Riders spend hours working and developing musculature in horses for proper health and sport specific development.

Yet how often do we think about that for our own bodies?

Hypertrophy

Hypertrophy is the growth of muscle tissue in response to training. 

When a stimulus is applied to a muscle that is challenging, the muscle fibers will adapt by building more muscle to handle the demand. This is true whether that muscle belongs to a 1,200 lb warmblood or the human sitting on top of him!

For the horse and rider team they are constantly utilizing muscles to perform in the tack. The horse is utilizing muscle to move the body in directions that the rider is directing, changing length of stride, gait, and balance. The rider is utilizing stabilizing muscle to stay tall in the saddle, maintain symmetry of aides, and working on independence from and and seat. 

Often I hear riders saying that topline is developed from proper nutrition and that is true... to a degree. The horse has to have enough calories to be able to perform the exercise demands to be able to develop muscle. If the horse is underfed/undereating for their exercise demands then they will utilize fat storage and muscle storage during higher intensity exercise.

The same principle applies to humans as well! If riders are not fueling their bodies appropriately for the high demands of activity with horse care, ridden work, etc.. then it is very challenging to build muscle when those muscle fibers are being challenged! If you are curious if you are fueling enough- I highly recommend working with a sports dietician! They can help guide your nutritional needs in an evidence-based way!

Not having enough nutrition in either body system means the muscle fibers are being stimulated for change, but can't grow. So this will also increase rate of injury or pain!

Building Muscle:

The principles are the SAME for both systems.

A mechanical load is applied to a tissue which creates small microtears in the muscle fiber. The small microtears after the exercise session then can rest and be healed over the next several days to remodel and create MORE muscle tissue that is able to adapt for that previous stimuli.
In human medicine, we call this the Goldilocks Principle (yes, that's the actual scientific name). It means you need to have a stimulus with enough challenge to create the microtears but not too much that will create larger tears and result in an injury. 

Let's do a very simplistic breakdown of what is happening- 

If I told you to do 30 squats in a row right now, that might be challenging for some of you. You might feel muscle sore the next day. 

Now if you did 30 squats every day for a month straight - those first few days would feel fatiguing and sore... but you'd adapt! By the end of the month those would feel easy. This is because your muscle fibers are remodeling to meet the demands of the stimulus! 

If you spent the rest of your life performing 30 squats a day without any weight or additional stimulus this is where the muscle development would stop. You would have achieved proper muscle development for that specific stimulus and therefore your body didn't need to remodel any further - so you would maintain. 

Think about how that principle applies to our horses. If we do the SAME exact thing every single day so the horse is able to meet the exact task, then no further muscle development is achieved.

Okay, so you train your show jumping horse to do 10 jumps in a row for a show jump course.

When you go to a show jump competition and you have 10 jumps in a course... is that training enough?
But what if it's a hot day?
Or the footing is deeper than your usual footing?
Or your horse is very elevated mentally by the environment and needs additional time to warm up?

If the horse isn't prepared for those additional stressors and has only trained for 10 jumps of a course prior to this- then we run the risk of injury. That is where progressive training comes in handy for horses AND for riders. You can help develop muscle strength that is able to tolerate these changing variables by creating a more resilient athlete.

The Bottom Line

Muscle development is a key part of training and developing equine athletes. We, as riders, also need to be developing our own strength as well. Hypertrophy of muscle creates muscle that can tolerate MORE weight and MORE resistance.

It's hard to plan for what can happen when on a trail ride or at a horse show, so developing muscle that is appropriate for MORE work than your specific needs is important!

Feel overwhelmed or not sure where to start? Let's chat!