The Equestrian Physio

The Equestrian Physio It's time you showed up for them too...

🗓️TEP Training opens doors in Sept.👇

🏋️‍♀️ Rider-specific strength, rehab & performance systems that actually work.
🎓 MScPT | 300+ coached | 200K+ riders strong.
🧡 Your horse shows up every day for you.

Happy June friends❤️
06/01/2026

Happy June friends❤️

05/31/2026

Comment WARM UP for your free guide!
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But also, WHY are we like this? 🥸

Listen, there is absolutely nothing wrong with devoting time and energy to getting your horse thoroughly prepped. We've been brought up this way by the industry, and a lot of it comes down to safety and horsemanship, so it makes total sense. Grooming, equipment care, feeling over their backs and legs, warming blankets, stretching routines, the basics like sweeping up and picking p**p.

I GET that after all of that, it's hard to imagine spending a few extra minutes warming up yourself before swinging your leg into the tack.

But what if a 5 minute routine to prep your OWN body was the difference between a "meh" ride and an "it's finally clicked!" ride?

Take it from TEP Training member Olivia: "...A few minutes of stretching in my horse's stall before I got on. The results?? WOW. My toes stayed facing forward through all the gaits, my lower leg felt way more solid, I was ACTUALLY using my lower leg to cue my horse, and inside leg to outside rein just started working. Who knew?!"

Every👏 other👏 sport👏 normalizes warming up before participation, but somehow we overlook our own obligation in equestrian sport? And when you stack everything we already do to get the horse ready on top of the overwhelming amount of advice floating around about warm-ups, it feels so much easier to just skip it altogether.

So I decided to make it simple for y'all❤️. I built the FREE Rider Warm-Up Guide to break down the non-negotiables from the nice-to-haves so you can prep your body exactly how you need to without wasting your precious barn time.

Comment WARM UP for your own copy! 🧡

LinkDM *022*

05/29/2026

Actually, I'd love it if just eating and riding could be my life😂. Coffee, horses, gym and eating... sounds like a pretty great party ✌️

How do YOU fit it all in? It's no secret that we ask A LOT of our schedules. I'm often on here beating the drum on the f...
05/21/2026

How do YOU fit it all in? It's no secret that we ask A LOT of our schedules.

I'm often on here beating the drum on the fact that as equestrians, we have an obligation to show up as fit, capable partners for our horses. In order to do that, that requires some form of off horse training to develop our physical capacity, because as I have said many times in the past, riding and barn chores are not enough to build the fitness required to be an effective rider (and you can check out many of my other posts for the physiological reasons why).

But KNOWING it is our responsibility to show up as fit, capable partners for our horses, and finding the time and strategies to actually DO IT are two separate things.

So I asked current members of TEP training how they do it.

What tips or strategies or hacks or non-negotiables do they have to make it all work. And the answers did not disappoint.

1. REMEMBER THE 'WHY': tie your actions to something bigger than yourself, whether that is your responsibility to the horse, health, longevity, your family, whatever it is. Keep that front of mind.

2. REMOVE FRICTION: block your calendar, make your lunch the night before, set out your gym clothes, invest in home equipment. The less friction you have, the easier it's going to be.

3. DON'T RELY ON WILLPOWER: Willpower is not a real thing. It is fleeting and irregular. Don't rely on it, instead, outsource your accountability to friends, family, calendar blocks, whatever works.

4. PLAN FOR THE WORST DAY, NOT THE BEST: Our schedules rarely go to plan. Knowing exactly how to modify, what to drop, and having a plan A/B/C/D in your pocket is crucial for maintaining consistency. It's not about getting it perfect every day, it's about doing what you can and continuing to show up.

What would YOU add to this list?

What are your "non-negotiable" for fitting it all in? Drop it in the comments and let's share our best tips!

05/19/2026

Comment SYMMETRY and I’ll send you the sign up for my new FREE Rider Symmetry Screen!

We all have that one little performance or position thing we struggle with. That thing our coach says RIDE after RIDE that we never seem to be able to figure out! The hand we like to lean on, the leg that creeps forward, the side that collapses in. But why does it happen?

