Dressage Riding Through Menopause: How to Stay Strong and Ride with Confidence

Work with your body through menopause to help stay strong and confident in the saddle.

Let’s talk about how menopause can affect your riding, and more importantly, what you can do to keep riding strong and feeling your best through this transition.

Menopause is a natural part of life, but it can bring some new physical challenges for riders. As our hormones shift, it can impact everything from energy levels to muscle strength and even recovery after a ride. But the good news is, with the right approach to training and recovery, you can keep thriving in the saddle.

We’ve always known strength is vital for riding performance, but it’s even more essential now—for your longevity, bone health, and even brain health. Studies show that maintaining good muscle health can reduce the risk of cognitive decline as we age.

So if riding has been your only form of exercise, it’s time to make a change! Let me explain why.

In order to create that light, soft seat in the saddle, we actually need strength. Often when the word “strength” is thrown around in dressage circles, it relates to incorrect training, which is not the path I am heading down.

Instead, it’s the underpinning of what dressage is all about: balance.

Developing your independent, soft seat is a lifelong ambition. It develops over time, and the fabulous thing about this sport is that we can thrive as we get older!

In order for that to happen, though, you need to work with your body and understand what is going on and how best to navigate correct training for you as a rider.

Let’s look at some key strategies every dressage rider should know during menopause.

 

Why Menopause Affects Riders: A Quick Overview

During menopause, the drop in estrogen and progesterone can cause noticeable changes in our bodies. These hormones are crucial for maintaining muscle mass, bone density, and energy levels. As they decline, you might experience:

  • Loss of muscle strength
  • Increased body fat
  • Decreased bone density
  • Longer recovery times
  • Mood changes and fatigue

As a rider, this can translate into feeling less stable in the saddle, struggling with stamina during longer rides, and slower recovery after a challenging day, or maybe just suddenly those jodhpurs don’t fit like they used to.

But don’t worry—there’s so much we can do to stay strong and confident through these changes!

Once you understand what is going on in your body, you can then do things to ‘pick up the roles’ that these hormones were doing in your younger years.

5 Key Strategies for Staying Strong in the Saddle Through Menopause

1. Strength Training is Essential

One of the biggest changes during menopause is the natural loss of muscle mass. This directly impacts your core strength, balance, and overall stability and energy in the saddle.

To counter this, regular strength training is key.

In your younger years, your hormones helped you maintain muscle mass, but as we age, these hormones shift. So we need to create adequate ‘stressors’ to our central nervous system to create adaptation to maintain and preserve muscle mass.

You basically have to pick up the slack for the role your hormones were playing and provide that stimulus through correct training.

This is where strength and resistance training comes in. And it’s resistance training that is challenging your body—not just riding.

Compound exercises like squats, lunges, and push-ups are effective and a great place to start. And you need to push yourself in these exercises so that you get enough of a response and stimulus in your body.

What I mean by this is: think about your RPE (Rating of Perceived Exertion) when doing an exercise; there should be enough of a burn happening that you struggle to push out your last couple of reps, but you stop before your form is compromised, creating enough of a stimulus for adaptation to happen.

What this means is don’t make it easy.

You need that adaptation to happen, and that good stress is what helps keep your body strong. Not just your muscles too. Your bones require the pull of your muscles under load to remain strong too!

What one person’s RPE is compared to another is unique, and for many, this is about starting with body weight exercises like our DRT program and building your baseline strength up carefully over time.

Letting your body adapt and make changes, then gradually and carefully progressively increasing the overload through systematic training.

Strength training will not only help you feel stronger on your horse, but it will also improve your overall posture and reduce your risk of injury both in and out of the saddle.

And yes, you can improve your strength at any age. The key is making a start and being consistent with it long-term.

Start where you are at, find your zone of challenge, and then carefully begin to build upon this over time.

Where so many riders go wrong is they simply use riding as their only form of exercise.

Riding should be your soul food—the thing you do that you love and that makes your heart sing.

The training you do off the horse helps you do that thing you love better and for longer.

 

2. Prioritize Protein for Recovery

During menopause, your body becomes less efficient at synthesizing protein, which makes it harder to maintain muscle mass.

To counter this, you need to make sure you are providing your body with the fuel it needs to maintain muscle mass. Aim for around 30-40 grams of protein with each meal, especially breakfast, after riding and/or workouts.

This helps your muscles recover and rebuild faster, keeping you strong and ready for your next ride.

