5 Exercises Every Rider Should Be Doing - India Parker-Smith

I typically kick the episodes off by having the guest tell us who they are and what it is they do. So I’m India Parker Smith and I’m a question performance coach. I help riders become twice as supple, stable and strong in the saddle and help to create a more confident and focused athlete and help them with their fitness training, their mindset training. I work both in person and online and also have an app that I create bespoke workouts in and programs for my clients. I work with riders all over the world, including polar players, dressage riders, show jumpers and eventers and I love it.

So why is fitness important for riding? Good question. I’ve been doing this for about 7-8 years and I must say the first three years of encouraging people to start changing their mindset or at least convincing them. So we focus on their training, building them up pre season to their competition day. We look at their nutrition, their electrolytes, we give them the chiropractor sessions, all this stuff and we just do not prioritize the riders at all.

But basically, if you are unbalanced in the saddle or you have a weak core, you’re not going to be riding correctly, which means you’re a horse beneath. You cannot perform optimally either. So it’s basically helping your horse perform as well as you giving them the correct aids. I always think that yes, you’re 50%, your horse is 50%, but the same time you are 100% of the partnership in the performance almost they’re listening to you. So if you don’t have the strength to give them the aid correctly, they’re not going to be able to perform optimally.

And also a lot of it is injury. We fall off horses, pull offs, we get bad shoulders, bad backs. A lot of it is pain management. A lot of it is recovering from injuries or even preventing injuries. Yeah, you have to be strong in order to have horses in the 1st place with just doing the day-to-day chores of it.

But also you have to be working optimally in the saddle for your horse to perform. Yeah. What is the core? I guess let’s start there. So the core is a lot of the trunk, so it goes into your hip flexors as well.

It’s your back muscles, it’s your stomach muscles. But also we’ve put different layers of our stomach muscles. So our internal core is what helps out with any back management. It helps connect your upper body to your lower body. I always think that people usually have really tight hips.

If you don’t have that strong trunk, the extremities of your body can’t really work optimally. So that’s why I always look at people’s core. I look at how their pelvis moves in and out of the saddle and there’s usually a connection there. So like your inner thighs are connected to your lower abdominal area, so your back sometimes can overwork. If the cores we we all get tight hamstrings, tight knots.

It’s like the core, but it’s the middle, the machine that works your body and then helps the horse to work their body as well. So if I’m being told by my trainer that I need to engage my core, what does that feel like? Imagine you’re zipping a zip up from under your glutes up to your belly button. So it’s not like a huge contraction, but it’s just a gentle light pulling in. Imagine that you’re doing that zip and then you’ve got a belt coming around from your side and and finishing in front of your belly.

Button bringing that all in. Lots of people who they’re flaring through their chest and they’re really arching through their lower back. And when you’re in that position, your core can’t really engage. If you’re in the saddle, there’s no movement through your trunk, through your pelvis, so you’re just clumping down on the horse. So you’re actually, it’s very difficult for the horse to get under you and get the energy coming from behind because you’re almost back to front with your core engagement, if that makes sense.

It should be nice and relaxed. But also with that light engagement as well, you should feel stronger but not rigid. Lots of you think, oh, engage core can’t anything else. It’s just a light engagement of that area. Yeah, I think so many times we’re told to engage our core and then everything tightens up and the leg tightens up, the hamstrings tighten up.

How can riders develop this ability to engage certain parts of their body but keep other parts of their body loose? So I think starting with diaphragm breathing is a really good way of improving your awareness of how your body should be feeling and how it should be engaging. Usually you can do that lying down in your back. Just put your hands on a lower abdominal area and as you breathe in, you’re inflating a balloon. As you’re exhaling, you’re deflating that balloon.

So I think that’s a really good place to start. I would say with a new client, especially the first stage of working with me is to improve yourself awareness of how you’re moving naturally in and out of the saddle. And then you’ll feel, you’ll start to subconsciously feel how that then changes how the horse reacts to you. So I think it’s self-awareness. So many of us aren’t really aware of how our body moves and how we should be feeling because we’re stuck in the bio mechanics that we’ve been dealing with our whole life.

