Human Anatomy

Contrary to popular belief, the core isn’t just your abdominal muscles, or “abs.” Your core is a complex system of muscles that spans your torso and hips; these work together to provide stability and facilitate movement.

Your core is essentially your base of riding. It offers the stability required to free and control limb movement, which is crucial for everyone.

The following are some of the significant muscles within this system.

◆ Diaphragm: Assists in proper breathing and the uppermost part of the core.

◆ Rectus abdominis: Commonly known as the “six-pack-ab” muscle, it helps in upper body flexion.

◆ Obliques: These muscles on the sides allow trunk rotation and side flexion.

◆ Quadratus lumborum: Deep core muscle that aids in spine extension and lateral control.

◆ Transverse abdominal: The deepest and very important muscle that supports and compresses the abdominal organs.

◆ Multifidus: Provides spinal stability during movements.

◆ Erector spinae: Extends the trunk and assists in lateral flexion.

◆ Pelvic floor muscles: Main support of the pelvic organs and the lowest part of the core trunk area.

Prioritize Core Strength

Riders need a stable and balanced core even more than most other sports. Imagine trying to direct and guide a horse without a firm base: Regardless of how strong your limbs are, without a sturdy core, it’s challenging to consistently improve riding performance.

Envision trying to take a jump without proper core stability. Despite having great balance, you won’t have the self-carriage to collect yourself and the horse effectively.

Moreover, a strong and supple core sets the foundation for balance—a vital aspect for all riders. A weaker core often leads to poor balance and reaction time, increasing risks of falls and mishaps while riding.

Strengthen Your Core

When most people think of core strengthening, traditional exercises like crunches, planks, and sit-ups most likely come to mind. Instead, try focusing on stability; you don’t necessarily need intense ab workouts. Simple exercises focusing on core stability will do wonders.

To begin learning proper breathing and core engagement, try the exercise below.

Diaphragm Breathing

Start by lying on your back. Concentrate on breathing through your nostrils while naturally expanding your stomach. Inhale, lift; exhale, lower. This is the first step to proper breathing for success on the trail, around a jump course, or in the arena.

As you engage your core properly with this first breathing exercise, you can introduce more challenging movements with more complex exercises, such as supine tabletop crunches, foot taps, deadbugs, turtle, and more.

The Turtle Exercise

The turtle exercise places emphasis on core stability and balance, both of which are fundamental for riders. A strong core helps you maintain an upright posture in the saddle while absorbing the horse’s movements, improving the effectiveness of your aids.

How To: Lie on a mat on your back. Extend your arms overhead. Lift your legs about 6 to 12 inches off the ground. The aim is to balance on your lower back with your shoulders slightly off the ground. Hold this position for the desired timeframe.

Muscles Activated: The primary muscles targeted are the rectus abdominis, obliques, and lower back. This position also requires engagement from the hip flexors and adds an extra challenge to the core muscles.

Common Missteps in Core Workouts

Equestrians, eager to strengthen their core, often make mistakes like rushing through exercises instead of taking the time to learn and perfect their form.

A strong core not only enhances your riding—it can also reduce unnecessary injuries. However, it’s crucial to work on all core muscles, not just the abs.

Your core is the foundation of your riding. A stable and strong core ensures a better-balanced, stronger rider, ready for any unexpected challenges in the saddle.

Further Reading
◆ Developing Core Stability for Horse and Rider
◆ Fit Rider: Get a Stronger Core
◆ Fit Rider: Yoga Poses for Core Strength
◆ Fit Rider: The Core of the Matter
◆ Fit Rider: Core Exercises for Equestrians

This article about core strength for equestrians appeared in the August 2024 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Core Strength for Equestrians appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

For many of us, squeezing in riding time between work, family, home and other commitments means we may have just an hour or two at a time to devote to our horse routine. And some days, we have much less. It’s frustrating, right? We want to continue to improve our horsemanship. But how do we do that with such a limited amount of time to ride? Luckily, there’s good news. By paying attention to the elements of good riding as we navigate our everyday life, we can improve our riding without spending more hours in the saddle. These can include:

◆ Balance
◆ Breathing
◆ Staying in the moment
◆ Relaxation

If you’re ready to leverage your non-riding hours to improve your horsemanship, here are a few ideas to start building daily habits that will translate to your riding.

