Hi this is Will Faerber from Art2Ride and today I wanted to answer a question that came into us. A beginner rider wanted to know what kind of exercises he could do to improve his riding.

I have found that the elliptical machine is the best machine type exercise that there is. It is very low impact on your knees and also allows you to imitate how you would be on a horse. Be sure to keep your shoulders up and your abdomen engaged. The biggest thing that it can help with is your balance, because you aren’t holding on. Holding on to the bars and hunching over won’t do you any good. Be sure to keep your knees and your hips relaxed. So I highly recommend the elliptical trainer. I use it three times a week. It will do more …

We are going to use Montana and Montana’s owners to demonstrate how to do a hip tuck, which is a really good exercise for two reasons.

One is to assess if the patient has a sore back: we are going to trigger a reflex point on her topline and if she resists, swings away, moves into us or acts like it’s uncomfortable that helps us determine that maybe she still has a sore back or croup. What we are actually looking for is a contraction of the abdominal muscles or her core muscles. If she is able to do the tuck, that tells me as she lifts up that she is engaging her core and is able to lift and round and come beneath with her hind end which we can do statically from the ground. This is also of course the …