Rider Fitness - Targeted for Equestrians

What you can do to become a better and more efficient rider

Part #1 - Cardiovascular Fitness

There are many things each of us can do on a regular basis to improve our riding and better our horses. You do not need a lot of equipment or expensive gym memberships, you simply need a few minutes every other day. Before beginning any exercise program it is a good idea to consult your physician and it is imperative that you do so if you have any existing health problems.

We all know how important it is to regularly exercise our horses but we often neglect ourselves. Riding, regardless of type, is a very physical sport and requires great muscle control and stability. In this article, I will demonstrate some basic guidelines you can follow to improve your cardiovascular heath as well as your horses’.

The first component to any exercise program is Cardiovascular Fitness. There are many forms of cardiovascular activity, including riding. A good rule of thumb is if you feel winded or out of breath while riding you likely need to improve your cardiovascular capacity. Of course all horses are different and some require you to work harder than others, however if you are fatigued in 15 minutes or less of moderate riding you should consider supplementing your riding with another cardiovascular activity. Some examples of alternate activities include; power walking, running, cycling, swimming, cross-country skiing, hiking and many more. When participating in these activities you can monitor how hard you are working a number of ways. First, you can take your heart rate which for moderate activity should be between 70 - 85% of your maximum heart rate. You can find your maximum heart rate by starting with 220 if you are male and 226 if you are female and subtracting your age, then multiplying by your target heart rate zone (70-85%).

Methods of Measuring Cardiovascular Activity:

1) Heart Rate

Ex: Female age 30 yrs exercising at a moderate level of 70 - 85% of her maximum heart rate Pulse taken on the wrist or neck over 60 secs.

Max - age=max HR, x % = heart rate zone

*226 - 30 = 196 x .70 = 137 beats per minute

*226 - 30 = 196 x .85 = 167 beats per minute

(*male use 220 as max)

137 - 167 bpm would be the heart rate zone for this person. Another easier way, although less accurate, is the Perceived Exertion Scale.

2) Perceived Exertion

This method uses a scale of 1 -10, 1 being very easy and 10 being very difficult. For example, 1 would be resting on couch and 10 would be a full sprint.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

very easy ----------------->easy----------------->moderate---------->difficult

Using this method you would ask yourself "how hard am I working?" and you should be at about a 7 or 8 on the scale.

How often do I need to exercise for? The minimum as recommended by Health Canada is 30 minutes of moderate activity (in your heart rate zone) 3 times a week. Now this is just a guideline and depending on your riding goals and how you feel when riding, you may need to do more or less. Keep in mind that your riding may also count as some of this time, that is if you achieve a heart rate in your training zone (70-85%) while riding.

Again, if you want to be able to ride longer without becoming out of breath, I suggest you increase the Cardiovascular training you do out of the saddle. You may ride 5 days a week but perhaps you are not riding efficiently? For example, if you added 1 day of another activity you would see and feel a difference in your daily rides! One more suggestion, if you are counting your riding time as cardiovascular training, and you are not sure how hard you are working, try wearing a heart rate monitor. Sometimes it is difficult to check your heart rate while on your horse so a heart rate monitor easily displays it for you. I will discuss this topic in more detail next time!

Summary

Cardiovascular health is equally important for you as well as your horses. To ride efficiently we need to be fit and often riding alone is not enough. As riders, we all have different goals and aspirations and our fitness programs should reflect them! There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to riders or rider fitness, therefore we each need to assess our individual needs and that of our horses in order to build sound fitness programs that are as unique as we all are!

Written for www.ccriderss.com [http://www.ccriderss.com]

How Honest Are You?

Do you remember when every meeting you had was done face to face? For years, that's the way we interacted with each other because there was no choice. Now we are inundated with choice - Facebook, Twitter, Skype, SMS, Face Time, online chat, email and of course, good old fashioned telephone conversations. All these methods of communication have left us in a state of constant-connection always in pursuit of the latest news, advice, information, gossip etc. But now we have a little bit of distance in how we communicate, how truthful are we? In my opinion you still can't beat a face-to-face meeting where you can build a rapport with somebody but that doesn't mean you can't achieve this in other communication mediums. Truth is everything in business and the way you communicate with your customers needs to build trust or you can kiss goodbye to repeat business.