So I think just by lying on your back, zoning into yourself, starting with deep breaths and as you kind of exhale, you’re getting that core engagement as well and you’ll start to feel relaxed whilst engaging the core. And then I like to get people to do some pelvic tilts again, either standing up or lying down, and you start to feel your hips gently move forwards and backwards as though when you’re in the saddle. And then you’ll start to be aware of what surrounding muscles have to engage for that position to happen. When you’re working with riders, you work with riders and kind of all sorts of disciplines, is there a common thing amongst equestrians in terms of imbalances or things that they’re just not necessarily aware of? I know we talked about the core, but any part of their body that tends to be weaker or.

Yeah. So I think that just the general population, we sit down a lot. Lots of people still have to work when they have horses as well. So I find I sit down quite a lot when I’ve got a lot of Zoom trainings in one day. So therefore, our glutes turn off our SOAS, our hip flexors get really tight, our hamstrings get really tight.

Rarely do people then mobilize those areas correctly, activate them, and then get into the saddle. So people would naturally have tight hamstrings, tight hip flexors, and then usually quite weak glutes. You’re kind of buttock muscles, and then that can cause lower back pain. So a lot of people will say they have lower back pain, but then when I break them, they’re by mechanics down. It’s usually because their muscles have got so tight that they’ve created this weaknesses and that we’ve created this kind of elastic band like ball effects.

So I have a big one I would say is people have lots of low back pain, but it’s not usually due to lower back pain. It’s usually due to weakness and tightness in some form of posterior chain. Yeah, I actually realized a little while ago, I started going to the gym and lifting weights and I’ve always been up Pilates, girly. And I was like, actually my physical therapist was like, girly, your shoulders are not good. Like you need to start building some muscles in your back because you’ve got nothing holding your shoulders into your body.

When I started lifting, I started having a lot of lower back pain and I realized it was because I wasn’t actually activating my glutes prior to the exercises. And so everything around the glutes started working to make up for the fact that my glutes were just like, not even there, just doing some basic activating exercises prior to lifting. A lot of my back pain subsided completely. And you really realize, oh, shoot, there are so many ways your body can compensate to make you think that something’s happening, even if that thing is actually happening at all. Totally.

And actually to go back to your last question about common problems of brightness, a lot of it is posture. So get so rounded and tight through our our anterior shoulders and chest area that it causes this bit of a rounding effect through the shoulders. And then you’re holding the horse through the front of the shoulders as opposed to engaging more of those mid back postural muscles. And again, same thing with going into a new form of training with weights especially, you have to make sure that you were in this correct position, everything is engaging correctly before you start going into heavier weights and any form of new training. I always kind of strip back my clients and say let’s look at your posture.

We’ve got to realign, we’ve got to open up the body, re stabilize in the correct position and then start strengthening. But lots of people go straight to that little bit of stretching. Now I’m going to start strengthening it. So that’s where issues and problems and reoccurring injuries arise. Yeah, going back to what you said in the beginning that we spend so much time focusing on our forces and we don’t spend any time focusing on ourselves.

But when we have these things like even a little bit of lower back pain or a twinge in a shoulder, I think so many people are willing to try to work through that, but then they don’t think that actually inhibits the horse. And so it’s, I always say if your horse is constantly needing their pelvis readjusted, your pelvis probably needs to be readjusted because you’re putting them in that position to compensate for you. And so it does save you a lot of money when you don’t need the chiropractor out every four to six weeks to readjust their pelvis because you’re actually riding them straight and evenly. Exactly. And I always ask when I’ve got a new client in the consultation, are there any reoccurring injuries on balances that your horses have?

And it was amazing polo player and she’s got about 20 horses. It’s polo players need a lot more horses than the other ones. And she’s like all of them fall through the left shoulder and they will have right back issues. And I’m like, that’s exactly what you have. You fall forward with your left shoulder, your right hip, it makes certainly rotates.

You don’t have the strength there. So your horses are mimicking now. And all of her horses, I knew her horse chiropractor and he said these must be her issues because all of the horses have the exact same issue. Yeah, so let’s say I’m the basic recreational competitive rider, which means I’m probably sitting at a desk most of the day doing my work either before I go and work my horse or maybe I work my horse in the morning or whatever. Are there things that you can do throughout the day to help reduce some of the postural issues that you’re developing?