Because our days are packed, each of these practices takes just a few minutes a day. You can do them anywhere, and all you need is a timer to get started.

Improving Balance

Balance is a key part of being a good rider. When we can balance in the saddle with our body aligned correctly, we can ride without gripping with our legs, shoving our feet forward in the stirrups, or hanging on with the reins.

Better balance means our aids—legs, hands, seat—become independent and precise, and it can help us ride with less pain, too.

Ideas to Try:

◆ Standing yoga poses. Try Mountain, Warrior, Triangle, Tree and Chair poses (visit Yoga Journal for tips).
◆ Stand on a BOSU ball or balance board for a few minutes a couple times a day.
◆ Use a saddle chair or yoga ball instead of a regular desk chair.
◆ Walk or hike on uneven ground.

Improving Breathing

The quality of our breathing impacts our everyday life and significantly affects our riding, and is a key factor to improve. When we hold our breath or our breathing is fast and shallow in our upper chest, it triggers the sympathetic nervous system and the fight or flight response. It also limits the amount of oxygen in our brain and body, which slows down decision making and reaction time.

Not only does shallow breathing create tension and stress in our body, it does the same for your horse. He may respond with tension, bracing, shying, bolting, or being fearful. When you change your breathing to deeper, slower, full breaths, you relax and your horse does, too.

Ideas to Try:

◆ Notice your breathing. Set a timer to ring every hour during the day. When it chimes, simply notice your breathing and how you’re feeling. Are you relaxed and breathing deeply? Are you tense and breathing shallowly? Don’t change anything—just bring awareness.
◆ If you discover your breathing has been shallow or quick, take a few minutes to use one of these tips to deepen your breath.
◆ Try box breathing. Inhale for five counts, hold for five counts, exhale for five counts, hold for five counts. Repeat for five cycles, then return to regular deep breathing.
◆ Try Pilates breathing. Take a long, slow inhale, expanding your lower rib cage as you inhale. Exhale slowly. Repeat three times. It can help to put your hands lightly on your lower ribs and feel the expansion.

Staying in the Moment

Our world doesn’t make it easy to stay present. With social media, games, texts, videos and music as close as our phone, it’s easy to get distracted. Horses, on the other hand, are always in this moment.

A key to good riding is staying present with our horse. If he stumbles, spooks or bucks and our mind is elsewhere—thinking about what to make for dinner, the big meeting tomorrow, our kid’s last report card—that minor blip in our ride can turn into a fall and a major injury for us or our horse. Staying in the moment during your everyday life can help you improve doing the same with your horse.

Ideas to Try:

◆ Practice doing one task a time. Set a timer for 30 minutes. Work only on that task until the timer goes off. Multitasking has been shown to greatly decrease productivity and efficiency.
◆ Take intentional tech breaks. Close email and social media or put your phone in another room for 15 minutes. Start a no-tech-at-dinner challenge.
◆ Go for an awareness walk. Set your timer for 10 minutes. During the walk, bring awareness to one thing, like the sounds you hear, the feeling of your right foot, or looking for the color yellow. When your mind wanders (and it will), come back to your focus area.
◆ Meditate. Focus on your breathing for 10 minutes. Inhale and exhale. When thoughts come up (and they will), notice them and return your focus to your breathing.

Relaxation & Softness

“Relax!” We’ve all heard this from our riding instructors, but forcing yourself to relax often has the opposite effect. Jamming your shoulders down and sitting up straight adds tension, not relaxation. Instead, bring awareness to how your body moves during your everyday to loosen habits of tension and use this to improve your riding.

