With increasing affordability and accessibility to horse-riding in Singapore, there is growing interest in horse-riding as a sport and hobby, and a rise in participation in local competitions such as the recent National Dressage Championships, and the National Jumping Championships.
For some people, hopping onto the back of a majestic horse that weighs many times our body weight may be a scary thought. Horse-riding requires not just physical skills, but also a good understanding of your mount. However, there are many health benefits associated with horse-riding – aside from getting a good physical workout, it can also be an incredibly healing experience. As an avid rider growing up, I want to share with you not just the obvious benefits, but also some of the more unknown ones.
1. BALANCE A necessary skill to be able to stay on the horse, especially if it turns quickly. It doesn't mean that if you don't typically have 'good balance' you can't ride – you can hold the front of the saddle to begin with and as you improve you will be able to stay upright and balanced without holding on.
Balance Test: Many of us don't realise how bad our balance is unless you have done any lower limb rehab. Try standing on one leg, close your eyes and balance for 30seconds. Too easy? Try balancing on tip-toes while staying super still. Not so easy? Balance is one of the easiest things to improve and quickly – we can show you how.
2. CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM BOOST Trotting and riding associated activities such as mucking out are considered a moderate exercise for the rider. The longer and faster you go, the higher the intensity and the more calories you burn.
3. COORDINATION Your arms and legs are your communication to the horse. There are certain arm positions and squeezes that you perform to indicate a command and often at the same time. Your body awareness will flourish.
4. INTERNAL ORGANS STIMULATION This is the same when walking on foot, which is why it is one of the many reasons it is fantastic for sedentary or wheelchair bound people; it aids in liver function and digestion.
5. MOTOR FUNCTION The whole body has to work both independently and together to develop riding skills. As it is unlike most other sports your body can develop and improve new motor skills.
6. REFLEXES AND ALERTNESS As the horse moves, you must instantly and continuously react to it and be aware of any environmental considerations. We will keep you on your toes and develop your responses.
7. SELF-CONFIDENCE Responsibility, patience, overcoming fears, self-control and relationship building with the horse; an unbiased and non-judgemental partner that is only responsive to your intent and behaviour (which studies have found to be highly beneficial for those with ADHD, depression, anxiety and mental health disorders).
8. SEROTONIN PRODUCTION Doubling up on this mood-enhancing hormone by exercising and spending time with animals.
9. SENSORY INTEGRATION STIMULATION Riding well means 'feeling' your way with the horse, which is unlike most sports which is sight reliant (you can't play the easiest version of racquet, team or ball sports if you can't see the ball), but you can ride with very limited vision.
Horse-riding is suitable and beneficial for all ages.
"Prehab" is a proactive approach to building strength and stability, and improving mobility, balance, and joint functions to decrease the potential for injuries. Prehab is extremely beneficial when you are considering getting back to any sport after a break.
Horse riding is an isometric exercise, where specific muscles are targeted to stay in a certain position without contracting the muscle. One of the best features of this sport is that whether you're trying to or not, you DO engage all the right muscles. Over time as they improve in strength, so will the transfer of this strength to other positions such as standing or sitting, and other forms of exercise.
Walking and trotting (like a light jog) are the two most common speeds that you will be doing as a beginner in horse riding. To try to understand the number of muscles involved, imagine trying to balance and coordinate your movements with the horse as you squat up and down continuously. Your quads, hamstrings, glutes, and adductors will certainly be sore the next day! Any old ankle, knee, or hip injury that has not been fully rehabilitated may start to rear its ugly head as you will rely more on your better side, and the imbalance will only become greater.
While riding, your arms are either pulling the reins or held statically in a raised position. This can create beautifully sculpted shoulders – provided you don't have chronically tight shoulders from sitting at the desk all day. Your Physiotherapist can teach you how to open them up and get your shoulder blades stronger, so that you can hold them correctly and much more comfortably, and not exacerbate any niggling shoulder problems.
If you are looking for a core of steel, then look no further! Your core muscles are in overdrive to balance and stabilise your upper body on an unpredictable and ever-changing base of support; slouching or over extending the back will affect your ability to stay on the horse as it turns one way, you need to counterbalance with those obliques. Your centre of gravity and body weight are constantly shifting, but you must remain as central on the saddle as you can, or you might cause yourself or even the horse to go off balance. The core is the foundation of our body, and if it isn't working optimally, then how can we expect it to provide the base for our limbs?
Horse riding is a wonderful hobby for both adults and children looking for a new and extremely fulfilling experience. It fosters a wide range of skills that many of us would get huge benefits from but a certain level of body awareness and improvements would be ideal to maximise these benefits.
Physiotherapy can identify areas of weakness, potential problems, and imbalances in the body, and create a customised sport-specific prehab plan to achieve your goals. The aim is not to be "perfect", but prevention is better (and less painful) than cure. Speak to a Physiotherapist and take the first steps to create the foundations for a long, injury-free, and healthy hobby.
Lucie Lamprey is a Senior Physiotherapist at UFIT Clinic. She has a B.Sc. (Hons) in Physiotherapy from the University of Southampton, as well as a Masters of Manual Therapy from The University of Western Australia. Lucie has worked with a wide range of clients, including people who are new to exercise, those with pre-existing medical conditions, to recreational and competitive elite athletes.
