Wilmington, OHIO August 14, 2026 Stall reservations are now open for World Equestrian Center Wilmingtons (WEC) 2026 Midwest Indoors Series featuring three weeks of US Equestrian (USEF) National Hunter/Level 4 Jumper competition beginning November 4 through November 22. Midwest Indoors 2 will play host to the annual WEC Medal Final. Qualifiers will be emailed invitations and qualifyingSource

If you compete in dressage, or you plan to in the future, its likely that your horse will be asked to transition from a free walk to a medium walk in a test. Its not necessarily as easy as it sounds and some horses naturally find it easier to do than others.Your horse may be reluctant to collect or tempted to jog, or not take the contact down and forward enough in the free walk. Its easy to lose marks here and correct training at home will help put you in the best position to score the higher marks. Dressage judge and trainer Alex Gingell shares his tips on how to make the transition seamless.What is medium walk?Medium walk is expected in all dressage tests starting at intro level. The horse should stride forward with purpose (think marching) and the rhythm should be regular and relaxed, but with energy. The judge will be looking to see that the footfalls are correct and the rhythm is consistent.What is free walk?Free walk on a long rein appears in dressage tests from the lower levels too. The horse should be relaxed and you should allow enough rein for them to take their head and neck down and forward, really stretching out. They should have complete freedom of their shoulder and the footfalls should remain correct, with a clear overtrack.The key is that the horse is relaxed but marching purposely, while taking the contact forward.Still not sure? Watch our video guide that explains each of the different walks.What does the judge want to see?Judges like to see a noticeable shortening in the frame of your horse, usually within two and four walk strides while passing the correct marker, explains Alex. The poll should be the highest point, with the nose on, or slightly in front of, a vertical line from your horses forehead to the ground.The contact should be elastic and light, but stable. The rhythm of the walk should be constant. The horses hocks should be engaged and carrying more weight than in the free walk.How can it be practised?Practise riding a free walk to a medium walk, and then halt.Ride free walk to medium walk and then back to free walk. Vary it with free walk to medium walk to leg-yield, so your horse doesnt know whats coming next. This reduces the risk of him tightening and anticipating.If your horse is tense and likely to jog then dont go for the maximum free walk otherwise you run the risk of him jogging when you gather the reins. Instead, keep a little connection and only lengthen the frame a few inches, but still make the lengthening noticeable, with the steps becoming longer. This makes it easier to gather him up without jogging.Half-halt and test the connection for a few steps before you make the transition to medium walk.Breathe deeply, in through your nose and out through your mouth and keep your arms, shoulders and core relaxed.To gather the reins, creep them up with both hands, or hold both in one hand momentarily and shorten one before swapping and shortening the other. Practise both techniques and be able to do both in a test environment. Choose the method that best suits your horse and how he feels on the day.Where are marks easily lost?The judges dont want to see:HollowingResistanceA change in rhythmBreaking (jogging)Tension in the horses backMeet the expert: Alex Gingell is a British Dressage list 4 judge and trainer.Image:Related contentHow to improve a horses walk *VIDEO*Four types of trot explained *VIDEO*Try Dan Greenwoods straight line exercisesThe scales of training explainedComplete guide to the dressage arenaThe post How to ride a good transition from free walk to medium walk in a dressage test appeared first on Your Horse.

