Jan was born and trained in The Netherlands, a county world renowned for its horsemanship. He graduated from the Dutch Equestrian Center and is now based here in Wellington. He has garnered a laundry list of awards and prizes, including the $25,000 Carol Lavell Advanced Dressage Prize and his USDF bronze, silver, and gold medals. Jan has been training horses and riders in the United States since 2001.

How did you become interested in Dressage?

As a kid growing up in Europe, you cannot do any jumping unless you’ve trained at the very basic level and achieved certain scores. Dressage was required to get to the level of jumping. I enjoyed it and decided to stay with it.

What physical demands does Dressage make on the rider?

It really forces you to control what your body is doing on top of this moving horse. There is a lot of balance involved because the horse is moving in lots of different directions so you have to follow it. It requires control over your core.

Does the physical fitness of a rider affect the horse’s ability to perform?

Absolutely because if you can’t control your own body on top of the horse, you won’t be able to control the horse. You have to have a certain amount of toning and strength to move on top of the horse otherwise you are basically in the horse’s way. You want to give the illusion that it’s effortless. It has to look like the horse is doing it by itself and you’re just a passenger. So if you have no strength, it gets in your way. 

During the parts of the competition that the horse needs help, you’re not available because you’re worn out. It’s not just the performance. There is a warm up before you go into the arena, which means you’ve been on the horse for 45 minutes total at least and if you’re not fit enough to go to the finish, it’s a problem. 

What do you say to a rider when you can see that their lack of fitness is affecting the horse’s ability to perform?

By the time they ask me to help them train they already know where I’m coming from and what my expectations are. If something isn’t right I don’t want to hear them complain about it. I have all adults and they have to be responsible for their own actions on top of the horse. My job is to help them make things clear to the horse. I don’t want to waste my time with people who aren’t willing to put in any effort.

What have you learned about off-horse physical training over the years?

It’s a big mental game as far as I’m concerned. If you’re doing something that has a lot of repetitions, it really becomes a mental game to push one more time until you are there. It correlates with competition because when you’re competing you have to do one more thing and one more thing and one more thing until you’re done.

What is the most important thing a rider needs to do to stay in shape?

People have their strengths and weaknesses, so you have to work with that a little bit. It’s not one area unless a person is really weak in a certain area. You have to have cardio. You have to have control of what body part does what. You don’t need the bulk because that might get in the way. You have to be fit enough to hang in with the heat here in Florida. It depends on the person, but most of the time it is an overall fitness that we’re looking for.

What are you looking forward to in 2021?

It’s going to be a very interesting year because they’ve moved the Olympics. It will be interesting to see which horses rise to the top and which don’t. This one year delay might have taken some horses out of the competition because of age. Or horses that were younger might have needed an extra year to really mature and they will be ready to compete.

To learn more about Jan, you can read “How to Assess Progress in Your Dressage Training” and watch him in action on the horse during a Dressage Clinic.

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With the Winter Equestrian Festival and the 2020 Polo Tournament right around the corner, we took the time to chat with expert equestrian trainer, Diego Piriz. Diego has been training riders since 2007. He worked for the International Polo Club for more than six years and now works as a personal trainer trainer serving individual clients.

How did you come to specialize is training equestrian athletes?

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Off- Horse Training

As a rider, you’ve probably experienced this for yourself. You know that when you are fit you are stronger, have better reflexes, are less prone to injury, and have more endurance. Riding is excellent physical exercise but it’s not enough for equestrians who want to be five star riders. After all, your horse has a training regimen that you follow faithfully. If training is good for your horse, it has to be good for you too.

Incorporating a on off-horse fitness program into an already busy life can seem impossible, but the very best riders all do it. In particular, it requires a strong desire for self-improvement, self-discipline, and the determination to rise to the next challenge. As an equestrian athlete, you apply self-discipline to all areas of your life. Thus, your physical fitness training regimen should be one of those things. Here are the top ten things we think you should include in your equestrian fitness program.