Ideas to Try:

◆ Use less muscle to do a task. Let’s take driving as an example. Are you holding the steering wheel in a death grip? Are your arms locked, braced or rigid? Practice holding the steering wheel like a baby bird—using just enough pressure to be effective. Take that awareness to other tasks.
◆ Become aware of your posture. Set an hourly timer and notice how your body is positioned. Are you slouched, or are your shoulders raised up to your ears? Take a moment, stand up, move your body, and relax into better posture.
◆ Practice mental softness. Set an hourly timer and notice your inner dialogue. Is it critical, judgmental, stressed or negative, either to yourself or others? If you find this is a frequent mental habit, create a simple phrase to redirect your thoughts. Post it on your computer, bathroom mirror, car dashboard or anywhere else to remind you that you have a choice in how you respond to the day.

Your Turn to Practice in Everyday Life

Take a few minutes and think about which areas are most challenging for you. Pick one to start with and bring focus to it during the day.

Track your practice over several days. A month is even better to build new habits to improve your riding—and maybe everyday daily life!

By spending just a few minutes a day bringing awareness to the elements of good horsemanship, you can deepen your riding skills. No saddle needed.

This article about improving your riding through elements of everyday life appeared in the June 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Improve Your Riding Through Your Everyday Life appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Developing a strong core is a popular focus in fitness these days, for both horse and rider. The benefits touted are less back pain, better posture, greater mobility, and increased athleticism. Plus, who doesn’t want a whittled waist and six-pack abs?

As riders, we may also seek the Holy Grail of a strong core for other reasons. Maybe it will help us sit up straight, keep our heels down and stay magically glued to our saddle as our horse moves underneath us. For our horses, maybe it will help them carry us with ease on trail rides and perform the movements of our favorite discipline, from reining or dressage to show jumping.

And we know the drill to get there, right? Crunches, curls and planks for us humans. Belly lifts, carrot stretches and asking for collection and frequent transitions while riding our horses.

But what if becoming a better, more balanced rider and helping our horse develop athletically and stay sound was not about core strength, but rather about core stability?

Strength vs. Stability

Core strength is training the abdominal muscles to perform certain demands, like holding a static plank position for several minutes, doing hundreds of crunches or sit-ups, or keeping your abs tight throughout the day.

The next time you go for a ride, tighten your core as much as you can. Likely you’ll feel unbalanced and unable to absorb your horse’s movement. Plus, how long can you hold that deep core contraction and still breathe and cue your horse? This is riding from core strength.

“We do need a certain level of core strength for everyday living,” explains Wendy Murdoch, renowned riding coach, author, and expert in human and equine biomechanics and connection.

“However, developing six-pack abs is not needed if our goal is to be better riders. In fact, if good riding were about the sheer strength of our abdominal muscles, then little kids couldn’t ride at all, and some ride extremely well.”

Core stability, on the other hand, involves dynamic movement.

“It’s the ability of the core muscles to work in an efficient and coordinated fashion to maintain correct alignment of the spine and pelvis while the limbs are moving,” Murdoch explains.

It’s this combination of dynamic strength and movement that are key to core stability—and good riding.

Signs of Instability

Here are some signs that you and your horse are not moving with core stability.

Human:
◆ Bracing against the stirrups or forcing the heels down
◆ Pushing the stirrup leather out of a plumb vertical line
◆ Pitching forward at the hips
◆ Not being able to stay with the motion of the horse
◆ Relying on the reins to maintain balance
◆ Gripping with the legs

All these result from bracing in the core muscles and elsewhere in an attempt to maintain balance, rather than from allowing soft joints to absorb the movement of the horse.

Horse:
◆ Out of balance
◆ High-headed
◆ Rushing
◆ Falling in on circles
◆ Difficulty controlling speed
◆ Stiff
◆ Resistant
◆ Fearful

These often occur because the horse is trying to negotiate the task but doesn’t have the flexibility in his joints or stability in his torso to carry the weight of a rider.

The key to building core stability is adding the element of instability in movement.