Rider Fitness Without the Nonsense: Katie Bleekman on Hip Mobility, Core Strength and Why Mucking Out Isn't TrainingJust Horse Riders Podcast Episode 40 | Published 14 August 2026Key TakeawaysYard work is activity, not training. Mucking out keeps you fit for the yard it does not make you fit for the specific demands of riding.Hip mobility comes first. Restricted hips force the lower back to create movement it was never designed for, which is why so many riders live with back pain.Two to three full-body strength sessions a week is the sweet spot plus one aerobic session. Full-body beats "chest day" every time for riders.Your glutes are the most underrated muscle group in the saddle, and they're part of your core not a separate project.You need roughly 15 of kit to start: a pack of mini resistance bands, one long loop band, and your own bodyweight.Progressive overload is the missing piece. A little more each week beats random workouts thrown at the wall.Sleep is free and it's the biggest lever you have bigger than ice baths, gadgets or any 60 recovery session.Quick Answer: Do Horse Riders Really Need to Train Off the Horse?Yes. Riding and yard work build a general base of fitness, but they don't build the hip mobility, lower-body stability and core strength that riding actually demands. Two to three full-body strength sessions a week starting with bodyweight and resistance bands is enough for most riders to feel a genuine difference in the saddle within four to six weeks.That's the short version. The long version, courtesy of Episode 40 of the Just Horse Riders Podcast, is a lot more useful and a lot funnier.Meet Katie Bleekman: The Coach Who Actually Understands Yard LifeKatie Bleekman is the founder of Event Rider Fitness, an online coaching business built specifically for equestrian athletes with a particular focus on female riders. She's a qualified personal trainer, but her credibility is horse-world first: she competed to 3* level eventing, spent three years freelance grooming across showjumping and eventing (including the Asian Games in Jakarta), and represented Team GB at the European Pony Eventing Championships, where the British team took silver.She's also a multiple-time finalist in Britain's Fittest Farmer, has four marathons behind her, and coaches everyone from happy hackers to a rider who's been to Tokyo. She runs the business solo from her family farm just outside Cullompton in Devon which is to say, she's fitting her own riding and training around the exact same chaos you are.From Pony Europeans to Personal TrainingKatie's route into fitness wasn't a masterplan. After growing up in a seriously horsey family her mum a professional event rider, her dad Dutch and raised on a showjumping stud she went through the pony circuits, competed to intermediate, and then, at around 18, quietly realised she'd had enough."I remember going across country and thinking, I'm not enjoying this," she told Aaron. "I wasn't nervous, I wasn't scared. I just didn't enjoy it anymore."Cue an office job in Newmarket, six unhappy months in equestrian e-commerce, three years of freelance grooming, and then a throwaway comment from a colleague in Portugal while she was training for the Manchester Marathon: have you ever thought about doing fitness for work? She qualified as a PT alongside grooming, built a client base in a small-group gym near Cirencester, and then Covid forced her hand. Event Rider Fitness has been going six years.The Biggest Misconception in Rider Fitness: "I'm On the Yard All Day"This is the one that gets everybody, and Aaron walked straight into it describing doing his wife Shan's yard duties for a weekend and being absolutely floored, despite being able to run six kilometres without blinking.Katie's distinction is the single most useful idea in the whole episode. Activity is not training. Dragging a wheelbarrow up a hill in February is genuinely cardiovascular nobody's arguing otherwise. But it's unstructured, repetitive, and it isn't progressing toward anything."Training is called training for a reason," Katie said. "A workout in my head is where you go and jump around for half an hour, you get sweaty, you finish. But there was no principle behind it. Training is a process you start somewhere, you want to get to an outcome."Is mucking out actually enough exercise for horse riders?No. Mucking out and yard work build a solid general fitness base and count as day-to-day activity, but they don't develop the specific strength, mobility and stability that riding requires. Riders typically have decent aerobic fitness already what's usually missing is structured strength training and hip mobility work.According to Katie Bleekman, most riders would out-walk a non-horsey friend on a four-hour hike without breaking a sweat. The fitness is already there. It's the strength and mobility side that's been quietly neglected and, as she points out, muscle mass and bone density both decline