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3 simple mounted exercises to improve your strength and balance in the saddle from a five-star event rider and top coach
Riding ability may be partly talent – both of the horse and rider – but there are ways we can improve our technique to become better riders. Here, we look at three exercises that work specifically to build our strength and balance, in this first part of a series on rider technique exclusively for H&H subscribers
Horse rider strength and balance go hand in hand, as five-star eventer and BHS Fellow Kylie Roddy explains: “If you imagine carrying a backpack that’s heavier on one side than the other, it’ll be harder for you to walk. So, if you aren’t balanced on your horse, it’s going to have the same effect.”
Balance requires stability, which means conditioning the muscles.
“It takes strength to stabilise your pelvis, and a lot of muscle groups are involved,” Kylie continues, adding that it’s all-encompassing, not just the core. “Your abs and back, hip flexors and glutes, all the way to the quads in the front of your legs; all those muscle systems work to balance you, so they all need to be strong.”
According to Kylie, lack of condition in these muscle groups might lead riders to rely on other ways to balance, such as their reins.
“You quite often see people with a lot of weight in the heel and their leg forward,” she adds. “A balanced rider has their ear, shoulder, hip and heel in a vertical line. If that line isn’t vertical, then the rider is out of balance with their horse.”
You should be able to draw a vertical line from the rider’s ear, through the shoulder and hip to the heel.
(Image credit: Lucy Merrell)
Strength is also important because muscle fatigue impacts the quality of your riding.
“If you go into a dressage test after a 30-minute warm-up, but that’s also the time it takes to reach your muscle fatigue zone, then you’re going into your test and will be doing your best work with tired muscles.”
How to improve horse rider strength and balance at home
“Keeping your ear, shoulder hip and heel in the vertical line is the easiest way to check that you’re in balance,” says Kylie. “It’s great if you’ve got arena mirrors, because every time you ride past, you can check yourself. If you don’t, ask someone with good eyes who knows what to look for to watch you.”
If you need to adjust your position regularly, it’s a sign you lack some of the strength you need for balance in the saddle. The good news? It’s easy to incorporate fitness exercises into your busy equestrian life to target these groups. The best news? You can do it mounted.
Exercise 1: ride a centre line without stirrups
“This is best if you have arena mirrors, or can get a friend to film you,” says Kylie. “Simply ride down the centre line without your stirrups, and turn at the end of the area.”
The aim is to keep your pelvis equally distributed in the saddle throughout.
“If you drew a line pommel to cantle down the center of your saddle, your horse’s spine should align with that, with your seat bones sat evenly on either side.”
Using either mirrors or a friend to give you feedback, try riding with no stirrups down the centre line to gauge your straightness.
(Image credit: Emma Herrod Photography)
The benefits
A go-to for horse rider strength and balance, no-stirrup work engages your core and helps expose any crookedness, which allows you to improve it.
“When you’re watching yourself down the centreline, you’ll likely notice that one leg looks longer than the other,” explains Kylie. “Actually, it’s that your pelvis has slipped to the side. Your aim is to ride towards the mirror or helper on the ground while keeping your feet level.”
Kylie says turning one way will likely feel easier than the other.
“Most riders’ pelvises will slide to the outside, so you’ll go from having a long, straight inside leg to it gripping up. This is associated with an unstable seat.”
To remedy this, riders should feel that their outside seatbone is on the pommel to cantle line through the saddle. “That won’t be the reality – you’ll actually be sitting square.”
Exercise 2: remain standing
“Kenneth Clawson trained me as a young rider,” says Kylie. “One day, when we were working in, he said: ‘no one’s allowed to sit today’. He had us walking, trotting and cantering all without our bottoms ever touching the saddle!”
Out of the saddle: Harry Meade demonstrates standing in the stirrups, which improves the rider’s strength and balance.
(Image credit: Jess Photography)
The benefits
While we wouldn’t recommend jumping straight in with a whole ridden session (why not set a 30-second timer and build up from there?) standing in the stirrups is an intense leg workout that’s easy to do.
“The other benefit is that the relief from sitting down helps you relax into the seat, making you more secure,” adds Kylie.
Exercise 3: 10 strides at a time
For something a little more involved, Kylie recommends:
Put your stirrups to jumping length and pick up canter
Sitting normally, count 10 canter strides
Adopt a two-point seat for 10 canter strides
Stand for 10 canter strides
Return to the two-point seat for 10 canter strides
Repeat steps 2-5
The benefits
“This balance-improving exercise requires the rider to gently find their way back down to the saddle without disturbing the horse’s rhythm or falling backwards to hit the cantle,” explains Kylie. “It develops the strength needed to control that movement, which is all part of being stable in the saddle – you have to find and control that softness in the knee and ankle to lift and slowly lower yourself back into the saddle.”
Kylie suggests steadying yourself by putting a finger into the neck strap if you feel yourself wobble.
Have you tried these horse rider strength and balance exercises? Let us know how you got on by emailing hhletters@futurenet.com, including your name, nearest town and country, for the chance to appear in a forthcoming issue of the magazine
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(Image credit: Andrew Sydenham for Future Publishing)
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A horse owner and rider with more than 20 years experience, Bethany has been writing for equestrian publications since 2017. Over the course of her career, she has reported from major British Riding Clubs and British Dressage championships, covered Badminton Horse Trials and interviewed equestrian sport’s best athletes. Her work can also be found in Country Life, The Field and Breathe magazine.
