time I rode I was in so much pain it wasn't any fun at all.  I laid off for three months and tried riding again and it was better, but still tight, with no strength in so the trot was very uncomfortable.  Then it took me a week to recover from that one-hour ride.

I'm going to the gym three times a week to stretch and try to strengthen that muscle.  I'm also getting Active Release Therapy as often as I feel I need to (once a week to about every two months, depending) and I will soon be starting yoga classes.

I'm going into some detail here because I am interested in knowing if anyone else has had this problem and were you able to over-come it.  My biggest fear, of course, is not being able to ever ride again.  As it is I think this summer is a write off!

Hi April, good to see you here again.

I never had your particular problem.  However it took me YEARS for my body to get over a head-on car wreck.  I would try riding and my back would end up in agony.  I tried different saddles, different pads to change the balance of the saddle, and as my undiagnosed MS got worse and worse from the wreck I gave up riding for a few years, getting up maybe once or twice a year.

Five years later I started riding regularly again.  All my soft tissue injuries had healed and my back has not bothered me since.

Give your leg time to heal.  I KNOW this is hard, I've been through it.  Gentle exercise on the ground is good.  Also good is limiting your riding to a walk for the first few weeks/months you ride.  It can be a long slow process.  I had to let go of all my old riding ambitions, but every time I get up in the saddle now and ride is a triumph to me!  And I have learned how improving a horse's walk can positively impact all the horse's other gaits since I do A LOT of walking still, my MS exhaustion severely limits my times at the faster gaits.

I did get some benefit from physiotherapy with hip/thigh pain perhaps similar to yours. I also messed it up worse by choosing the wrong saddle (which fit my horse but was not working for me). In one ride I created additional severe sore spots that took me weeks to relieve.  Exercise and stretching is important, but it has to be the right exercises for that particular problem. Ones that correct so called "anterior pelvic tilt" helped, strengthening glutes and core abdominals, and releasing my shoulders which were pulling too tight forward. It all works together, the pelvis, abs, shoulder, back muscles. So if these are all out of whack, you can end up with pain in hip and thighs (as well as all the other spots). It's a continual battle, as we females get older it seems our bodies want to tighten in all the wrong places. I also found getting plenty of calcium, and had neglected magnesium, and lot of Vit. D also make a difference to muscle and nerve function.

I'll be 57 in 2 months.  Running our own boarding barn and being around the animals 24/7 keeps me energetic, healthy, fit................ no time to rest :) 

When I ride, I feel like a little girl! Love every moment and would not swap it for the world!  The bones are a little tired though afterwards, so a nice hot long bath with Epsom salts and a glass of vino does the trick.

Sometimes I forget that my next birthday will be my 60th; sometimes I get frustrated and think how different (and carefree) it was when I was in my teens and 20's

it depends on the horse I'm riding, sometimes it's like i'm a hundred. most of the time I'm a teenager

When you think about it, older riders benefit from all the positive effects of the horse's movement, and the mental interaction with horses the same way disabled riders benefit. We must be sure we are paired with the right horse. I have shorter and sane horses in my old age. There are dozens of stories about older riders(70 and up) who are still riding. If you look at old photos from England, you will see senior riders in the hunt. Don't give up. 

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