with age, so it's the side that matters more the older you get.Start Here: Hip Mobility Is the Gateway to EverythingEvery rider on Katie's top-tier programme goes through a movement screen around ten bodyweight movements, filmed and uploaded, which she then watches twice: once at full speed, then again at half speed. That second pass is where the truth comes out."I had somebody, and I watched it first and thought, God, she moves really well," Katie said. "And then when we slowed it right down, you could see tiny little things she collapses a little bit into the left hip at the bottom of a squat. It's minimal, but it's there."And the finding that comes up almost every single time? Hip mobility.Why do riders get lower back pain when they ride?Very often it traces back to restricted hips rather than a weak back. According to Katie Bleekman, mobility is the gateway to everything if you're immobile in one place, the lower back tries to create movement it was never designed to produce. Riders are also commonly stiff through the thoracic spine, which compounds the problem.She gave a textbook example of a client who kept getting a sore back after hard flatwork sessions. The screen showed her feet rolling inward, which meant instability through the knees and hips, which meant her legs weren't doing their job so her back stepped in to cover. Fix the foundation, and the symptom stops shouting.Katie's One Exercise: The 90/90Asked for a single movement to pick if she could only have one, Katie chose hip mobility drills specifically the 90/90. Sit on the floor, bum down, feet out in front with knees up. Let both knees drop to the right, then to the left, keeping your torso tall and your backside on the floor. Both knees should reach the ground reasonably easily.If they don't, you've just diagnosed yourself: you need work on both internal and external hip rotation. Her instruction is 510 slow reps each side, deep breaths, and importantly do not force your knee to the floor. Work within your range and let it open up over weeks, not minutes.It's also a much nicer thing to do in something that actually stretches with you, which is a decent argument for owning at least one pair of properly stretchy riding jodhpurs and breeches that don't fight you when you're trying to get low.Core Strength: You've Been Sold the Wrong VersionKatie is refreshingly annoyed about this one. "I don't really even know why core strength has become such a thing in rider fitness," she said not because it doesn't matter, but because of what people do about it.Twenty-minute ab workouts. Endless sit-ups. Three weeks of enthusiasm followed by a sore back and total abandonment. Her framing is much simpler: your core's job is to support the spine. So you train the muscles around the spine and around the hips front, back, all of it rather than hunting for one magic exercise.What is the most underrated muscle group for horse riders?Your glutes. They're the powerhouse of the position you actually sit in, and they're already part of your core anything from mid-thigh, front and back, up to just below the chest counts. Training glutes properly means you're training your core, not choosing between the two.She also makes a point that lands uncomfortably well: a lot of riders genuinely cannot engage their core or fire a specific glute on command. "When you're having a lesson and your coach says engage your left glute how do I do that? I can't teach you how to do it when you're riding if you can't do it on the floor first."Katie's Home Core Pick: The Dead BugLie on your back, feet off the floor, knees and hips at 90 degrees, arms up above your chest, ribcage pressed down. Extend your left arm and right leg out together, keeping your ribcage in contact with the floor. Return, swap sides.Why it's her pick: it trains opposite limbs working together, which is precisely what your body does every stride you ride. No kit, no gym, no excuses.How Often Should You Actually Train?Here's where a lot of riders self-sabotage before they've started. Katie described the classic onboarding questionnaire answer: ideal training week six sessions. Then she reads the rest of the form. Office until 5:30. Yard by six. Riding till seven. Wednesdays till 7:30."How the hell do you think you're going to fit in six sessions a week?" she asked, entirely fairly. "But it comes from a place of good intentions."How many days a week should a rider strength train?Two to three full-body strength sessions per week, plus one aerobic session, is what Katie recommends for most riders. Full-body training is more time-effective than split routines, and three sessions gives you more weekly volume which is what actually drives progress.According to Katie Bleekman, riders should aim for full-body sessions rather than "chest day" or "back day" because if you smash your pecs and shoulders on Monday, Tuesday's mucking out becomes a genuine problem. That's what functional training