Riding Ready by Pegasus Physio

Understanding what your body needs to do – and being able to do it

A lot of riding is talked about in terms of outcomes.

We talk about what it should look like, or what we want riders to do – a still upper body, quiet hands, a deep seat, a stable lower leg, a rider who looks “balanced”. We talk about what the horse should do – more forward, more through, straighter, more consistent in the contact.

And none of that is wrong. Outcomes matter.

But outcomes are the result of something – not the thing itself.

What I see again and again is riders being told what the end result should look like, without anyone really explaining how you actually achieve that result with your body. So riders try to copy positions they’ve been shown. They try to hold themselves in place. They try harder.

Sometimes that works – briefly.

But as soon as the horse changes rhythm, speed, direction, or gait, it all falls apart again. Balance goes, tension creeps in, and the rider feels like they’re constantly chasing stability.

That’s because riding has very real physical requirements that are rarely explained clearly.

There’s a gap between what we want to see on the horse, and what the rider’s body actually needs to be able to do to make that outcome possible.

That gap is where Riding Ready came from.

Riding Ready wasn’t created as a posture system, or a set of aesthetic rules, or another way of telling riders how they should look. It came from clinical reasoning – from working with riders and looking honestly at what their bodies are being asked to manage when they sit on a moving horse.

When you ride, your body is dealing with constant movement and force. You’re sitting on a base that’s never still. You’re absorbing vertical and horizontal load every stride. Your centre of gravity has to stay aligned with the horse’s as it shifts through each gait, each transition, each change of direction. Your pelvis needs to be able to move with the horse, your trunk needs enough stability to support your arms, and your hands and legs need to make small, precise adjustments without tipping the whole system out of balance.

That’s not a posture problem – it’s a neuromuscular task. In simple terms, it means riding isn’t about putting your body into a posture and holding it there. It’s about how your brain and body work together to manage movement, balance, and force in real time. Your nervous system is constantly deciding where to stabilise, where to allow movement, and how to keep you upright as the horse moves underneath you. If that system isn’t organised or confident, your body will default to bracing or gripping – even if you know what position you’re aiming for.

So instead of starting with how a rider should look, Riding Ready starts with how the nervous system and musculoskeletal system have to organise themselves to make that task possible.

From a motor control perspective, the body works from the centre outward. The pelvis and trunk act as the control hub for balance and movement. If that hub isn’t organised or doesn’t feel stable, the nervous system doesn’t simply give up – it protects itself. It stiffens. It links joints together. It limits movement where it feels unsafe.

That’s why so many riders feel blocked in the seat, tight in the hips, or unstable in the hands. Not because they’re weak, lazy, or lacking flexibility, but because their system doesn’t feel secure enough to allow free movement through those joints.

This is where a lot of traditional instruction unintentionally misses the mark. Telling a rider to “relax” or “open hips” doesn’t help if their body is bracing to protect itself. In fact, it often makes things worse.

Riding Ready was built to give the body a sense of organisation and safety. By finding a functionally neutral pelvis and stacking the trunk over it in a way that makes mechanical sense, the body can stabilise itself with far less effort. When that happens, there’s less need for bracing, and movement can happen where it’s meant to happen – through the pelvis, hips, arms, and hands – rather than being dragged through the whole body as one rigid unit.

This is why Riding Ready isn’t about holding a static posture. It’s about giving the body a stable reference point so it can move more, not less. Once that base is in place, the pelvis can follow the horse’s movement, the trunk can adapt to shifts in balance, and the limbs can start to work independently. That’s what real, dynamic riding requires.

Every part of Riding Ready comes back to the same underlying questions.

• Where is the rider’s base of support on a moving horse?

• Where does their centre of gravity need to be relative to the horse’s?

• How does force travel from the horse, through the saddle, and into the rider’s body?

• And what does the body do when it can manage that load – and when it can’t?

Riding Ready looks at how the body organises itself in response to balance demands, changing centres of gravity, speed, force, momentum, asymmetrical movement, and repeated load over time. When the body has the movement options, control, and strength it needs, it adapts efficiently. Balance feels easier, load is absorbed smoothly, and aids become clearer without extra effort.

When those options aren’t available, the body still adapts – just not in the way we want. It compensates. Most so-called “bad habits” aren’t bad habits at all. They’re solutions the body has found to stay on the horse.

The phrase “riding ready” isn’t commonly used in riding, and people can interpret it in lots of ways. For some, it might mean feeling warmed up, confident, fit enough, mentally prepared, or having done a few stretches before getting on. All of that can be useful – but that isn’t what Riding Ready means here.

Within Pegasus Physio, Riding Ready describes a very specific kind of physical readiness. It’s about whether your body is prepared for the actual demands riding places on it, and whether it has the capacity to manage those demands consistently as complexity increases. It’s built gradually, not chased through quick fixes or surface-level corrections.

Riding Ready breaks riding down into what the body actually has to manage – base of support, centre of gravity, balance and asymmetry, movement demands of each gait, force transfer and shock absorption – and then works systematically on building the ability to meet those demands.

This is the framework I use in every Pegasus Physio rider physio session. It’s what I’ve always done – it now just has a name. I work with riders all the time who either understand exactly what their coach is asking for, are trying their hardest, and genuinely want to improve – but physically can’t find or maintain what they’re aiming for once the horse starts moving with more energy, speed, or complexity. Or they don't really understand what they are meant to be doing and why- just what it should feel like or look like.

At a halt, even in walk, things can look fine. Add trot, canter, transitions, circles, corners, or pressure, and balance and control can then disappear. That’s when tension shows up. That’s when symmetry is lost. That’s when riders start being told to “stop doing” things they don’t even realise they’re doing.

Riding Ready doesn’t start by correcting the symptom. It starts by asking why the body is doing that in the first place.

If you’re able to attend in person, a Rider Physio session allows us to look at what your body is currently doing in the saddle, identify where balance, movement, or load management breaks down, understand why certain issues keep repeating, and work on the specific components that will make the biggest difference for your riding.

Riding Ready will shortly be available as a guided subscription for riders who want to work on this in and out of the saddle. It’s an evolution of the current Pegasus Physio subscription, designed to give riders a clear structure for building physical readiness step by step, so riding instruction becomes easier to apply. I’ll share more details as the content continues to develop.

If you’ve ever felt like you know what you’re meant to do, but your body just won’t cooperate, Riding Ready is designed to help you understand why – and give you a clear way forward.