Why should we be doing daily core strengthening work with our horses? Because we sit on the lowest, weakest part of their back, so this is the bit that needs to be strengthened for riding!

LET ME SHARE WITH YOU THE BENEFITS OF CORE ENGAGEMENT FOR YOUR HORSE!

Tip 1: Your horse will start working over his back

We have all heard this term, getting your horse to work over his back, and we probably know what that is or looks like, but WHY is it important and HOW do we do it? And what does it...

I talking a lot about posture and core engagement for our horses as it's so important and beneficial, so going a step further, I wanted to talk about how core engagement affects different activities for our horses!

Each activity with our horses requires them to have different skills, whether we are doing dressage, jumping, cross country, endurance, groundwork.

But all of these activities or sports require good core strength for different reasons! 

Dressage riders

Question for...

Through my time rehabilitating horses with injuries, one of the things I have noticed is that a lot of the horses have looked weak in their musculature, or uneven in the musculature at the point of injury/starting rehab, so I can start to see how the injuries may have happened.

Horses have not evolved for us to ride them, and they are actually a pretty poor design for riding!

They are big animals so I think it’s easy to think they are strong. However, size doesn’t alway mean...

The way that I look at horses is holistically, meaning I look at the whole horse, not just the areas that are injured, painful or dysfunctional.

And something that I have learnt and see regularly is that horses learn to compensate for issues in their body by avoiding/locking one area, so that the weight of the rider and forces of movement have to be absorbed elsewhere in the body.

I’ll give an example to explain what I mean.

A horse that has been ‘jarred up’ because he...

My experience in working with back pain in horses over the last 10 years has provided me with the opportunity to find out what actually works when it comes to training horses!

What I have learnt and developed is a system of core engagement exercises and ‘tools’ for you to use to transform your horses posture and get him working over his back properly.

The fundamentals that I teach in my training are:

Postural correction: if your horse is moving with a tight back and high head...

TIP 1: Low neck position

***Can you lead your horse around with his nose near the ground?

It's not as easy as you might think! Give it a try! If your horse can't or won't do this, he is resisting in his neck/core/back.

This is one of the fundamentals that I teach in my training - your horse needs to be able to 'let go' of his neck and back, it's really important.

TIP 2: Carrot stretches!!!

They really are one of the BEST exercises that you can do with your horses! They are super effective at...

Here are my top tips to help encourage good posture in your horses, and they are small things that you can be doing on a daily basis. Little and often is better than once a week! 

What do we mean by good posture?

Good posture in a horse is a strong toned core, which lifts the back. A strong and well muscled topline. A leg at each corner is a saying in the horse world, and good posture is also a leg at each corner of the horse, with the horse neither leaning over his forehand, or leaving...