I’ve never rode a horse, but it seems like the horse is doing the work while the human just sits there. I googled if calories are burn during horseback riding and I found that riding a horse for 45 min burns 200 calories. How is this possible if the humans not really doing anything except sit on the horse?
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Being alive – even lying totally still and not doing anything but breathing – burns calories. This is called the “resting metabolic rate”, or the calories the body burns just by doing things like breathing, digesting, basically just existing.
Meanwhile, it takes a fair amount of muscle control to move, or to control your body’s movement, while seated on a moving object like a horse. You use your core muscles to stay upright in a normal posture, and you use your legs to stablize yourself and prevent yourself from falling off the horse. If the horse is walking, this intensifies. If the horse is trotting, cantering, or galloping, you’ll need to control your body even more to move with the horse and avoid falling off. You will also be guiding or controlling the horse’s movements, effectively steering it, with the reins and your legs.
So you can imagine, if even lying still burns calories, that keeping your body stable on top of a moving object that may move somewhat irregularly, over terrain that may or may not be smooth, will require you to use your muscles more, thereby burning more calories.
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