Just sitting down at a desk, rounded typing at a computer? Yes, you mentioned that you ride probably first thing in the morning. I encourage people to do a 10 minute mobility routine. Even your coffee’s brewing or you’re feeding the dogs or feeding the horses, use 10 minutes of your time to do some form of dynamic movement mobility. I love resisted mobility where you’ve got some form of weights that kind of you up a little bit more.

Get as much oxygen into your body as you can. As much movement first thing in the morning is really going to set you up for the rest of the day, especially if you’re going out at 7:00 AM and you’re lifting a water bucket, that’s when you’re going to hurt your back. So I would definitely use the morning to get movement in for sure. And then if you sat at a desk, I like to bring my laptop up to eye level and then you have your kind of keyboard down a little bit lower so you can then sit away from the sit away from your chair, stack your bird spray, a little bit of core engagement. I would say just my clients switch out a Swiss ball with a really big bone up balls.

Do half an hour on that and then go back to a normal chair to give you some time to rest. But at least on the ball, you’re aware of how your body’s moving if you’re overarching through the lower back. And then with regards to nutrition, keeping the meals small so it’s easy for your digestive system, stay away from anything that’s got a lot of sugar in it and just focus on lots of vegetables, proteins, fat. So it just keeps your energy levels consistent as well rather than blood sugar spikes. And then just moving, getting up and moving.

So if you take a phone call, stand up, walk around, do some calf raises, do some squats, just keep moving throughout the day. And then if you go back to riding in the evening, at least your body’s a little bit more awake than if it was sat down for 8 hours. Yeah. And you mentioned mobility. I actually was creeping on your website this morning and saw that you have your own sort of mobility program for riders that’s completely free.

When I’m thinking of mobility, how does that differentiate between just like stretching or yoga? What is a mobility routine? So mobility is mobile. So you’re dynamic, you’re working with your body, you’re trying to open up those joints as much as you can. But I think there’s a misconception in a kind of static stretching is also going to help with your flexibility.

If you get up at 7:00 AM and you hold a quad stretch, you’re, you could there’s a high possibility you’re going to pull a muscle. So in mobility, you’re working with resistance bands, you’re working with light weights just to really open up your body more than it would do a static stretch. So I use a lot of light 5 LB weights. I use a lot of resistance bands to help my clients open up their shoulders, their wrists, their hips, and it. Just having that external stimulus adds more pressure to the stretch almost and gives you a long term increased range of movement.

Yeah, I think so many times riders will do their stretches before they get on, but it doesn’t really change anything. Like they’re still not activating things. They still don’t have that necessarily increased level of body awareness. So it’s interesting that maybe adding the weights just brings more attention to the areas that you’re actually trying to work on and open up. Definitely mentioned contraction as well, activation during those mobility exercises, you are activating the muscles as well.

So you’re getting blood and nutrients into the area, you’re preparing the body for action. And it’s proven, scientifically proven that if you do a really good warm up before your performance, you will increase your rate of competitiveness and focus. And so you’re also waking up yourself mentally and getting yourself in the zone for the performance. So let’s say I want to do like bare bones, minimum effective dose of exercise or mobility or whatever. What are the sort of three to five places in your body that you should really be focusing on opening up and engaging?

Yes, I think #1 would be shoulders. Everyone seems to have clicking shoulders tight and that’s just from day-to-day life. I think it’s we all have really bad shoulders. So I’d say a lot of shoulder mobility for sure. Mid back engagement, especially if to round forward, you want to really engage those mid back muscles and hold your back right from there you work down into your core.

So lots of internal core, lots of lower core engagement as well into the glutes. So lots of banded glute work is really good to do as well. And then lots of hamstring strengthening and lengthening as well. I could keep going on, but I would say yeah, if those kind of main components are working correctly, it’s a lot easier to deal with any injuries or bio mechanical issues. And if I get on my horse, let’s say I do my mobility in the morning and then I work all day and then I get home, get into the barn, get in the saddle, and it’s 6630 at night.

Is there anything that I can do in the saddle on the horse while maybe they’re warming up? Yeah, so actually, this is something I always say to every single client, regardless of what discipline they’re in. Like once you get in that saddle, take your feet out the Sterex, let the horse open up. So you’re releasing the reins. You want the horse to open up their stride, stretch out their neck, do the same thing.