With email marketing you can start to build trust with your client base. In order to do this though you need to be honest about your own business and the way you operate. Here are a few questions for you to mull over:

Do you tell customers when they are eligible for a free upgrade or other benefits? Do you remind customers if they haven't claimed something they might be entitled to? Do you remind customers when their warrant or guarantee is about to expire? Do you advise customers before automatically renewing their subscription or other agreements? Do you advise customers if they could be on a better tariff? Do you pro-actively follow up on poor service or mistakes with apologies and refunds? Do you ever recommend a competitor's product or service if it better suits your client's needs? Do you ever use third parties to generate customer reviews? Do you ever use customer analytics to improve their overall experience with your business?

If by now you are starting to blush slightly then maybe it's time that you started to make your business a bit more transparent. In the email-marketing world we all know what it's like to receive spam, fraudulent offers, hard sell, and unrealistic opportunities. Unfortunately the more ways we have to communicate, the more we are bombarded with information that we can't trust. However, it is possible to cut through all this noise and make your business become a shining beacon for truth, integrity and transparency in how you communicate with your customers. You just need to be honest with yourself first...

For honest, no nonsense advice on how to start an email marketing campaign that builds trust with your customers then please contact Hayley Cashmore on 0845 116 2723 or email info@threespiresconsulting.co.uk

Advantages of Cheap Ebooks

There was a time when the idea of ebooks taking the place of hard copy books seemed far-fetched and impossible. Now, however, with electronic reading becoming more and more popular by the moment, people are beginning to get a glimpse of the future of reading, and it mostly involves electronic books.

There are many reasons why cheap ebooks became widely accepted and are slowly becoming the dominant medium in literature. These reasons may help convince you to invest in an eBook reader and take up an eBook reading habit.

1. Availability. Cheap ebooks are so easy to find, with them being so rampant on the Internet. It is now possible to find copies of any title on the market without even leaving one's home. People can browse through lots of online libraries and download their selected titles for a fee. It certainly beats having to go to a bookstore to look for your desired titles, and since you can easily jump from one online library to another, you don't have to go through the hassle of not finding the book you want after driving all the way to the bookstore.

2. Accessibility. Cheap ebooks are also highly accessible. Once you find the title you want, getting a copy is as easy as making a few clicks. That is, if you are buying from the bookstore that supports your ereader. But even if you seek for ebooks from other online sources, getting access to the digital copies is as easy as connecting your ereader to your computer and transferring the files.

3. Affordability. Electronic book copies are usually offered at lower prices online due to the competition among different online booksellers. With a lack of monopoly, the booksellers have to find way to bring in more customers than their competitors. One strategy to ensure this is by lowering the prices of books. And since online bookstores that sell digital copies do everything electronically, they have very little expenses in maintaining their businesses. This puts them in the position to offer lower prices.

4. Convenience. The biggest reason, however, that convinces people to start reading cheap ebooks rather than their hard copy versions, is the convenience of electronic reading. Since ebooks don't take up any space at all, you can store them in your ereader or on an online storage service. In one ereader or one memory disk, you can store up to thousands of electronic books already. Not only is this logistically convenient, but it also allows you to access your books wherever you may be. This makes it a joy to read while commuting or even when you're traveling.

Using A SEO Directory to Promote a Website

In order to run a successful search engine marketing campaign, incoming links are seen as the most significant aspect. It is known that if you are able to gain the right high-quality links, it will make it much easier to rank a website higher in the natural searches results. A wide range of linking practices are available, some more beneficial than others. One of the easiest techniques for acquiring high quality one way links is to use the general or niche specific SEO directory websites.

There are literally thousands of web directories across the internet offering the opportunity to publish a link, which directs back to your website. Directories might range from the general, which accept any type of website, the niche specific directories, and the business directories. Each of these directory types will have their own target audience, so it is important to choose the one that will be most beneficial for your needs.

Also, web directories are either free-based or incorporate a payment structure for the submission process. Fees can range from a nominal one-time payment to those charging several hundred dollars or more. A recurring monthly or yearly fee might also be applicable. The choice of web directory used often comes down to your marketing strategy and available budget.

A high-quality and human edited paid directory can often be highly beneficial to any website to get listed on. If looking at the more expensive web directories, such as the Yahoo Directory for instance, it often helps to look at the long-term benefits that may be gained. Mostly from having your site listed on a highly trafficked site. Paid listings are also seen to offer significant SEO benefits in the search engines.

Submitting a website to a handful of quality free-based Web directories is also an effective step in getting a website well indexed and also to boost a sites ranking position in the natural search results. Even though the search engines might not give so much emphasis on the free directory listings, you still benefit from the incoming links. Also, if the general or niche specific directories have sufficient traffic, then some of that traffic might make its way to your site by clicking on your well thought out link and description.

