Rider Fitness Without the Nonsense: Katie Bleekman on Hip Mobility, Core Strength and Why Mucking Out Isn't Training

Just Horse Riders Podcast — Episode 40 | Published 14 August 2026

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 Life

Katie 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 Training

Katie'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 Everything

Every 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 90/90

Asked 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 5–10 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 Version

Katie 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 Bug

Lie 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 Skips

If 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 Peloton

Aaron 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 Ball

Asked 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 Get

Aaron 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 Horse

Two 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 Start

1. Follow 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.
2. 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.
3. 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 Follow

This 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.

Published 14 August 2026 | Just Horse Riders Podcast, Episode 40