Horseback riding is a favorite pastime of many with so many physical and mental benefits. Whether you live in a rural location surrounded by ranches, or you’re in a major city, you can benefit from horseback riding. Despite their large and somewhat scary appearance, horses are gentle, sensitive animals who respond to their handlers’ emotions.
1. Physical Benefits of Horseback Riding
Horseback riding greatly improves your physical health. You will use muscles you have never used before– and ache like you’ve never used those muscles too! With time the aching will subside, and your strength within those muscles will increase.
2. Improves Your Flexibility
Right from the start, horseback riding tests your
flexibility. Just getting up into the saddle requires your knee at shoulder height (foot in stirrup) and to push your own body weight with one leg. Unless of course you are lucky enough to start out on a small pony and use a mounting block.
Your hip flexors and pelvis will become extremely flexible if you ride horses regularly. Don’t worry if you are unable to mount the first few times, this type of flexibility and strength comes with time and practice.
3. Improves Your Balance
Despite the ongoing argument that horseback riding isn’t a sport, you can’t just simply sit in the saddle and expect the horse to do all the work. Remaining balance on a moving animal requires a lot of skill. Advanced riders will use their body weight to help the horse in and out of corners, over jumps and up and down steep slopes. All of this requires excellent balance.
4. Improves Your Core Strength
Sitting in a saddle while a horse is moving is using your core like no other workout! Your abdominal muscles, back, and pelvic floor all have to work together to keep you stable in the saddle.
Likely, you’ll be repeatedly told to
‘sit up straight’ when you first start riding. The correct posture will come with time, once you have developed your core musculature.
5. Improves Your Coordination
When you are riding a horse, you aren’t simply a passenger. You have to use your hands, weight, legs, and seat to direct the horse. Normally you use a combination of all 4 of these at once. For example, if you want the horse to go faster, you drop your hands forward, you shift your weight forward, you put on the pressure with your legs and you engage your seat. Horses are very sensitive animals, and these movements are subtle.
6. Grows Your Muscles
Horseback riding uses more muscles than just your core. Your glutes, quads, and hamstrings will be doing a lot of work to keep you in the saddle.
Your arms, shoulders and upper back have to hold your arms steady so you don’t give mixed signals to the horse.
The rising trot is where you rise out of the saddle and off the horses back at a trotting speed. You rise up and down with the movement of the trot. It’s like repeatedly performing a squatting exercise.
7. Improves Your Concentration
As a beginner, horseback riding uses
every ounce of your concentration. You have to think about the horse, your balance, your hands, your legs, move around obstacles and a whole lot more.
Soon this will become second nature, and you’ll be able to concentrate on fun stuff like jumping and racing your friends.
Before you indulge in equestrian sports, you should know some basic tips of looking after a horse. This way, you’ll be better informed when you decide to take up your first horseback riding lesson. Horses, like any animals, need food, water, cleaning, and veterinary attention. Horses are grazing animals and therefore get all their nutrition from grass, hay or haylage. Horses thrive living out in the pasture in a herd with other horses. Horses require fresh drinking water at all times. If the horses are stalled, the stall will require mucking out a few times a day. Yes, this means removing the poop!
Horses will require veterinary attention throughout their life. Like all animals, they require annual jabs to protect them against certain diseases. Many horses develop arthritis due to repetitive movements and old age. CBD oil for horses with arthritis may help alleviate the symptoms associated with equine arthritis.
Horseback riding is like any skill or sport, it takes hard work and dedication and a lot of hours to be able to master even the basics.
Go Horseback Riding Today!
What are your favorite benefits of saddling up? Let us know on Twitter!
By subscribing, you consent to receive emails from BlackDoctor.com. You may unsubscribe at any time. Privacy Policy & Terms of Service.