Let your legs fall out of your pelvis. Just let them lengthen, relax down. You can be a little bit wobbly with your upper body as well, but the main thing is to look at your pelvis. Just let your pelvis move with the horse. And again, it’s a really good exercise for self-awareness because when I call my left, the left side of my pelvis is a bit stuck.

My right one’s all over the place or my left foot is actually sticking out to the side a lot more than my right foot is. The player was saying use that as an exercise for your own body awareness, but it also gets you moving with the horse. So as you’re letting them open up their stride and relax and stretch out their back in the necks, you’re moving your pelvis with them. So it’s a really warm up exercise. You can stretch down.

You can take your left hand, stretch it down to your right, stir it, get a bit of movement through the back of the shoulder into the thoracic bit of rotation. You can lean your hands forward towards the horse’s ears. So you’re just stretching out as well. But I would say that she doing a 5-10 minute warm up before you get in the saddle is going to be way more effective because then you’re warmed up and then you can focus on warming the horse up. Whereas you’re trying to warm up the same time the horse is warming up.

It’s going to take actually a bit longer. But I think by you being mentally, physically prepared before getting in the saddle, get 1/2 of time in the saddle. If you haven’t got as much time because you’re like, I’m ready to go, let’s warm him up and then her up and then we’ll go for it. Do. You suggest riders bring a yoga mat to the barn and do their mobility right there?

Or is this like a I can do it at home and sit in the car for 20 minutes when I drive to the barn? Or however long it takes? Or should it be done right before you get on? Yeah, most effectively do it just before you get it on, but again, everyone has a very busy schedule. It’s better to do it any any time of the day than not doing it at all.

You don’t even have to use them if you don’t want to. You can always do lots of things. Standing up next to your horse whilst I was tacking up or whatever. Ideally, yes, just before you get in the saddle. Anything is better than doing nothing.

How important is the breathing element of exercise? When you do Pilates, a lot of times your instructor will tell you when to breathe or how to breathe. Is breathing really all that important to the efficacy of the exercise or is it one of those things where, OK, yeah, I can meditate separately or that sort of deal? Yeah, breathing is extremely important in all aspects of life. But also exercise then, and also being on your horse.

Like we said at the beginning of the conversation, your horses are very sensitive to how you move and how you think. So if you’re holding your breath, the horse feels that and then it tenses up. So I think they actually did some research on this. This woman couldn’t do as many lead changes or something as she would get to two or three and the horse would just stop. And I think the trainer realizes because she was holding her breath, so she was running out of oxygen.

By the third lead change, her horse was as well. So once she learned to breathe through it, I think they went from three straight through to 10 in a row or something like that. It was crazy. By not breathing, you’re not getting oxygen to the working muscles, you’re not relaxing into the movements. You’re staying very rigid to the second we hold our breath, instantly our shoulders come up, we tense through our body and we try and hold the breath.

Riding is also tiring, so you’ve got to make sure that your aerobic capacity is good enough to be able to do a cross country course or play a full game of polo or gets through a dress arch test without running out of air, because you need to be nice and relaxed for those couple of minutes that you’re performing. It’s very important as well. And also an exercise with my clients, I’m always like, keep breathing because your face is going very red and you’re not moving. So yeah. And it gives us a little bit of extra bit of output with our power.

That’s why tennis players make those ridiculously loud noises every time they hit the ball. It’s because you do get an extra bit of power through doing that part of the exercise. Yeah, it’s interesting because so many times it’s so crazy how like breathing is literally necessary to live, but yet we do anything like new or nerve wracking and immediately we’re like. I can’t. Breathe.

I need to do this right? And then everything goes to crap because you’re not breathing. And I would assume that kind of practicing the breathing or working on your breathing while exercising actually increases your ability to just breathe When you’re doing your dressage test or when you’re doing that show jump course where maybe before you would get lightheaded, you know, leaving the arena because you weren’t breathing the whole time. Now you know, or your body knows, Oh, it’s OK. We can still like function even when things get hard.