actually means: can you still do your life tomorrow?A workable session, in her words, is one core exercise, one lower-body exercise, one single-leg exercise and one upper-body exercise. That's it. Do that two or three times a week for four to six weeks and you'll feel the difference.Progressive Overload: The Bit Everyone SkipsIf there's one piece of gym jargon worth learning, this is it. Progressive overload simply means doing slightly more each week a little lower in the squat, one more rep, a fraction more resistance.What it is not is a different set of random exercises every session. "That's literally just what I call throwing spaghetti at the wall," Katie said. "Doing random stuff, hoping it's going to stick. And then three months down the line you're like, oh, it's not worked."She draws the parallel a rider will feel in their bones: you wouldn't school a horse by doing something completely different every session and then wonder why the simple changes aren't improving. Repetition with small progressions is how horses learn. Funnily enough, it's how we do too.Her rule on adding load: nothing gets heavier until the movement is right. If your hips can't get below your knees in a squat and she reckons most riders' can't the answer isn't more weight, it's more depth.Riders Aren't Lazy. They're Overwhelmed.This was the line of the episode. According to Katie Bleekman, she has never met a rider who doesn't work hard and yet riders routinely describe themselves as lazy."They're not lazy," she said. "They're either completely overwhelmed, completely burnt out, or they just don't have a clue where to start."The typical intake call, she explained, sounds like this: three kids, part-time job, husband working away, three horses, two dogs, running the whole place solo but I'd really like to work on my fitness, and also I'm knackered all the time. No wonder it feels stuck.Does going to the gym actually improve your riding?Yes when the training is specific and consistent. Off-horse strength and mobility work improves body awareness, corrects asymmetries like collapsing into one hip, and builds the stability that stops you tiring in the last third of a course or lesson. The gym isn't the only venue, though: around 70% of Katie's clients train at home.One of her clients described exactly this transfer: after twelve weeks she could feel herself dropping her left hip while riding, and knew instantly what to do about it engage the glute, lift the foot, use the core. That's the whole point.You Need 15 of Kit, Not a PelotonAaron asked the obvious practical question: what do you actually need at home? The answer is gloriously unglamorous.A pack of mini resistance bands (around a fiver, five resistance levels) and one long loop band (roughly 11). Katie rates Core Balance, though she's quick to note other brands exist. Add your own bodyweight and that's a complete starter kit."If you're completely new to training, that and your bodyweight to start with that's enough," she said. "You don't need anything else."Later, if you've found your feet, a kettlebell or a pair of dumbbells is a sensible next purchase. What isn't sensible, in her view, is a Peloton bought to solve a motivation problem: "Unless you're a millionaire, I wouldn't say a Peloton bike is a particularly great use of money. I'd say you'd be better buying a push bike and going outside."And if you're stocking up for a horsey friend who keeps saying they'll start in January, resistance bands make an excellent stocking filler alongside anything from the equestrian gifts collection. Cheaper than a guilt-inducing gym membership, too.Bin the Bosu BallAsked for the biggest myth in rider fitness, Katie didn't hesitate."That you need to stand on a bosu ball all the time," she said. "They have their place I did an ankle ligament injury two years ago and it was part of my recovery. But as soon as I was done? Most riders, they're expensive, and they're a pretty useless bit of kit. On the whole, throw them in the bin."Her wider point is the good one. Look at how every other sport trains. World-class hurdlers aren't doing shoulder presses mid-hurdle. Long-distance runners are in the gym doing strength work, mobility, foam rolling and recovery. Nobody in athletics is balancing on a wobbly dome and calling it sport-specific."I don't really know how we got so lost," she said. "This is where sport-specific can get a bit messy because you don't need to be doing crazy exercises."Sleep Is the Cheapest Performance Gain You'll Ever GetAaron raised the three pillars sleep, diet, exercise and Katie immediately picked her favourite."Sleep is the biggest thing in the world and it's free," she said. "All these people go and pay physios 50, 60 a session, they go and do cold baths, sit in the freezing chamber, do all this crazy recovery stuff that isn't free. Let's just remember you can sleep for eight hours a night. And I don't know any equestrian who wouldn't want to