All in all, submitting a website to these online directories, whether paid or free, offers an excellent opportunity to increase the success of your search engine marketing campaign. Instead of submitting to just one or two well-chosen SEO directories, aim to submit to several web directories over a prolonged period to really see the benefits.

Insuring The Older Worker With Workers Compensation

In many globalized countries these days, including much of Europe and America, there is a problem of an aging workforce. In Germany many of the workers in auto plants are near retirement age, and the specialized labor force to replace them is in critical shortage. There are similar challenges in US, within the next decade workers compensation laws will continue to change and adapt to theses new situations.

According to data from the U.S. Census, employees in the United States are rapidly aging and many people over the age of 55 are still working. These numbers have increased by more than 50% over the last six years. With this in mind, there's a way for employers and employees to prepare by actually changing the work environment, as well as taking caution with more safety initiatives. This is where employers and workers unions have a rare situation where they can genuinely work together for the betterment of both parties. Furthermore, as commodity and labor prices in the marketplace will fluctuate, worker's compensation policy trends will also have to change as well. Group health insurance plans will increase, forcing workers compensation insurance to also change as the larger corporations force the insurance industry to also adapt.

Together with the problem of worker maturation, this presents a new field of pitfalls, which then cause finance problems essential in insurance policy formation. In addition to their employers, aging workers need to learn new methods to use modern assisted technology. If incidents do occur then, they're more successfully dealt with in the workers compensation statements. While older personnel are more experienced and have less workplace injuries, they are from a financial standpoint, more expensive than newly hired younger staff. This provides an incentive and opportunity for employers to find younger workers to replace them. However, with the changes in broad demographic trends, the gap between the aging labor force and their replacements continues to grow. The growth of age-related health issues will also produce changes in work compensation.

In accordance with the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2004, the states paid out over $56 million to assist workers; annually that amount continues to increase. In almost all of theses cases the injuries were physical incidents while the worker was attending to his official work duties at the assigned work place. Nearly half of the insurance budget set aside by the states is used for health care bills alone, and throughout 2007, workers compensation payouts rose to nearly $70 million. The statistics also stress the number one issue in worker's compensation claims were again, physical related injuries.

The most beneficial way for the system to improve is to actually favor the older workers. However, as trends Indicate, the system needs some serious revision. For some employers, what might have been adequate in the past will certainly not suffice in the future. If workers compensation laws favor assisted technology, costs will go up for employers. This may reflect in the national economy as more regulations are applied in the different states. Assisted technology may have higher costs for the employers, but they will benefit society as a whole by reducing our government payouts in the form of injury compensation.

Retail History

It is one of the biggest employers in the world. It eats up a large chunk of our money. It is the retail industry.

Retailing is a massive, passive beast that pervades just about all our lives. Virtually all of us shop, sometimes as a pleasure and sometimes as a burdenous chore.

But when and how did it all begin? The answer is probably to do with surpluses. As we got better at cultivating the land, some people found that even after feeding their families and animals and putting food into storage, there was some left over. Rather than waste this surplus, it was traded for other surpluses or perhaps tools or other objects.

Those that had enough land and were particularly good at producing food from it would have realized that they were on to a good thing by deliberately producing surpluses. Eventually the informal trade in goods would have become more organized, with central markets being formed where these producers could get together on a regular basis in order to exchange goods.

Of course, trading goods for other goods is all very well until you have just about every thing you are likely to ever need, or the product you want has yet to be produced. In order to get around this, people started to owe goods to other people. Early forms of credit may have just been verbal agreements. As time passed, some traders and producers decided to keep a record of what was owed. One way this was done was by the debtor leaving some collateral with the creditor - some object or an animal that was held by the creditor until the debt was paid. This was OK until the debtor needed the tool or animal in order to produce the very goods that were owed. An alternative way of denoting credit was to use a symbolic object, such as small animal. Since small animals are not very portable, it became more normal to use small inanimate objects such as pebbles. Over time these small object became more decorated and valued and eventually metal coins and paper notes became more and more familiar. So early trading gave rise to money.

As time passed, some producers would have found they were better at selling the goods than growing them (or perhaps enjoyed it more!). Others preferred to stick to growing. So there was a gradual separation of the producers and the traders.

And it was not just food that was sold. Tools, trinkets, jewelry, cups, plates and many other objects would have been traded as well.

The informal markets would, over time, become more formal and more permanent. So shops began. Other traders would prefer to travel around selling their goods. These became known as peddlers. Selling from a regular market, from a permanent shop or peddling goods are known collectively as retailing.