Back Pain Relief for Horseback Riders Begins with Support

If I were to ask you, “What does support mean or look like to you?” I bet the answers would be plentiful and varied!

Family, friends, barn.

Exercise, mindset, meditation.

Food, hydration, meds.

If I asked you about physical support, you might think of things like orthopedic arches in your shoes, crutches, braces.

For horseback riders dealing with back pain, support takes on a whole new meaning.

Support is not just about getting out of pain: it’s about who takes care of the horses if their main rider is out. It means how do we support our bodies in the saddle, on a moving animal, when we don’t always trust our bodies on the ground? What are the exercises, routines, treatments, tips, tricks, and fixes we can implement to help us when we’re in pain but the barn has to get cleaned regardless?

When we are the lynch-pin of our horses' lives and well-being, how do we support ourselves and our bodies, especially when we’re dealing with chronic pain?

We often take for granted how much work our bodies do for us on a daily basis, usually until something goes wrong or we don’t feel right.

We spend a lot of time and money trying to better support ourselves externally - be it diet, movement, supplements, therapies, etc. Often, these methods are because of trends, the fitness/wellness/diet industry pushing some new ideal or idea on us, rarely with any science to back up their claims.

It’s probably one of many reasons that we don’t know a lot or speak a lot about the immense power of something totally free, that we already have, and can do with or without coaching.

I’m talking, of course, about breathing.

Breathing into your lower ribs is your first step against back pain, especially as a horseback rider.

The average person breathes something like 23,000 per day; the only muscle that works harder is your heart.

Breathing does more than give us life. Our anatomy is designed to create core engagement from breathing, and what we call Intra-Abdominal Pressure.

When we inhale, two of our largest core muscles stretch, moving our ribs down and out. When we exhale, these muscles shorten, letting the ribs return to start. This muscle action is literally your core engaging! Miraculous!

By breathing into our lowest ribs, we also boost our internal pressure system, which you’ve likely heard once or twice if you’ve been here for a while. 

Intra-abdominal Pressure, or your Internal Pressure System, is the human version of inflating a basketball or flat tire. Our bodies and our internal systems function better when we are supported and pressurized from the inside out. 

This is why breathing for core stability creates such powerful back pain relief for horseback riders, and why it should come first before we look to yoga, pilates, lifting, or “core workouts.”

It’s the first step most horseback riders skip, which is a bit like building a house without a foundation and wondering why it’s less stable.

This “system center” is around your belly button to your pelvis. These spots are where the sacral and root chakras sit. It’s our center of gravity, center of growing life if you’re a child-bearing person, an area that protects us through force absorption if you’re a horseback rider.

Ideally, when we ride, our spine is stacked so that any jarring is distributed evenly. This begins with our sits bones, is bolstered by our IPS/center of gravity, and the ripple effect dissipates by the time it gets to our neck and head. Talk about a perfect system for back pain relief for horseback riders when it's developed properly!

When, however, we have an area (or areas) of our spine with more or less curve, or a collapsing/short side, or uneven sits bones weight, or a loss of pressure in our abdomen, we compromise the entire system. We lose support, we lose alignment, we lose safety, and our body perceives this as a threat, so it locks down. This is where back pain becomes a chronic, unrelenting, life-altering problem.

Our body has one goal: stay alive. Anything else is something we’ve constructed, created, learned. Our bodies will keep us upright and moving forward to the best of their ability, through any means necessary. This often means compensation, and without intervention, compensations become our normal pattern.

Then we get tension, pain, more locking down. Back pain goes from a twinge to a chronic weakness, spasms that land us in bed, and shooting pains into our limbs, neck, etc. Horseback riders may find that they have a tricky situation here: sometimes they have more pain in the saddle than on the ground, and other times they have no pain in the saddle, but it comes back when they’re unmounted.

It still comes down to support, and helping the body feel safe.

All this to say: in my practice, we rebuild support from the inside out, and often get dramatic results in the first two sessions.

Instead of treating a) pain exclusively and b) from the outside in, I help my clients develop their Internal Pressure Systems through improving their breathing mechanics and core engagement. This is Step 1 across the board -  I treat neck pain, shoulder tension, scoliosis, sciatica, tight hips, etc with this same first step. 

Why?

Because these issues are all the result of a loss of support that created compensation patterns. And Step 1 will always be to give the body support before we ask it to change something it created for safety.

I usually spend 2 sessions working with folks on this, and then they have simple work to do on their own. We go through various positions, assessing and releasing tension in the diaphragm, training their breathing, expanding their capacity. In just those two sessions, most people feel a tremendous amount of support, strength, resilience, and calm begin in their bodies.

(When you'd like to join me, you can schedule an Ouch to Ahhhh Breakthrough Session!)

To put this in riding terms, this is horsemanship. The work you do before you even get in the saddle - how to move safely around them, how to understand their body language, how to brush them, clean the stalls, tack them up, take care of them. This is developing a relationship on a solid, safe foundation. Miss this step, and everything else you build is shaky at best.

Support from the inside out is the foundation of safe, pain-free riding.

From here, we now have a system ready to receive more changes because it feels safe. 

Onwards we go to Alignment.