What Physical and Mental Benefits does Horse Riding Have?

Horse riding is always an enriching activity with lots of benefits. It has become a healthy, natural and family-friendly leisure alternative.

But not only is the experience of riding there, it is not only an occasional fun. Riding indirectly implies a series of benefits for our mind and our body. If you love nature, you like sports and health occupants, horse riding is the perfect activity for you.

What physical and mental benefits does horse riding have?

• It improves our posture. Our back should maintain a straight position getting so we adopt a better body position.
• Regulates muscle tone.
• Promotes blood circulation. Being on an animal, such as the horse, which has a body temperature higher than ours affects the body favoring its blood circulation.
• Decrease spasticity. Riding a horse gets our muscles to relax, decreasing their stiffness and muscle tension.
• What physical and mental benefits does horse riding have?Remember that we are not alone, that is, we are part of a team, our horse and we are living beings in a natural environment. The exercise does not take place in the same way as in the four walls of a gym, in which nothing changes overnight. When we ride a horse we develop the reflexes more since we must be attentive to any change of pace of our partner or any new variation that occurs in the natural environment in which we find ourselves.
• Motor planning Because it is an activity in which another living being participates and develops in a changing environment, it forces us to be attentive to the changes and prepared to anticipate the actions that we must carry out. Therefore, it increases our motor planning because it is about knowing how to plan and execute unusual special activities.
• Improves body perception. Another benefit of riding is that it makes us aware of our body and the position and place it occupies with respect to the environment in which it is located. We get more information about our space and how we can establish relationships with that environment.
• It favors the acquisition of laterality. Body laterality is essential to guide the body in space and objects, which are in it, with respect to the body itself. Through the development of laterality we adapt our body movements to the environment in which we find ourselves.
• Trust, self-control and self-esteem. Being in contact with the horse and playing sports with him entails a series of psychological benefits such as trust (we must trust our quadruped companion and, at the same time, our capabilities as riders), self-control and self-esteem.
• Improves concentration and attention span.
• Respect. Working alongside another living being and in nature teaches us to love and respect what surrounds us.