There’s a lot of layers to it, and even the same problem might stem from different things person to person. But USUALLY it’s some combination of strength, mobility, or body control deficits, or an imbalance side to side, that’s driving it (barring other stuff like saddle fit). And if we can uncover WHAT those things are out of the saddle, we can address them to start fixing ourselves IN the saddle.

And that’s what the TEP Symmetry Screen is designed to help us uncover. It’s is a series of quick mobility and strength checks that dig into the real reasons behind things like:

🔸Why your lower leg won’t stay still...
🔸 Why you’re always hanging on one rein...
🔸 Why your ankles give out...
🔸 or why you always shift to one side in the saddle...

The goal here ISN’T to aim for perfection, but to recognize where we may be falling short, so we can make a PLAN to better ourselves, for our own performance and the welfare of our partnership with the horse.

This screen helps you breakdown and analyze your mobility and strength joint by joint, limb by limb, and movement by movement, so you can stop guessing and actually take action on some of these issues.

Ready to get started? Comment SYMMETRY or check the link in my bio to sign up! As a bonus, share this with a friend to do the screen together (and commiserate with your results, lol)

LinkDM *019*

05/15/2026

Great question!
What is too much discomfort when rehabbing an injury?

There are three things I check, and I use them on myself too, including this week as I'm working through my own ankle rehab.

The first one happens in the moment. As you move through a set, is the pain getting worse, or is it loosening up? Acute injuries can absolutely yell at you on the first rep and that's not a red flag on its own.

What you want to see is each rep feeling a little better than the one before. Yesterday I squatted, deadlifted, ran through my whole ankle rehab routine and nothing got worse. Then I tried running and went from a 0 to a 3 or 4 out of 10 in under a minute. My body was telling me, very clearly, too soon. So I jumped on the bike instead. No harm, no foul✌️

The other two play out in the 24 hours afterward, because some tissues love to give you a delayed reaction. Tendinopathies are famous for it. So is nerve pain. You can finish a session feeling totally fine, then wake up the next morning or a few hours later with a sharp flare that just won't settle. If pain doesn't calm back down inside that 24 hour window, that's solid info about where your threshold is. Same goes for swelling. If the injured area puffs up after the session and doesn't return to its baseline within a day, you pushed past what the tissue was ready for.

Healing moves through three phases (inflammatory, proliferative, remodeling) and your body will happily run the inflammatory/ proliferation phase on its own. It cleans up the damage, lays down a little scar tissue, and that's about all it's going to do without a nudge. The only way that tissue gets back to anything close to what it was before the injury is if we ask it to with LOAD.

So we DO have to push. We just don't want to overshoot.

Poke the bear. Don't punch the bear.

Want more rehab and training tips like this in your inbox? Link in bio to join the list!

05/13/2026

Think you need to spend 20 minutes stretching to get more flexible? Maybe you don’t🤷‍♀️

A 2023 meta-analysis by Alizadeh et al. found that resistance training through full range of motion is just as effective as static stretching for improving flexibility—but with a secondary bonus: it also builds STRENGTH and CONTROL in those end ranges.

But why does this matter? There’s a difference key difference between flexibility & mobility.

Flexibility is your passive rang: how far a joint can move when you relax.
Mobility is your active rang: how far you can move and control that joint under your own power.

And in sport? MOBILITY and CONTROL are what actually matters. You don’t need to flop into the splits, you need to control your body at end range under force. That’s where end-range loading comes in: strengthening your body while it stretches.

And equestrians need this more than most! Sitting on a horse already puts your hips into abduction and external rotation, often near your max range. Then add the dynamic forces of the horse’s movement (lateral sway, vertical bounce, rapid transitions) and your body has to follow and absorb it without falling behind. That requires strength in your available range, not just passive flexibility outside of it.

The other issue is that most riders are strapped for time. You might want to stretch for 20 minutes after a workout or ride, but realistically? We struggle to fit that in.

The good news is that training with full-ROM resistance movements (like deep squats, split stance work, RDLs, and controlled overhead pressing) can give you the SAME flexibility gains AND makes you stronger at the same time.

If you found this helpful and want more insights like this, join my email list through my website or link in my profile. I send out free resources, event updates, and rider-focused training education you won’t get anywhere else!

05/10/2026

I am convinced that the barn warps time in some strange way. We gotta get the physicists on that ...⏱️

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