Horse riding and breathing
Why is it important
Written by Tonia Bontjer
Breath is life -Breathing is the first thing you do when you are born and the last thing you do when you die. Your breathing stays with you your entire life. Breathing is essential to you!
Breathing not only fuels your body with oxygen, it also clears a foggy mind, can calm the nervous system and help strengthen your muscles. When you breathe you send oxygen into the all the cells in your body. Your body, and every cell in it, constantly needs a new supply so that they can produce energy. When breathing, you allow your body to get rid of the waste products and toxins it creates. These waste products can easily stagnate in your body and cause damage vital functions if not expelled.
When you breathe in (inhale), the muscle on the bottom and inside of your ribcage (diaphragm) , contracts/tightens, and moves downward. This allows the lungs to have room to expand. The muscles between your ribs (intercostal muscles), contract/tighten, to pull your ribcage upward and outward. As your lungs expand, oxygen/air is sucked in through your nose (or mouth) and travels down your trachea to your lungs. After passing through your bronchial tubes, the air finally reaches the air sacs where oxygen is passed into the blood stream. At the same time, carbon dioxide travels into the air sacs from the blood stream and is expelled from the body as you breathe out (exhale). As you exhale, your diaphragm moves back up, and your intercostal muscles relax.
When you are pressure, and experience stress, your breathing pattern changes. When anxious and stressed, you will take smaller, shallower breaths, using your shoulders rather than your diaphragm to move air in and out of your lungs, or you may hold your breath and not even realize that you are doing this. This style of breathing disrupts the balance of gases in your body, and can prolong feelings of anxiety by making the physical symptoms of stress worse.
It is important to learn how to breath effectively, most people breathe at only 10 to 20% of their full capacity. There are a number of breathing techniques you can use, depending on what you are doing, and the results you are seeking at the time. Some breathing techniques help to speed up your heart rate and encourage the body to warm up, while other techniques are specifically designed to calm you down and put you into a deeply relaxed state. (see videos for various breathing techniques for different purposes).
When you breathe in an inefffective way (or hold your breath) while riding, it has the following effects (on you, and your horse):
- Your body tightens and tenses, transferring tension to your horse
- You are more likely to become unseated, or even fall
- Your horse’s head raises a few cm or inches
- Due to your body movement being restricted, your horse’s movement also becomes tense and restricted
- You become disconnected from your horse due to tension in your own body
- You lose your rhythm, your timing is out, your aids become inconsistent and unclear to your horse
- You bounce a lot more
- You open yourself up to stiffness/soreness/pain
- You energetically cut yourself in half
- You end up relying on your upper body for strength, causing you and your horse to go into a battle of strength against one another
- Your horse will take shorter, choppier, tenser strides
- Due to the tension in you, and therefore in your horse, you both have restricted amounts of oxygen you can take into the lungs, greatly decreasing both (you and your horse’s) strength and endurance
Learning effective breathing will:
- Allow you to maintain correct position-posture-alignment while riding, and therefore apply correct and consistent aids
- Keep you calm, and in turn, keep your horse calm
- Allow you to respond to situations, rather than react with negative thoughts and emotions
- Assists with necessary body and mind connection and awareness
- Lower your blood pressure and heart rate
- Reduce levels of stress hormones in your blood
- Reduce lactic acid build-up in your muscle tissue
- Assist you to become more flexible
- Encourage the use of correct muscles
- Increase your stamina and endurance
- Balance levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in your blood
- Improve metabolism functioning
- Improve your immune system functioning
- Assist in your focus and concertation
- Increased your physical energy when you need it
- Help you sleep better
- Increased over all health and wellbeing
Effective breathing has profound positive benefits for both you, and your horse. Learn breathing techniques you can utalise to achieve the results you need in any given situation you require - see video page on this website.