Work Out Wednesday

Horse riding requires strength and stamina in certain muscles that we typically do not use otherwise. This means that when you start out those muscles are not going to be strong enough to do the job correctly straight away. And this is completely normal! However there are some exercises that you can do at home to help speed this process up and get you riding more independently much quicker. Today's work out is slow squats.

I love this exercise as it targets the muscles we use for rising trot. Quite often when I have riders that are learning to do rising trot they tend to not have the ability to ease themselves back down in to the saddle and end up landing quite heavy on the horses back. Long term this can cause some serious back issues for your horse if you don't change what you are doing. So how I do the slow squats is I do just a normal squat with my feet placed at shoulder length apart with toes facing forward. And then I squat down but I take 10 seconds to go down and then 10 seconds again on the way back up. You will feel burn in your thighs! Only do as many as you can comfortably do! If you have any pre existing medical issues or experience any pain while doing this please contact your doctor or medical professional before undertaking in any exercises.