go to sleep at the end of a long day."She's blunt about the pattern she sees: riders under-fuelling all day, hitting a wall at four o'clock, grabbing a Mars bar and a Red Bull from the garage, going to bed at midnight, up at five. It works right up until it very suddenly doesn't.The same logic applies to your horses, incidentally nobody expects performance out of an underfed, overworked animal, which is why we're all so diligent about everyday supplements and feed support for them and so cheerfully negligent about ourselves.The Glass Balls, the Rubber Balls and the Young HorseTwo analogies from this episode are worth stealing.The first came via Jake Humphrey's High Performance podcast: you're juggling a lot of balls, and most of them are rubber. Drop them and they bounce a work task, a dented car, the tack room you haven't tidied. A few are glass: your health, your relationships, time with your kids and parents. Drop those and they don't bounce.The second is entirely Katie's, and it's the one that'll stick with riders. One of her clients realised mid-programme that she'd been applying two completely different standards. "When you produce a young horse, you look at the big picture," Katie explained. "He's three, he's unbroken what's the next ten years going to look like? You're not expecting flying changes by the end of his four-year-old year."We give horses years. We give ourselves about a fortnight before declaring the whole thing a failure. As Katie put it: "When it comes to us, we're not very good at being realistic."What About Injuries?A quick but important one, because it stops a lot of riders from starting. Katie currently coaches a client three months post-ACL surgery and another who broke her collarbone in October. Both trained through, both from home with a couple of weights and some bands upper body for one, legs for the other, gentle mobility throughout.She also asks every new client about injuries "regardless of how minor," because the answer is almost always oh, nothing major followed by a broken ankle at twelve and a fractured elbow at nineteen which, nine times out of ten, you can still see in how they move today.Where Is Rider Fitness Heading?Katie's honest answer: exciting, but slightly worrying. She's enthusiastic about performance centres like the Performance Hub in Gloucestershire, where riders can access trainers, physios and sports psychologists in one place provided the model becomes affordable enough for ordinary riders rather than the top end only.Her concern is data. Stats and tech are genuinely useful for tracking margins and progress, but she's wary of a culture where riders feel judged against numbers they can't realistically access. "Data is something that gives us information to assess and move forwards and make changes with," she said. "It shouldn't be, this is the top score and you're below it."Katie's Final Three: Where to Actually StartFollow a full-body programme, three days a week. If you've no serious injury history and you move reasonably well, you don't need bespoke personalisation to begin you need consistency.Warm up before you ride. Five minutes. Arm circles, roll downs, leg swings, hip circles. You'd warm up for any other sport; riders just get on and go.Stop trying so hard. Her answer to "what should riders stop doing immediately?" One bad schooling session or missed gym session is not a verdict on you.And her closing line is the one to pin above the tack room: "The cost of entry is embarrassment." You will look daft learning something new. Everybody does. Katie spent last year landing on her backside in front of the strongman lot while learning to snatch, and now she can do it. That's just what the beginning looks like.Watch, Listen and FollowThis one runs long because it's genuinely worth it grab a coffee and watch now:Prefer it in your ears while you're mucking out? Listen now on the Just Horse Riders Podcast on Spotify, where you'll find every previous episode too.You can find Katie at Event Rider Fitness, on Instagram and on YouTube. She's offered to share video demos of any of the movements described in the episode her inbox is open.About the AuthorAaron Englander Founder, Just Horse Riders. Aaron has spent more than 15 years in the equestrian industry, building Just Horse Riders from the ground up into a multi-channel retailer stocking over 60,000 products, and is the creator of the Englander Equestrian own-brand range. He hosts the Just Horse Riders Podcast, where he talks to riders, coaches, vets and industry figures about the realities of life with horses. Read more about Just Horse Riders.Published 14 August 2026 | Just Horse Riders Podcast, Episode 40

