Everyone Should Be Doing Pilates, and That Includes Your Horse
Laura Reiman, MS, NPCP-CPT, is the owner of The Pilates Powerhaus in Alexandria, Virginia, and author of ‘Pilates for Horses’. Follow for more tips on Instagram at @Pilatesforhorses or online at Pilates4horses.com
If you’ve never tried Pilates, it is a full-body exercise modality that excels at keeping muscles both strong and supple. There are Pilates movements for everything: injury prevention, elite athlete conditioning, support for post-injury or older bodies, and increased mind-body connection. You name your goal, and there’s a principle within Pilates that can help you get there in some way. If you have tried Pilates, you know how strong and tall you feel when walking out of a class. Don’t you want your horse to also have great posture and a solid core?
I have a story like a lot of adult amateurs. I got myself a young, green off-track Thoroughbred with the idea that with the help of trainers and other professionals, I’d be able to work my way up to some lower-level events and have fun at clinics, hunter paces and all the other opportunities that abound in Area 2. Unfortunately, it just didn’t go that way.
After a mild kissing spine and subsequent EPM diagnosis, I had to take a huge step back and figure out how to build my horse’s muscles and strength from the ground up. I read every book I could find and met with all kinds of bodyworkers with an open mind. I realized that a lot of the information out there is not all that amateur-friendly, and that simply put, horse’s bodies respond to exercise and therapy a lot like ours. I took my background in Pilates, personal training and nutrition, and started modifying classic stretches and exercises to fit my abilities and my horse’s needs.
I consider myself an eventer, a very terrible but very passionate dressage enthusiast, and now a Horse Pilates practitioner. It’s so easy to incorporate 15 minutes of Pilates into my barn time, whether during warm-up, as part of my ride, or after I’ve put my horse away. Some days my horse gets a full set of stretches, some days we lunge keeping Pilates principles in mind, some days we do flatwork or gymnastics with an emphasis on balance and the mind-body connection – there are ways to sprinkle a few minutes of Pilates into every visit to the barn.
Pilates is not about reinventing the wheel. Joseph Pilates himself studied all different types of movement and created an exercise program that was an aggregate of the best ideas he could find. Most people have heard of carrot stretches, cavaletti work, transitions, hill work, etc., however we often don’t stop to think about why we do these things and what the benefits are. When we do, our program and goals become more clear and our aids more intentional. If is far easier to remember an exercise when you know the “why” behind it, and not just the choreography because we’ve heard it somewhere before. Looking for a good place to start? Why not a classic carrot or “incentive stretch?”
Try Nose Forward Reach, which is an exercise that focuses on core engagement and can improve balance, stability, and self-carriage. By doing this stretch, your horse will active his thoracic sling including the serratus ventralis, pectorals, and subclavius, as well as the hip and pelvis stabilizers including the glutes, sacrocaudalis dorsalis, tensor fasciae latae, quadriceps, bicep femoris, adductors and sartoris. This is also a great stretch for the muscles around the spine.
How to try Nose Forward Reach:
1) Stand in front of your horse and hold one hand gently against his chest to stop any forward steps.
2) Offer a treat right in front of his nose to get his attention.
3) Slowly move the treat in a straight line away from the horse, enticing him to shift his weight forward toward the treat without taking a step.
4) Make sure your horse’s nose is straight, with no tilt.
5) Hold for 10 seconds to start, working up to 30 seconds over the course of several weeks.
6) If your horse tries to take a step forward, try keeping a hand on his shoulder and move the treat away more slowly.
Considering the main principles of Pilates – control, center, concentration, precision, breath, flow, balance, efficiency, alignment, coordination, stamina, lengthening, and harmony – it’s hard not to see how beneficial it can be for our four-legged athletes. Have you tried Pilates with your horse?