One of the things that I find interesting is the difference in horse sports, where I feel like dressage requires a lot of sort of stability, where jumping you have a lot of getting in and out of the saddle. Are there different things that you focus on with different disciplines, or does it all embody the same sort of stuff? Yeah, the basics definitely are all the same throughout each equestrian discipline. The jumpers I do an event is actually I do a little bit more cardio work with because during of course country course you’re mentally focused, you’re physically on. So you have to have physical endurance as well.

With the jumpers and the eventers, we’re doing a bit more with movement pattern of coming out of the saddles. We’re doing lots of different progressions of squats with different planes of movement, weight, stay pretty light. But I think the basics, everyone is the same because even if you’re jumping and you’re doing a venting, you still need to be able to ride and control the horse just like you’d through a dressage. And again, if you’re doing something like jumping and eventing, you’re more likely to have fallen off. So you’ve got more biomechanical issues or injuries that we’re dealing with.

And so there’s a lot more kind of injury rehab with them. So how does working out and all of this lead to maybe you do have the aspect of it does reduce injuries overall, but even in the rehab, I’d assume if you are already strong and you have an injury, the rehab would be quicker. Why is that? So? Like how does exercise in general just lead to less injury overall?

Oh. I see your joints have more stability in them. You’re through doing resisted mobility. Your body is better prepared for maybe overstretching or over rotating of a horse slides to the left. You have that mobility and improved range of movement to be able to deal without, without stretching or pulling a muscle.

I’ve got this amazing polo player. She’s one of the best female polo players in the world. She trains pretty much five days a week, 5-6 days a week. No matter what country she’s in. She is a necessity that she has to be exercising, even if it’s just doing some mobility in a run or doing something a bit more hardcore touch wit.

I don’t want to put this into the universe, but she hasn’t had a single injury since I’ve known her and she’s in polo for 20 years. And her body is strong. It’s super strong, it’s stable, it’s really flexible, really mobile. And so her body can hold these overstretched positions and she’s rotating a lot. And probably you’re rotating or reaching around, you’re having to turn, stop and turn pretty quickly.

And so because she’s, I call it like a bulletproof body, she has created a really strong body that can these types of movements. Whereas if you’ve got someone who doesn’t have any core strengths or there’s no mobility or strength or stability through their shoulders and a horse pulls them, more likely to get injured for sure. Yeah, I’ve never really thought about the ability for the muscle to overextend and then come back because I know so many riders, you’ll lead one young horse and you’re probably getting yanked all over the place. And I know every rider has a bad left shoulder and I know for me when I was having some shoulder issues, I started, but I never really thought about the flexibility of the muscles helping support it in that over extension. I just always thought it prevented the over extension.

So that’s really interesting. How does body awareness? When you get on and you’re just walking with your feet out of the stirrups, you might notice that your left foot pokes out a little bit more or that you’re not as mobile in one hip as you are in the other. How does working out? Let’s say I’m stuck in one hip versus the other, so one hip is obviously weaker.

Am I continuing to work both hips evenly? Or are there points where you say actually we really need to focus on loosening this hip but strengthening this hip? Or does it all remain in balance? Yes. So for instance, if you’ve got a really weak left hip and your right hip is actually the one falling out, then yes, we’ve got to be focusing a lot more on the suppleness of one of them and the strength of the other.

But I will be doing the same movements through both sides. But yes, if the left side is weaker, we’re going to be doing another one or two sets on that left side. So you find that if someone has broken their knee on the left side and they’ve done a lot of physical rehab, they end up having a really strong left side and a weak right side. The injury was on the left side, but it’s because the right knee is the one falling in. It’s constant monitoring of the progression and improvement of decline.

Now the left, it’s competing with the right. So now we continue with equal strength and stability training on both sides. I’m going to start off focusing a little bit more on the left side for strength and the right side for mobility. Then you change the training program and that’s The thing is that you start with one goal and then once you’ve got to the kind of next level of improving certain aspects of your body, then change it. So the training program is constantly changing and evolving as your body gets better and stronger.

Yeah, I think most riders have probably done some form of physical therapy. And that is definitely something that I’ve noticed with myself and with clients is that all of a sudden the weaker piece that we had to work so hard on getting to baseline has now surpassed baseline. The issue is so many people never go back and restrengthen the other side. So I was wondering from that perspective of if you are in physical therapy for an injury and your physical therapist is really only focusing on this one thing, You can also say, OK, I need to keep up with my right hip because I don’t want my left hip to create this different imbalance. I just don’t think.