“Our ability to stay upright and in balance while riding is the result of our large and small muscles firing at the right time, while our joints are supple to allow and follow motion from our horse,” explains Murdoch.

To help us create a solid foundation of core stability, she offers these suggestions.

Core Stability Exercises

Because human and horse anatomy is so similar, we can both benefit from similar exercises and movements. One of the best, and most fun, activities that will benefit both you and your horse is going for walks on varied terrain: up and down hills, walking over logs, negotiating rocks on the trail, and so on.

“The instability under your feet allows the large and small muscles to work and become stronger,” says Murdoch. “At the same time, you’re developing your proprioception of knowing where your body is in space.”

Here are some additional options to try. For humans and horses, the key point is to start with small, slow movement and build in dynamic movement that challenges balance and activates the small postural muscles.

For the Human:
◆ Standing on a balance board, BOSU ball, or SURE FOOT pad (sold by Wendy Murdoch)
◆ Stand-up paddleboarding
◆ Hula hooping
◆ Jumping on a trampoline
◆ Doing yoga poses that challenge balance
◆ Using the Anywhere Saddle Chair instead of a desk chair (sold by Wendy Murdoch)

For the Horse:
◆ Try non-habitual movements, such as those from Linda Tellington-Jones, whose system of circular touches allow the nervous system to learn much more quickly than through repetition of movement.
◆ SURE FOOT Equine Stability Program and pads: These challenge proprioception and balance as the horse activates different muscles and learns new ways of maintaining stability.
◆ Dynamic stretches, such as those from Activate Your Horse’s Core, the book by Hilary Clayton, BVMS, Ph.D., Dipl. ACVSMR, FRCVS.
◆ Groundwork: Explore slow, quiet ground work to become aware of how your horse is moving and his alignment. Start by walking over poles, allowing his neck to relax and lower, then try turns and more complex movements with your horse staying soft in his body. One approach is Peggy Cummings’ Connected Groundwork.

Get Set for Core Stability

Core stability is a gateway for you and your horse to learn to move freely, improve function and deepen your partnership.

“After all, the point of riding isn’t about overpowering your horse with rock-hard abs,” says Murdoch. “Rather, it’s guiding and signaling your horse as you move together in harmony, and helping your horse develop the athletic ability to carry you in dynamic movement.”

No crunches or belly lifts required.

This article about core stability for horse and rider appeared in the April 2022 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Developing Core Stability for Horse and Rider appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.

Lifelong rider and yoga instructor Jamie Ricketts of Fulshear, Texas, first tried a yoga class when she was unable to run due to injury. She found it more challenging than expected, and that class sent her on a path to becoming stronger and more focused.

“I had always thought yoga was more or less stretching, so I was impressed with the workout I got,” says Jamie. “I started yoga for the workout, but I kept going back because I learned something new every time, whether it was about yoga or myself. I was challenged physically and mentally and began seeing those changes. I grew stronger and more flexible—I couldn’t touch my toes when I started—and my mental toughness grew, too!”

Equestrian Yoga for Focus

As an NCAA equestrian competitor on the Texas A&M University team used to clueing into a pattern for competition, Jamie realized that yoga improved her ability to focus more than she could in the past. Yoga was a way for her to train her muscles to react in the way she wanted by focusing on calm, paced breathing.

“Outside of yoga, when things get tough, you can check in with yourself and ask, ‘What am I doing with my breath?’ When things get difficult, turn back to your breath and the conscious effort of just breathing will soothe your mind. You want to go back to long inhale and long exhale to utilize the full capacity of your lungs and make the most of each situation.”

To start building strength and improving focus, Jamie guides you through three yoga poses for equestrians: Goddess, Warrior 1 (or the alternate pose, Crescent Moon), and Downward Facing Dog. These moves target the areas that get stiff or sore after riding.

Jamie recommends finishing the workout in Savasana, or Corpse pose, which is lying on your back.