90% of complaints by swimmers that bring them to the doctor and/or osteopath/physiotherapist are related to shoulder problems.
The shoulder complex is designed to achieve the greatest range of motion (ROM) with the most degrees of freedom of any joint system in the body.
Your shoulder is a ball and socket joint, with a rim of cartilage that goes around the socket to make it deeper and more stable. Surrounding the joint is your joint capsule, a fibrous material, with thicker parts of the capsule forming ligaments.
What is a swimmer shoulder?
Swimmer's shoulder is an umbrella term covering a range of painful shoulder overuse injuries that occur in swimmers. Because there are various parts of your shoulder that can be injured from your swimming stroke, your pain can be anything from a local pain near the shoulder joint, to a spreading pain that travels up your shoulder and neck or down into your arm. Being an overuse injury, it is caused by repeated trauma rather than a specific incident.
Inflammation of the supraspinatus and biceps tendon within the subacromial space leading to a shoulder impingement syndrome.
Training errors such as overtraining, overloading, and especially poor stroke technique may also contribute to this condition.
Many swimmers have inherent ligamentous laxity and often will have multidirectional shoulder instability - essentially, more movement in the joint.
However, all swimmers develop muscle imbalances where the adductors and internal rotators of the arm over-develop (due to the nature of swimming). Unfortunately, this leaves a relative weakness of the external rotators and scapular stabilisers - simply because they don't get used as much. Consequently, this muscle imbalance overuse and/or poor technique results in an anterior capsule laxity. These all culminate and allow the humeral head to move forward and up thereby, compromising the subacromial space (where the supraspinatus and biceps tendons run through) causing an irritation/impingement.
What goes wrong in swimmer's shoulder?
The shoulder is a very mobile joint, and being so mobile, it needs to be well controlled by the muscles and ligaments that surround the joint. Over-training, fatigue, hypermobility, poor technique, weakness, tightness, previous shoulder injury or use of too large hand paddles can lead to your muscles and ligaments being overworked. If this goes on, injuries such as rotator cuff impingement and tendonitis, rotator cuff tears, bursitis, capsule and ligament damage, or cartilage damage can occur.
9 times out of 10, a poor stroke technique is causing shoulder pain in the first place in swimming. Correcting your technique is not actually that difficult, but you do need to know what to look out for and, just as importantly, work diligently to improve in these areas. Video analysis is a great tool for this because it really helps you identify what you personally need to work on.
Developing a good, symmetrical body rotation through the development of an efficient bilateral breathing pattern is key to removing shoulder injury.
Swimming with a flat body in the water with limited rotation along the long axis of the spine causes the arms to swing around the side during the recovery phase.
This swinging action results in large amounts of internal rotation at the shoulder joint which is the major source of impingement and rotator cuff issues. By using several key technique drills this can be easily addressed and fixed.
Without the use of video analysis, many swimmers are unaware of how they pull through under the water. Typically swimmers will pull through with either a dropped elbow or with a very straight arm. Doing so loads the shoulder muscles excessively as the majority of the pull through phase is spent pushing down, rather than pressing back. Working to develop a 'high elbow catch' technique with enhanced swimming posture will really help you utilise the larger, more powerful muscle groups of your chest and upper back, rather than rely upon the shoulders.
Researchers have concluded that there are essentially 7 stages that need to be covered to effectively rehabilitate these injuries and prevent recurrence.
As with most soft tissue injuries the initial treatment is RICE - Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation.
In the early phase you'll most likely be unable to fully lift your arm or sleep comfortably. You should stop doing the movement or activity that provoked the shoulder pain in the first place and avoid doing anything that causes pain in your shoulder.
You may need to wear a sling or have your shoulder taped to provide pain relief. In some cases it may mean that you need to sleep relatively upright or with pillow support.
Ice is a simple and effective modality to reduce your pain and swelling. Apply for 20-30 minutes every 2 to 4 hours during the initial phase, or when you notice that your injury is warm or hot.
Anti-inflammatory medication (if tolerated) and natural substances (eg arnica) may help reduce your pain and swelling. However, it is best to avoid anti-inflammatory drugs during the initial 48 to 72 hours when they may encourage additional bleeding. Most people can tolerate paracetamol as a pain reducing medication.
As you improve, supportive taping will help to both support the injured soft tissue and reduce excessive swelling.
Your osteopath will utilise a range of pain relief techniques including joint mobilisations and massage to assist you during this painful phase.
If you protect your injured rotator cuff structures appropriately the injured tissues will heal. Inflammed structures eg (tendonitis, bursitis) will settle when protected from additional damage.
Symptoms related to swimmers shoulder may take several weeks to improve. During this time it is important to create an environment that allows you to return to normal use quickly and prevent a recurrence.
It is important to lengthen and orientate your healing scar tissue via joint mobilisations, massage, shoulder muscle stretches and light active-assisted and active exercises.
Researchers have concluded that osteopathic treatment will improve your range of motion quicker and, in the long-term, improve your functional outcome.