That’s taught. Left knee is good, it’s feeling good, but I can feel that actually the right hips got really tired as a result of all of this. So yeah, it’s just being self aware of everything and the body works collectively as one machine, so if there is one thing that’s out of place, the rest of the body will overcompensate. I like to get people to use mirrors a lot. I’m like if I train them on zoom in their house or their barn, I’m like get in front of a mirror because your left shoulder is all the way up here.

Using the mirrors will really help with that as well. Yeah, that kind of physical or visual component, I’d imagine brings a lot of awareness because it’s even like when you’re riding in front of mirrors, you realize, Oh my God, I’m like, not straight at all. Like I’m riding down the center line towards the mirror and my left shoulder is way back over at the hind end, and no wonder I’m struggling to turn right when I hit the end of the arena. They’re like, I’d assume if I have a weakness, it’ll get brought up, but they’re not living inside of your body. It’s up to you as you know your individual self to.

That’s probably why the morning mobility stuff is so good because it gives you a chance to connect with the different pieces of your body and be like, oh God, I’m actually really tight in my right side today or oh today my left side is actually tighter. Interesting. Maybe that’s because I worked harder on the left side yesterday or whatever it is, but it all really does come back to that ability to be aware of what your body is doing at any given. Day yeah, it’s taking accountability and I think that like I I keep going back to when we look after our horses so much that we just don’t prioritize our own health. But by taking accountability and it doesn’t, I think people get scared as well starting a whole fitness program.

And I hate using the word fitness because perceived quite negatively. It’s all it means. I’m going to be over exerting myself and it’s going to be and I’m going to get sweaty. And I’m like a lot of my stuff I do with my clients is like functional movement. Oh yes, you’re going to be working, but it’s going to be working through different planes of movement, different movement patterns is not there doing 100 squats with 100 kilos on your back.

And actually my clients homework to do. So I’m like, yes, you see me however many times a week, but I give them their own workouts to do and I give them homework. So people who aren’t necessarily good and staying as disciplined and like all you have to do tomorrow is 20 dead bugs. Then on Wednesday you can do 20 glute bridges. So it’s just breaking it down rather than seeing is this whole new thing.

You’ve got to spend hours each week and you don’t have enough time. You just do. You have 10 minutes there whilst you’ll watch your horse eat dinner. Then you can do if you’ve got wheat calves, you do some calf raises or you know your wrist hurts, you grab water bucket and do some extension flexion. But I think people are scared to start this journey because it has negative connotations of spending hours and needing the right trainers and gym kid.

And I’ve got to go to a gym to do the really, no, it’s just doing small little things that you can integrate into your busy schedule. Yeah, it is. It’s so similar to training horses, because sometimes you start working with a horse who has a weakness, and when they first start working through that weakness, they’re really adverse to the training. But then as they start working through it, they actually realize it’s not as hard as they thought it was going to be. I think a lot of the times it’s the same with people where actually once they start getting into a bit of a program and again, we’re not talking about Olympic lifting.

We’re talking about things that promote flexibility and stability in the saddle, which overall isn’t going to be the same as these like fitness influencers that are like pushing heavy weights at the gym to get bulk. That’s not really the point of exercising as an equestrian. We don’t need that math no. And I think that’s what’s cool about you is that you are an equestrian and you bring in this kind of fitness. I actually really like the term fitness because I feel like it embodies the whole picture.

It’s cardio, it’s muscle, it’s tendons and ligaments, it’s all of the components versus just like lifting. Like I hear lifting and I’m exhausted and I’m sore just thinking about going and doing squats with weight on my back. And yeah, and it also sounds intimidating. Oh my God, lifting like that’s. I could get hurt and like you can.

But if you do these things that actually complement the riding, it’s different than going to the gym. That’s why I say I’m a performance coach because yes, we’re focusing on your fitness and every aspect of your health, but at the end of the day, everyone’s working towards the goal of performing better in the saddle. Once people understand why they would be doing this form of training, it’s easier to apply it and actually want to put the effort in because we’re spending a lot of time and effort on building up the fitness of the horse and working towards the next big event is or leveling up with your dressage or whatever. It’s comes down to performance. So all of these small marginal gains we focus on as riders are getting towards an improved level of performance.

