Whether you're an elite dressage rider or someone hopping on a horse for the first time, we all experience stress. It goes hand-in-hand with pursuing success. How stress plays out for you in your riding ultimately depends on how you handle it.
Most horses seem to enjoy companionship and attention from their riders, but some may find being ridden uncomfortable and even scary. It is up to the individual horse to decide whether they like it. There are things you can do as a rider to help your horse feel more comfortable while being ridden.
Reduces stress
Horseback riding allows you to take a break from life's stressors and experience the fresh air. Spending time with animals and exercising releases a hormone called serotonin, which can improve your mood and reduce your stress levels.
Lowers Stress Levels
For many who own horses, one of the first therapeutic values they will cite is that being with their horse immediately lowers their stress. Spending time riding horses can lower blood pressure and cause cortisol (our stress hormone) levels to decrease dramatically.
It can be tiring
A lot of physical and emotional strength is required to ride a horse and it will wear you out, especially if you are dedicating a lot of your time to the sport. If you lead a busy lifestyle, then you will need to take this into consideration before taking up horse riding properly.
While horseback riding has clear physical benefits and is great exercise, it also provides huge psychological benefits as well. Horse riding can help to lower stress, improve confidence and help mental focus and concentration.
One study conducted in Sweden confirmed that horses sense the anxiety of their riders and experience an increased heart rate at the same time as their human companions. This may be why it is said that horses can sense fear when a new human is attempting to handle them.
Horses Like Humans With Calm and Happy Facial Expressions
Another study conducted by the Universities of Sussex and Portsmouth has concluded that horses are capable of recognizing human facial expressions, allowing them to react differently to those humans who they might perceive as a threat.
Horses can read human emotions, too, often in uncannily accurate ways; alerting us to our sadness or nervousness, sometimes before we've even consciously registered it.
While your friends will work their butt off in the gym, as a horse rider you'll undoubtedly already have beautifully toned legs and glutes; great for those fitted jeans and no need to dread 'leg day'. Toning and muscle building while having fun.
For a person weighing 150 lbs, riding at a walk burns approximately 136 calories in a 30 minute session. If you increased the horse's speed to a trot, that same person would expend 72 additional calories over that same 30 minute period of time (208 calories). Galloping a horse burns 261 calories per half hour.
Avoid riding your horse when the combined air temperature (F) and relative humidity is over 150, especially if the horse is not acclimated to the heat.
Horse riding is not particularly easy to learn. It is both physically and mentally challenging to handle both your own posture in the saddle as well as the movements of the horse. Becoming a good rider can take years depending on how often and consistently you ride.
There was a study done and published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine that found that equine therapy can have a positive impact on individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Horse riding can have an antidepressant effect causing a drop in the levels of stress hormone. It is a natural stimulant for the hormone Serotonin, otherwise known as a mood enhancer. When this is released, we feel a sense of happiness and well-being. These endorphins also relive tension and stress.
Your leg and back muscles muscles will be very sore when you first start riding. Riding requires you to use muscles you didn't know you had and it takes time to acclimate and build strength. At the trot you can get bounced around quite a bit until you find your balance and learn to move with the horse.
Researchers confirmed that horses can smell specific odors in human sweat that reflect emotions like fear and happiness, which could open doors to a whole new way of understanding emotion transfer from human to horse, they say.
Horses aren't just for humans to show one another affection. Did you know that horses hug too? Just make sure that you're on the horse's good side before hugging them, and remember that if they start licking you or breathing on you it is often because they appreciate your company.
Horses DON'T form attachment bonds with their owners despite what equine enthusiasts might think - but they do regard humans as 'safe havens' Horses think of humans as 'safe havens' but don't form attachment bonds with their owners - despite what equine enthusiasts might think, a new study reveals.
The researchers conclude that, assuming a similar riding ability between riders, there is no fundamental difference in a horse's stress responses elicited by male and female riders.
The authors claim this is because horses appear to view humans as safe, and they are calmed by our presence, but they don't appear to be affected by the presence of specific people. In other words, they don't seem to care about which one of us is around them.
According to results of a study conducted by researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, horses do seem to read some signals to indicate whether a nearby person is stressed or afraid, at least in certain circumstances.
Now researchers have found that horses also can smell human emotions. Dr. Antonio Lanatá and his colleagues at the University of Pisa, Italy, have found that horses can smell fear and happiness.