Fitness for Kids

There’s something about kids and ponies that just goes together. Riding can be a fantastic growth opportunity for children. Like any other sport, riding provides ample circumstances for children to learn great life skills like good sportsmanship, responsibility, commitment, and active lifestyle habits. Being in a relationship with another living creature and accomplishing tasks together adds further benefits. 

While your child is out there having fun, staying active, and learning to negotiate with and be responsible for another living being, you want her to be safe. An accident can spoil the fun very quickly.

Whether your child is involved in competitive sport, has fun on your backyard horse, or only goes on occasional rides, you may have wondered how to encourage her to develop the physical skills she needs when she can’t be at the barn. If your child is involved in other sports at school, she may very well be getting some good cross-training from those activities. Other sport coaches may have her doing some training as well. All of these activities will help your child develop physical strength and stamina, good posture, good cardiovascular ability, and good active habits for later in life.

It is very important for children to be as active as possible and to try out a wide variety of activities. If your child is just horse crazy and wants nothing to do with other activities, she is at risk of under-developing the skills that will help her with her riding well into her riding life.

Under-development in things like muscle tone and kinesthetic awareness (a sense of where your body is in space and how it should move) will end up affecting her riding ability. A young rider who is not competitive should still develop as well as she can so that she does not create ingrained, unproductive riding and postural habits. Such habits will eventually cause strain or cause her to lose balance while riding and place her at greater risk for injury.