"The Benefits of Bareback Riding"
by: Suzanne Lavine
Why is horseback riding considered therapeutic? Bareback riding allows the rider to experience more personal freedom of movement combined with the powerful movement of the horse.
The horse’s movement at the walk provides the rider with a side-to-side and up-and-down movement similar to a human’s normal walking gait. This motion causes many of the major muscle groups in the person’s body to work simultaneously. Each gait of the horse is transmitted into the rider’s body: back, shoulders, buttocks, groin, hips, thighs, knees, calves.
Horseback riding helps to improve posture, balance, strength, flexibility, and eye-to-hand coordination. These elements provide overall body involvement unique in the therapeutic world. Bareback riding allows the rider to easily lie down on the horse, move legs side-to-side, rotate the body or hug the horse while lying across its neck without the restriction of a saddle.
Remember, horseback riders are athletes. Ever been around runners? What is the first thing they do?– they stretch. How often do I see riders tack up, jump in the saddle, and ride off? In fairness to body and horse, consider stretching for the rider and the horse partner first. Many of the stretches taught when bareback riding can easily be adapted to the saddle; although when riding bareback, it is much easier to move around on the horse. By performing a stretch while riding, the movement of the horse exaggerates all movements and gives a little more oomph into that stretch. For example, grab the horse’s mane with one hand and touch the opposite site of the horse’s croup (rump) while looking toward the back of the horse. That will provide a very good stretch through the whole spine.
Frequently, riders will use their legs to clamp onto a horse. Through bareback riding, riders experience how to release their clamp and still maintain balance. Part of this experience is to realize that the horse moves more freely and trusts the rider more when the rider has learned how to better communicate with the horse by utilizing each part of the body independently.
This experience will benefit riders of any discipline.
In order to feel balanced on a horse, a riders needs to understand their own and the horse’s weaker or stronger side. During the sessions, each learns how to strengthen the weaker side, support the horse, and bring balance to the riding experience. Weight shift means something to a horse depending on how it has been trained. By balancing the body, this helps the seat remain level during all exercises, avoiding unintentional signals to the horse. Un-level riding can be difficult on the body and physically hard the horse.
When lounging bareback riders from the ground, I frequently see the rider stop moving through the upward and downward transitions. This transmits to horses to stop engaging their backend; their engine – their rear wheel drive. Each gate has a unique movement that the rider should match, enabling horse and rider to engage in the harmonous “dance” of riding.
Bareback riding will teaches how to make contact with the horse through the rider’s seat bones. However, the way the head is held, shoulders, hips, back and legs impacts the rider’s seat and, therefore, balance. Overall posture is very important. It is also common to focus on relaxing one area of our body, only to tighten up another area in the meantime. A series of exercises will show how to stack the building blocks of the body to gain relaxation and balance at all levels.
Riding bareback on the lounge line allows riders to fully concentrate on their body while someone else is controlling the horse. One of the best experiences while doing this is closing the eyes, which closes out a major sensory input and truly allows focusing on feeling the horse’s movement.
Overall, the bareback experience allows a better sense of feeling what is happening in the horse’s back and how the legs are moving. This encourages building a rhythm with the horse—what I call “dancing in rhythm” with the horse. Don’t step on his toes or have him step on yours!! The incredible sense of success when rider and horse are true dancing partners is beyond rewarding!
(c) 2004 - Suzanne Lavine