Menu
Something we have wondered about for a long time is how many calories we burn when horseback riding? Have you also occasionally thought: “Oh I can eat that piece of cake; I just came home from riding my horse”? But how much exercise do we get from riding a horse? We have decided to find out.
“No problem, I can easily eat that extra chocolate biscuits, because I am anyway going to the stable later to see my horse.” Afterwards you also supplement with a piece of carrot cake – it is unpolite to say no. We all know the situation. It will work itself out, because soon we are going to ride the horse, and then we burn all the extra calories. But honestly. How much can you eat, before gaining more kilos than anticipated?
Mucking out, filling the hay net, and of course riding. This is all good activities counting as exercise. If you on the other hand wish to lose weight, you have to burn fat. Before this you also should consider eating less calories than you burn.
Do not worry. Your body use several calories just by staying alive. This is called Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR. It indicates how many calories it takes to keep the heart going, the lungs functional and the brain running and to keep an overall constant body temperature.
A rule of thumb to calculate how many calories you burn by doing nothing is to take your body weight and multiply it with 20 calories if you are a woman and 25 calories if you are a man. This is roughly how much you burn when you lie completely still in your bed.
A woman weights 70 kg and has a BMR of 1400 calories (70 x 20).
A man weights 90 kg and has a BMR of 2250 calories (90 x 25).
Thanks to an article from Horse and Hound combined with several tables on the internet, we are able to measure the number of calories you burn in the stable and while riding your horse. Of course it is necessary to take different factors into consideration as your weight, your age and overall condition. The calculations are in connection to a “normal” built woman in her 30s with a standard BMI between 18,5 to 25. BMI stands for Body Mass Index and is used to figure out if you are overweight, underweight or normal. The test of BMI finds a number that indicates the relation between you weight and height. You can find out your BMI here.
There are of cause many ways to keep a stable or shed clean but in this case, we have looked at it as an ordinary cleaning where both poo and urine are removed. Furthermore, in this process you also empty the wheelbarrow, sweep the floor and use a shovel which all means that you burn about 175 calories in an hour.
How much do you burn when you ride dressage? About 410 calories in an hour which is quite a lot! In this case you are both walking, trotting and doing canter. If you compare this with other sports it almost counts for playing soccer in an hour. So, the next time your boyfriend or husband claims that riding is not hard work then ask him or her to read this article.
According to Horse and Hound you burn little less calories when jumping than riding dressage. All in all, with warming up, walking and a few rounds in the arena you burn about 300 calories. Perhaps the less calories relate to the fact that show jumping changes a lot in intensity. You have more breaks whereas in dressage about 40-45 % of the time you ride in the same intensity above average.
However, as a show jumper you can rejoice that you burn calories while putting up the jumps, pulling them down and memorising the combinations of the jumps by walking around in the arena. If you spend about 20 minutes on this it is the same as doing cross fit for about 20 minutes. You can therefor add 125 calories to the 300.
Enjoy the chocolate biscuits, the time in the stable and riding your horse!
