lol yeah I most assuredly was not just trotting and cantering around a hayfield. Equathon is endurance where you ride the course and then get off and run the same course on foot. The instructions for the first part of the course- don’t slow down going up the mountain or you’ll get swarmed by fireants
Sorry I wasn’t implying that’s what you were doing! I meant to rely to 1969 that I would test whether riding for pleasure for the same amount of time as I do for schooling would see my heart rate stay lower.
I couldn’t do either part of your sport without collapsing!
This is an excellent idea. Because so many factors can come into play in a lesson - you’re being watched, you’re trying to produce a specific result, your horse may be cooperative or not so much. It’s really impossible to know what is affecting your HR. This is my HR in the race I mentioned earlier. HR in red, elevation in green. My highest HR of the race was the steep descent - see yellow arrows. (Note that I went up that same hill in the beginning of the course with a much lower HR.)
This is all adrenaline. I think it must impact riding very much.
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Gotcha-
Sorry didn’t mean to seem cranky
Interestingly- I looked the HR for the running portion of that competition and it’s really similar to the ride other than the average is higher and there’s no spike for my opinionated mare deciding she was in charge lol.
@S1969 so true - “This is all adrenaline. I think it must impact riding very much”. I did a really cool rock climbing thing (Via Ferrata in WV) a couple months ago and it pretty hard physically (plus it topped out at 106 degrees -yuck lol). The biggest spikes on my HR were from a spot where you had to reach around, grab hold of a bar you couldn’t see and basically step off into mid-air and where I watched someone else take a pretty hard fall- not from where the effort was the most
It was probably me that @S1969 was thinking of. I work in ultrasound with a group of cardiologists and have done thousands of stress echos (bike, treadmill, and dobutamine). HR, BP, and wall motion changes with exercise are my jam.
What is your average resting heart rate? I’d be curious to see if your HR tends to be higher while tacking up for a lesson vs tacking up to ride on your own. This would definitely indicate that you’re having a stress response.
Also curious if your routine is different. Are your lessons typically at the same time of day as your regular rides? Do you have a coffee before your lesson, but not before a ride on your own? We don’t allow patients to have caffeine for at least three hours prior to stress testing due to the effect on HR response.
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My average resting HR is 52. Lesson and regular ride times vary throughout the week so if it’s a morning, yes coffee. If not, no. However I only drink decaf, if that makes a difference.
I tend to be an anxious rider in general, (an anxious person in general lol) but have complete and utter faith in my horse so don’t think that kind of anxiety / stress is an issue. However I do worry about performing well for my trainer so that could be a factor.
I don’t generally turn my watch on until I’m in the saddle, so will try tracking HR from when I start tracking up to compare. That’s an interesting question.
My trainer did push me today to not take so many breaks and to just keep going through the feeling I needed to stop just because I was breathing hard. I’m sure she’s right that the only way to improve stamina is to keep pushing the limits. I remembered to focus on my breathing pattern some of the time, but when I get busy trying to keep my leg underneath me, my toes forward, my sternum up, my shoulder blades back. My wrists straight, my fingers closed and my abs engaged there’s not always room to think about breathing too 
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@BigMama1 - I thought about you/this thread yesterday. I have been doing a LOT more canter work with my gelding. A couple months back, my trainer noticed that I was doing more gripping than I should be with my legs and was needing to sit more down on my pockets and relax my leg. Once I was able to get that feel better, it helped a ton. Yesterday during my lesson, we spent a good portion cantering poles and a baby crossrail; my heart rate only hit 156 as the high.
The bracing I think was really causing me to hold my breath and this is something that I think I have been doing for many years now at this point. My gelding is only 5 and he had NO canter when I got him, so Im sure I had some extra anxiety playing into it from that angle as well. I’ve gotten him to a place now where he knows what the ask is and is pretty reliable; now we are working more on balance, shifting gears etc.
Have you had any luck??
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Exactly what you just said! I just figured out in a clinic last week that what I thought was “forward” enough really wasn’t, and I never really had my horse in front of the leg. So I’ve been gripping and driving and probably holding my breath too. Now I’ve found a new gear in trot and canter where I literally just sit with my leg off, and the only muscles I’m really engaging all the time are my abs and upper back. It makes everything soooo much easier. And I’m trying to regulate my breathing the way I do when doing other types of exercise, but I forget a lot lol.
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Yay!!! It’s a much better feeling isn’t it? 