We can all be guilty of slipping into behaviours that feel like they will make life easier, such as riding one-handed, on a loose rein, spending time chatting to a friend, or even using a phone when we are in the saddle on a hack.Horsemanship expert Jason Webb discusses the bad habits he most often sees in riders when hacking, and what you can do to address them.As with horses, I tend to see two bad habits among riders: either they dont pay enough attention to their horse, or they pay too much attention, says Jason. Riders who dont pay attention can miss signals from their horse that hes worried about something, so it can seem like a behaviour comes out of the blue.The other problem is being too in tune with your horse, so looking at what hes doing, micromanaging him and worrying about what he might do next without taking in your surroundings.Jason explains that both styles can result in a horse displaying undesirable behaviours, such as spooking, planting, refusing to stop, or jogging.You need to have an awareness of your horse, but also of yourself, so that you can understand both your strengths and weaknesses, he says.Becoming the rider your horse wantsIf you find your mind wandering during a ride, or you become caught up in conversation with a friend, try to bring yourself back to regularly checking in with your horse. Make sure that you maintain a consistent contact so that youre ready if he indicates to you that hes unsure of something.If you find yourself worrying, look up, pick something ahead to focus on, like a tree or a lamppost, and concentrate on riding to it. Dont forget about your horse, but remember to take in your surroundings too.It does require work to change these habits because you dont always realise that youre doing them, acknowledges Jason. A good place to start is by asking a friend or instructor to highlight anything they notice.Related contentBored of round the block? Four ways to find new hacking routesWhy wearing the colour red could play a part in safer hacking10 tips for training your horse to open gates out hacking8 benefits of flatwork for every horse, whether you compete or notThe post Overcome bad hacking habits to become the rider your horse wants appeared first on Your Horse.

Filled legs is the term used to describe a condition where the length of a horses legs (more commonly the hind pair) appear swollen. Its often the result of the horse standing in their stable for longer than normal and not doing enough exercise.Although finding that your horse has filled legs can be worrying, in most cases its a simple enough problem to resolve and doesnt have to lead to a hefty horse health insurance claim, as long as you know what youre doing.Causes of filled legsThe veterinary term for filled legs is oedema, and its basically an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the bodys tissues.Horses are prone to this stocking up as they have relatively poor circulation in their legs. When a horse is moving, the action of their legs and feet hitting the ground acts like a pump and sends blood and lymphatic fluid back up from the limbs.However, if they stand still this process slows down, allowing fluid to leak out of the blood vessels and reducing the return of lymph.When to call a vetIn most cases, although filled legs can cause a horse to be a little stiff, its not serious and will usually resolve after exercise or the use of stable bandages. If it doesnt resolve within a few hours after exercise, call your vet for advice.Its also vital that you check your horse for other symptoms of illness. If theyve suffered a cut, are showing signs of pain or lameness, appear depressed or they are running a temperature, it could mean they are suffering an infection and you should call your vet straight away.Filled legs can also be a sign of other health conditions in horses, including problems with the efficiency of a horses heart and conditions which result in low blood protein levels. There will usually be other signs of illness too, so always call your vet to investigate further.Dealing with filled legsWhen a horse has developed filled legs due to inactivity, walking them out and placing stable bandages on the legs can help reduce the swelling.Wearing magnetic boots may also help some horses, as they are believed to help improve circulation.Stable bandages are wider than exercise bandages, and should always be used over padding, such as Gamgee or Fybagee.Before you apply stable bandages, tie your horse up and make sure their legs are clean. When applying bandages, always position yourself to the side of the leg, squatting rather than kneeling so that you can move quickly if you need to, and keep your fingers off the floor so that your horse cant step on them.Stable bandagesSee our illustration below for an easy-to-follow-guide to applying stable bandages:Main image Shutterstock; illustration Your Horse Library/Kelsey Media LtdRelated contentSwollen legs in horses: possible causes and how to manage itAlan Davies step-by-step guide to applying a stable bandageHow to check a horses vital signs *VIDEO*How to tell if a horse is lameThe post Filled legs in horses: common causes and management advice appeared first on Your Horse.