“I allow myself about 2 minutes each stretch (per side) if needed. Don’t underestimate the benefits of Savasana,” she says. “This pose is important in the practice of yoga because it is the opportunity to slow down, process and allow the relaxation of the central nervous system.”

Yoga has much to offer for equestrians beyond a good workout. “Yoga literally means ‘union,’ and it seeks to create balance in the body as well as in the mind and spirit,” says Jamie.

Equestrian Yoga: Just Breathe

Prepare for your workout through pranayama, or breathing work.

Ricketts says breath work can actually start warming the body internally, before getting physical. Here is her suggested warm-up routine:

Focus on drawing attention to your breath and using the capacity of your lungs, diaphragm, and accessory muscles that help with breathing.

A great way to do this is the three-part breath, allowing the stomach to expand on the inhale, followed by the ribs, and finally the top of the chest.

Linking that breath into movement, start slowly with some spinal movement in each direction: front, back, sides and twists.

1. Goddess

The first equestrian yoga pose for core strength is named Goddess. Before getting in the saddle, use this wide-legged squat pose to loosen your limbs.

The Basics: Try to keep your chest elevated and shoulders over your hips as you bend your knees.Your knees should track over your second toe. Focus on a slight tuck of your tailbone, engaging your core and alleviating any unnecessary pressure in your lower back. Slowly sink into the squat, and as your inner thigh muscles loosen, deepen it.

Advanced Move: With repetition, the squat portion of this pose will continue to drop lower. Add a heel lift to the stretch to take it to the next level.

“This increases the challenge of holding the pose while on your toes, and it works your calf and inner thigh muscles even more,” says Jamie. “Be sure to keep your tailbone tucked in, and keep your shoulders centered, not falling forward.”

2. Warrior 1

The second equestrian yoga pose for core strength is named Warrior 1. Warrior 1 is ideal for opening the hips and strengthening thighs.

The Basics: Start facing forward, with both hips facing forward, then stretch one leg back as if you were doing a lunge. Reach upward with both arms, keeping your elbows about even with your ears. Be sure not to pinch in your shoulders, but keep them wide and even. Stretch back with both arms, elongating your torso by drawing your belly button in toward your spine to protect your lower back.

Modified Move: If you feel any pain in your back knee when you stretch down into the pose, turn your back foot so that the heel is lifted. This is Crescent. You can place one hand on your calf or your thigh if the stretch is too challenging. Then reach the other hand toward the sky similar to Warrior; the pose resembles a crescent moon.

The Workout: Alternate the pose with each leg and hold it for 10 breaths, then 20 or more. Remember to breathe with deep inhalations and long exhalations. To progress, Jamie says to hold for a few more breaths, which builds endurance.

3. Downward Facing Dog

The third equestrian yoga pose for core strength is named Downward Facing Dog. Downward Facing Dog lengthens the backs of the legs while stabilizing your upper body. This will help you stretch your heels down in the saddle.

The Basics: Start standing and bend downward like you’re touching your toes. Stretch each leg back until you are in a push-up position, or high plank. Your fingers should be spread out, with pointer fingers pointing straight, your shoulders over your wrists, and your core pulled up and in (belly button to spine and slight tuck of the tailbone).

From plank position, keep your hands and feet where they are. Press down and forward into your hands as you lift your hips up and back. Your body will resemble an inverted “V.”

Proper Form Matters: This pose both stretches your torso and is also holding your own body weight when in the standing “V.” Your weight should be evenly distributed between your hands and feet.

Draw your shoulders away from your ears and think about pressing your chest back toward your thighs. Your gaze should be toward your knees or whatever is behind you. (It’s OK if your heels lift off the ground.)

Variation: Pedal your feet by bending one knee and pressing the opposite heel down toward the ground to work on stretching your calves and backs of your legs.

This article originally appeared in the December 2018 issue of Horse Illustrated magazine. Click here to subscribe!

The post Fit Rider: Yoga Poses for Core Strength appeared first on Horse Illustrated Magazine.