What is Body Awareness and why is it important for Equestrian Athletes?

How cross training helps with understanding where your body is and improve your riding

Body Awareness is our body’s internal ability to recognize where we are in space.

Body awareness allows us to react and produce movement appropriately and help us understand how to relate to objects and people around us. Also called kinesthetic sense, body awareness allows us to figure out where all of our body parts are in space, how they work together or separately and even how they feel.

As we get older, we gradually develop a greater sense of body awareness and for typically developing children, it is a result of gross and fine motor skill practice through play and repetition.
When you hear people say that they are “uncoordinated” or that they “trip over their own feet”, it usually means that their body awareness is probably hindered. Coordinated movement requires the brain to interpret sensory information and produce the correct movements accurately.

So what does this have to do with riding?
 


When you are able to produce movement appropriately, and can influence your body parts to do specific movements, you will be able to communicate more effectively with your horse.


Horse riding is a full body sport that requires all of our limbs to work together and sometimes separately at the same time. Every small movement is a different cue to the horse and each time our body moves, our horse can sense it. 



When we improve our body awareness, we can feel if we’re applying too much pressure on the inside leg, or if we are pulling too hard on the outside rein, 



As our body awareness improves, our proprioception abilities improve and we can also be able to feel our horses body better by using our body. We can feel if our horse is falling in and then through body awareness and knowing how to use our body appropriately, then use our inside leg to correct him. 


Using our body to feel our horse’s movement not only helps ourselves become better athletes, by knowing what cues to give your horse, but we are also helping our horse feel more comfortable and match his movement with yours. For example, when you have heightened body awareness, you can feel when your horse is hollow, you can feel your horses belly drop, and you can feel him using his front end more than his hindquarters. Because of your body awareness, you can apply the correct aids to help him be more balanced, lift his back and use his core muscles. 



Our goal as riders is to be in harmony with our horse. As you advance in your riding, you will start to be able to measure the amount of each aid given to the horse and the effects of the amount of force you add. Body awareness allows us to know if we are sitting even on both seat bones, if we have even pressure in both hands, if we are too tense in our shoulders, and ways to correct them while on horseback. 



Having good body awareness also allows us to react quickly when there is a sudden change of movement in your horse. If your horse gets spooked and bolts, your body can detect that movement, and respond accordingly and safely. Which brings us to our third point, body awareness and injury prevention.

Body awareness and injury prevention

With poor body awareness, we can remain in potentially harmful positions for prolonged period of times in and out of the saddle and not even know it. We may workout and perform exercises with bad form, and we may ride with poor posture. And when you continue to perform exercises in bad form, you will ultimately be in pain or sustain an injury. And often, people will use compensation strategies to avoid feeling the pain and discomfort, which will further the injury and may even cause injury to other parts of the body.

When you are able to be aware of how your body feels, you can know when something hurts or if you are in good posture or not.

Let’s do an exercise right now and quickly notice how in tune we are with our bodies. Sit up straight, and bring attention to your posture as you’re reading this right now.

Without changing anything, notice how your arms, shoulders, neck, head, back, legs and feet are positioned?

How do they feel?
Do you feel strain or stress in any regions of your body?
What can you do to decrease the stress?
Is your seat bone shifted to one side or do you feel pretty centered?

Now let’s correct our posture. Did you feel any tension or strain anywhere? Do your muscles feel fatigue when you’re in good posture?

A good way to check in with your body regularly like this is if you set an alarm in your phone daily that goes off to remind you to correct your posture, especially if you work 9-5 at a desk.

Many equestrians, especially those who have just started riding or riders who have anxiety like myself, tend to be tense and have a lot of tension in the neck and shoulders and chest.

Some tips to enhance our body awareness through working out:

• The more you workout and exercise, the better your body gets at understanding the sensations that results from it


• Use modifications until you feel confident enough to progress. Don’t go straight into a difficult exercise with complex movements


• The more challenge going the activity, the more sensory input you receive and need to process, the more body parts you need to keep track of. Start small.


• Use the mirrors at the gym and look at yourself while working out. Mirrors are great ways to improve your form and get immediate real-time feedback


• Practice mind muscle connection when working out. Think about the muscle you are working out when doing the exercise to build better communication between your brain and your body.


• Good core stability provides a stable base for all other limbs and can improve overall movement patterns 


• Stretching improves brain’s relationship with the muscle and joint and its ability to monitor every receptor and reflex involved with muscular coordination and function. 


• Stretching allows athletes to practice breathing techniques, relaxation, clearing ones mind, practice body awareness by listening to when a muscle is tensing up or relaxing

Equestrians are athletes too. The more we start treating ourselves like athletes, the better athletic performance we will have when riding. The more we understand why cross training is beneficial for ourselves and our horse, the better rider we can become!