Move Barefoot

Why would moving barefoot make you a better rider?

The way your feet behave have a massive impact on how the brain behaves with movement. Increase balance and suppleness on the saddle by incorporating some barefoot training.

We need to start from the beginning. One of the fundamental physical human and horse need is movement. Our nervous system is calibrated accordingly.

In the foot, we have 26 bones, 33 joints, over 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments. Up to 200000 receptors back to our movement brain to make us super efficient and minimise the risk of injury by giving feedback to the brain on how the terrain is and how our balance needs to adjust.

This is where the health of our feet is directly related to posture.

Secondly, if no info comes from the feet, it dumps down the information you receive from the environment. This is also true by riding!

Doing some barefoot training off the horse, such as Yoga, will improve your balance, agility, strength and of course, posture.

With the right signals from the feet, we can have ankle mobility, then knee stability, then hip mobility, pelvic stability, thoracic mobility, neck-scapula stability. All can start with the feet! So I would suggest as well to find riding boots with low heels and most importantly wide toe box. Also would it be advisable to have quality stirrups that don’t restrict your feet movement while still providing support and stability.

Last but not least, spiritually, the feet symbolise the direction in life and guidance. Possibly a strong enough argument to take them into account and let them spread and talk. They are here to help us cultivate awareness.