Yeah, now that’s so important because anyone who has gone to the gym and lifted really heavy knows how much it sucks the next day. And then you almost think if you do get off schedule a little bit, it’s almost intimidating to go back because you know that you’re going to be sore and all of these things. I remember I got on this fitness program and it was clearly not the right program for me because I was so exhausted. I think I fell off like every other day for six weeks. I was falling off and I was like, this is not good because I’m so exhausted and I’m riding these tricky young horses.

Once I found kind of a program that was more tailored towards equestrians, all of a sudden a lot of those problems went away and a lot of the pain went away. And I think so many people find themselves, OK, I want to take this seriously and I’m going to listen to these podcasts or these YouTube videos, but unless it’s really geared towards what you’re doing, it may actually not be that beneficial to you. Totally. And again, like what you said earlier is when people start doing this, a new training program, if it includes lifting, especially if we’re not doing that body maintenance or preparation beforehand, you’re actually going to go down the wrong route with regards to your progression. It’s going to probably get a lot stiffer in your movements, which therefore you can’t connect better with the horse because you’re sitting on top of them as opposed to getting deeper into the saddle.

And you’re going to injure yourself. And like you said, you’re going to be tired and you have to be mentally and physically alert and aware when you’re on, especially youngsters, if you’re bringing on horses. Crucial that you get onto the right training program that suits you, your body, how you want to work as well and something that’s beneficial to your performance at the end, isn’t it? Yeah, no, it’s. I always joke like I made these mistakes so other people don’t have to.

Social media makes it so easy to see what famous people or whatever are doing, but unless you’re watching the top riders in your thing and they’re not, they might do one day of lifting and it’s a full body sort of thing, but it’s not super heavy. It’s not going to impede with the way that you sit in the saddle. And I just think that’s such an important point because it really can be intimidating to think about starting these fitness journeys. So let’s say as we’re closing up here, what are your sort of top five exercises that you think all equestrians should be doing most often? So I would say doing something that involves A resisted mobility exercise, for instance, you put your legs really wide, you’re standing up, you open the legs as wide as you can, toes go out to the side.

You’ve got a medium sized weight, something like A5 pounder. You have a flat back and you hinge your hips back as your chest comes forward and you squeeze your inner thighs inwards. Something like that is stretching open your inner thighs and your hamstrings, but also engaging them as well. So that’s one of my top kind of resistant mobility exercises. With regards to something like stability for glutes, glute bridge, I like to say glute bridge instead of a hip thrust because it’s not just thrusting your hips up and down, it’s a controlled movement of moving those hips up.

Articulating the spine is also a core exercise. Blue bridge, People think it’s just the butt, but actually it’s engaging your core as well. It’s something like a dead bug that helps you focus on the internal core and then get some slings working where your body works in diagonals so it strengthens the slings that come across your body. That one’s on your back, moving opposite arms to leg away from the center of the body. It’s something like holding a plank.

Again, I like to incorporate diaphragm breathing into the plank to help all diaphragm breathing before you plank. Actually, it’s better and that helps get those internal core muscles engaged as well. Something like a Copenhagen plank, which is a little bit more advanced, but that’s doing a side plank with one leg lifted up of the ground onto a bench. But I would use that as more of a intermediate to advanced level and something like an aeroplane where you’re on one leg, you’ve created AT shape of your body, and you’re opening and closing your hips. This one’s all over my Instagram, so you can go check out what I mean by that.

But that helps with the glute engagement as well. Because, you know, the question you asked me earlier was like a big weakness I see all over riders. And it is that glute engagement. And I think until you get those glutes activating correctly, you will always be hindered slightly in the saddle. So doing something like an aeroplane combined with a glute bridge is a really good way of waking them up.

Awesome. How do they find you? Follow along with what you do. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been fun to discuss my passion and you can find me on Instagram, IPS, Equestrian performance, and my website is India dot Parker Smith.

Oh no, it’s just India Park Smith. Oh my goodness, what is it? Www.indiaparksmith.com is my website. But yeah, I’m regularly putting things on Instagram to help people with their education of looking after themselves for the saddle. Awesome.

Thanks for joining me. Thank you so much for having me.