Top 10 Equestrian Fitness Tips

1. Strengthen your core. A strong core is the most important investment you can make in your overall performance as a rider. If you want maximum impact for the time invested, focus on this area of your body. It needs to be strong enough to support excellent posture during your ride. The catch is that you can’t get this strength through riding only. You need to work on it outside of your regular time on the horse.
2. Increase your overall strength with power lifting and weight training. If you are a physically stronger person it will make you a stronger rider. In addition to burning calories, weight lifting builds strength, increases muscle size, and improves endurance. By adding free weights to your fitness routine, you will move easier and have better balance because you must learn to control the weight as well as lift it.
3. Increase flexibility by incorporating stretches into your daily routine. Stretching is one of the most underutilized methods of improving athletic performance. You need to stretch to lengthen muscles that get tight from riding. For the best athletic performance, riders should target the calves, hamstrings, hips, and groin. 
4. Strengthen your hips and legs. Riders rely heavily on their hips and legs to maintain balance and control the horse. Because of this, you need strong quads and glutes. Strength in these muscle areas will also reduce your susceptibility to strains in the groin area and make your lower body more stable.
5. Increase the mobility and suppleness of your hips and legs for a deep and independent “seat”. The right exercises will give you mobility in your hips and legs (in addition to strength) and contribute to a stable seat.
6. Increase your cardiovascular capacity with aerobic exercise. Riding in itself doesn’t provide adequate cardiovascular conditioning for competitions. Regular off-horse cardio training will increase your stamina, increase your endurance, and reduce your injuries. 
7. Strengthen your arms, chest, and shoulders. Your horse is led by the position of your upper body. This means that your chest and shoulders need to be in strong to achieve an effortless independent hand. Use equipment such as a shoulder press, a chest press, or a biceps curl to pay attention to this important, but often forgotten, area of your body.
8. Strengthen your lumbar muscles. Many riders suffer from lower back pain. If you’re one of them, it can be debilitating and negatively impact your performance. If you lack strength and suppleness in your torso, your body will have a hard time absorbing the repetitive movement that comes from riding. Usually this puts strain on the lower back causing pain and injury. Exercises that strengthen the lumbar area will help. Many riders have success with crunches, Pilates or Swiss ball exercises. If you are experiencing lower back pain, we can work with you to address it. 
9. Don’t neglect proper nutrition. Traveling and event attendance can thwart even the strongest healthy eating resolutions. In order to perform optimally, your body needs good fuel to feed your strong and limber muscles. This means consuming lots of vegetables, fruits, lean protein, and mineral-rich foods. It’s easier to do at home where you’re in control of what’s available, but much harder to do on the road. Plan ahead so that you’ll have the highest quality food available to you when you need it.
10. Don’t neglect mental preparation. With all the focus on physical fitness, your psychological state can get pushed down on the priority list. Mental toughness is important to winning competitions. Psychological awareness results in improved reaction time. You’re more likely to move with controlled speed and think to quickly. In addition to training your body, learn how to train your mind to get it into a state of superior psychological readiness. 

Riding is a sport that requires every muscle in the body to be ready to kick into action at a moment’s notice. It’s critical to train your muscles to work together to help the horse. In addition, physical fitness will have a psychological impact, giving you greater confidence and courage. Embarking on an equestrian fitness program will help you to become the athlete you know you can be. 

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Off-Horse Fitness Training

The 2019 Winter Equestrian Festival at Wellington ends it’s 39th year on April 1st. That means now is the time for riders who are serious athletes to focus that intense work ethic on their year-round training plan. In addition to plenty of time in the saddle, making it to the elite equestrian levels requires off-horse fitness training. Ideally, rider fitness training will focus on stamina, endurance, strength, and flexibility. The athlete should grow in their “muscle sense”. Muscle sense is the ability to sense the position and movement of their body and it parts. This usually takes 60-90 minutes of training, three or four days a week. In Wellington, there is a need for an equestrian fitness program that can transform elite riders into champion riders.

Strength and Body Control

Competitive adult riders know that off-horse training must enhance and increase their skills when they are back in the saddle. They also understand the need for strong legs, a strong core, and flexibility. But this focus can cause the equestrian athlete to downplay the importance of things like upper body strength, proper symmetry, body control, and powerful lumbar muscles in the lower back.

The English Rider Handbook devotes a lot of space to physical fitness. The section on the importance of lower back strength makes several important points. “To support the rider’s back and pelvis, the rider needs very good core strength. The core muscles which support good posture are in the rider’s stomach, sides, back and pelvis from the tailbone and floor of pelvis, up to the occipital joint where the rider’s head and neck connect. From a skeletal point of view, the low back is a human weak point where, for a few inches of the torso’s length, the entire human structure is connected from top to bottom by a few inches of spinal column. The opportunity for injury in the lower back is tremendous because it is the most foldable section of the back.”

Five Star Riders

In addition to building strength in key areas, an effective equestrian fitness training program will identify all the movements associated with top athletic performance. It will then systematically train the rider to perfect them. Every equestrian athlete’s goal is to become a 5-Star rider. If you want to get to that level in competition, you have to train at a certain level off the horse. At Resilient Fitness, our staff understands through first-hand experience what competitive riders need to have in their workouts to experience unbroken progress toward the top level of the sport. We know that you are an athlete and you need to train like one.

As the Festival comes to a close here in the “Equestrian Capital of the World“, we invite you to schedule a time to talk with us about your year-round training needs. We want to see you at the top of your event as much as you want to be there.

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