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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If you just sit there, you’re in for a very bumpy ride. You use your legs a lot as shock absorbers. And that’s just for starters, but I’ve only ridden a few times, so others can provide a lot more details.
A horse isn’t much at all like a car. The rider has to move to account for the horse’s bouncing, control where the horse goes, and of course balance to avoid falling basically any direction. If it were “just sitting there” it wouldn’t be such work to get good at it.
Because the rider is having to engage various muscle groups in order to stay balanced on the horse and not fall off. It’s actually pretty tiring after a while! 🙂
It takes a lot of energy to remain upright on a horse. All of the bouncing around requires that you hold on fairly tight and constantly make a bunch of minor adjustments to your posture.
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