In most cases, you will also have developed short or long-term protective tightness of your joint capsule (usually posterior) and some compensatory muscles. These structures need to be stretched to allow normal movement.
Signs that you have full soft tissue extensibility include being able to move your shoulder through a full range of motion. In the early stage, this may need to be passively (by someone else) eg your osteopath. As you improve you will be able to do this under your own muscle power.
Your shoulder blade (scapular) is the base of your shoulder and arm movements.
Normal shoulder blade-shoulder movement - known as scapulo-humeral rhythm is required for a pain-free and powerful shoulder function. Alteration of this movement pattern results in impingement and subsequent injury.
Researchers have identified poor scapulo-humeral rhythm as a major cause of rotator cuff impingement. Any deficiencies will be an important component of your rehabilitation. Plus, they have identified scapular stabilisation exercises as a key ingredient for a successful rehabilitation.
It may be difficult to comprehend, but your neck and upper back (thoracic spine) are very important in the rehabilitation of shoulder pain and injury.
Neck or spine dysfunction can not only refer pain directly to your shoulder, but it can affect a nerve's electrical energy, causing weakness and altered movement patterns.
Plus, painful spinal structures form poor posture or injury do not provide your shoulder or scapular muscles with a solid pain-free base to act upon.
In most cases, especially chronic shoulders, some treatment directed at your neck or upper back will be required to ease your pain, improve your shoulder movement and stop the pain or injury returning.
It may seem odd that you don't attempt to restore the strength of your rotator cuff until a later stage in the rehabilitation. However, if a structure is injured we need to provide nature with an opportunity to undertake primary healing before we load the structures with anti-gravity and resistance exercises.
Having said that, researchers have discovered the importance of strengthening the rotator cuff muscles with a successful rehabilitation program. These exercises need to be progressed in both load and position to accommodate for which specific rotator cuff tendons are injured and whether or not you have a secondary condition such as bursitis.
Swimming requires repetitive arm actions, which place enormous forces on your body (contractile and non-contractile).
In order to prevent a recurrence as you return to swimming, your osteopath will guide you with exercises to address these important components of rehabilitation to both prevent a recurrence and improve your sporting performance.
Depending on what your training or competitive program entails, a speed, agility, technique correction and power program will be customised to prepare you for swimming-specific training.
Depending on the demands of your swimming season, you will require individual exercises and a progressed training regime to enable a safe and injury-free return to swimming.
Your osteopath will discuss your goals, time frames and training schedules with you to optimise you for a complete return to swimming.
The perfect outcome will have you performing at full speed, power, agility and function with the added knowledge that a through rehabilitation program has minimised your chance of future injury.
Sebastien is a qualified Osteopath from France and graduated with a MSc in Osteopathy from Ecole d'Osteopathie Paris. Prior to this, he obtained a BSc in Sport & Exercise Science from the University of Rouen. He is also a certified Personal Trainer and Swimming Coach.
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Too scared to jump on a trampoline with your kids? Not sure when to return to exercise after having your baby?
Maybe you should see a Women's Health and Continence Physio!
What does a women's health and continence (WH &C) physiotherapist do?
A WH & C Physio is a physiotherapist that has done additional study at University to specialise in the areas of continence and women's health. They can treat every day aches and pains and sports injuries but are also able to treat conditions related to pregnancy and pelvic floor muscle dysfunction.
What does an assessment with a women's health and continence physiotherapist involve?
Initial assessments are usually between 45 minutes and an hour long. The physiotherapist will spend most of the first session asking questions to determine the source of your symptoms. If the pelvic floor muscles need to be examined, the initial and follow up assessments may involve the use of real-time ultrasound over the lower abdomen, to providing visual biofeedback during pelvic floor muscle training.
What conditions do women's health and continence physiotherapists treat?
Assessment of altered bladder sensation.
If you would like further information on the services or if you would like to book an appointment please contact UFIT clinic.
I first saw Declan a couple of years ago after he reached out to me via social media. He had heard of an issue I was having that was initially diagnosed by another physio as a hamstring problem and said he would like to take a look at it. As my last physio was utterly useless, I agreed. A proper diagnosis and a few weeks of treatment later, I was back up and functioning like before, if not even better. His multi-pronged approach of manipulation, massage and strengthening exercises was exactly what I needed.
It was at that point I decided to start training with Declan too. We assessed my goals and he came up with routines for me that kept me safe and helped me reach new levels of fitness. We trained to prep my body for pregnancy, so that I could train through pregnancy. I'm happy to say that I've managed to escape a lot of pregnancy issues like trapped nerves in my back, back aches and excessive weight gain. I couldn't have done it without Declan's assistance and guidance.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Declan's services to anyone. He is brilliant. Open-minded and always eager to learn more to help his patients, he's now increasingly harder to get hold of. However I also know that he has cultivated the creme de la creme of rehabilitation specialists in Singapore (and likely South East Asia) at the UFIT Clinic, so whoever you see will be sure to get you back on the road to recovery - providing you do your exercises.
Thank you, Declan. And thank you, UFIT.
If you're looking for specific pre and post natal services please check out the latest with what's going on in our UFIT mama's corner.


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