Protein is also great for managing blood sugar, helping you avoid the energy crashes that can come with hormone fluctuations. You need approx 1.7-2.4 grams per kg of body weight spread through out your day.

It’s also usually where many women fall short. They simply aren’t providing their body with adequate fuel to remain strong and energized. So check in with your protein amount and aim to pad your rides and your workouts with adequate protein before and after. Often this simple change can make the world of difference.

Most importantly too, don’t save your protein for the end of the day and overload your body. Spread it out and fuel for the activities you are doing.

This is how you maintain and build muscle mass.

 

3. Incorporate Plyometric Training

Plyometric exercises, like jump squats or box jumps, are amazing for improving both bone density and power—two things that decline during menopause. As a rider, these exercises help you react quickly to your horse’s movements, keeping you balanced and in control.

This is not only important for metabolic health, but it’s also helpful in preventing falls if they should happen.

And keeping your bones strong, if you were to fall and therefore prevent breaks.

Riders don’t get enough cross-directional force placed on their bones; walking isn’t enough, and neither is just riding. It’s a start, but those bones of yours need ‘stressors’ placed on them to send signals to remodel and stay strong.

Plyometrics does this. It also supports cardiovascular health, helps your stamina, and, of course, prevents injuries.

Once you have built your baseline strength up, adding some of these exercises into your routine can make a noticeable difference in your riding performance. This is something we also do with our DRT programs, and I have even had members say by doing the DRT program, they have improved their DEXA scan results!

“As an extra bonus, due to the weight-bearing and strength-building aspects of your programs, my DEXA scans (test for osteoporosis) have improved! I no longer have osteopenia (weakened bones due to age-related changes). My scans are those of a premenopausal woman!” – Vicky, USA

Once riders have built their foundational rider-specific strength, they will see more plyometrics coming into our programs from DRT1 to DRT5, carefully adding them to prevent injury and allow the correct adaptations to happen in our joints and ligaments.

4. Rethink Your Cardio

Long, drawn-out cardio sessions aren’t the answer during menopause. Infact spending too long in zone 2 sort of training can have a negative effect.

Instead, focus on short bursts of sprint interval training (SIT). This approach is more efficient, less taxing on your body, and helps promote fat loss while building endurance and energy.

For riders, this means you’ll have better cardiovascular fitness without exhausting yourself, allowing you to recover faster and maintain energy in the saddle.

This can be done in a variety of different ways, and one way we do this within our DRT programs is through the introduction of intervals from DRT3 onwards, after a baseline of strength has been created with better body biomechanics.

Intervals help in a variety of different ways:

  • Weight management by improving insulin sensitivity and promoting glucose uptake. Think of it as a system reboot, helping your body better manage the food you are consuming.
  • Metabolic health: Increased GLUT-4 activity helps regulate blood sugar levels, which is important in preventing or managing type 2 diabetes.

You can do sprints in a variety of different ways; the key is choosing an activity that really lifts your heart rate up that you can do safely. Then do 30 seconds of maximal (sprint) effort and then rest as long as you need. Do this for up to 10 times, and slowly build this up over months, not just weeks. And you can slowly adjust tempo, reps, duration as you get fitter.

Here are some examples of things you can do

  • Running sprints
  • Bike sprints
  • Rowing sprints
  • Battle ropes
  • Kettle bell swings
  • Box jumps
  • Burpees
  • Step ups
  • High knees

Get creative and the key is doing this activity full gas! Your sprint level to get your heart rate right up.

You will instantly notice the different feeling and response that intervals have on your body.

And MOST importantly you only need do this once every 7-10 days as the adaptations to this sort of training take place over the next 72 hours post training.

So don’t over do it to start, just start at your 70-80% and eventually you may like to do it twice a week if your body is ready and according to your workload, but in most cases, when done well and at the right intensity once is enough when combined with everything else.

Riding itself sits at a lower intensity of training for most of us, so this is why we need those spikes of intensity to come in through training off the horse to create adequate good stress responses in our body.

When you combine these sprint intervals and strength training with a movement based lifestyle, that comes with owning horses, you have a great formula.

If you don’t have an movement based lifestyle, meaning you aren’t getting many steps into your day, consider this as your place to start and build yourself up to intervals once a week over the next 6 months once you have a good base of movement happening each day.

 

5. Recovery is Non-Negotiable

Recovery is just as important as your workouts, especially during menopause when hormonal changes can slow down your body’s ability to repair itself.

Prioritize quality sleep, stress management, and balanced nutrition to keep yourself strong and energized.

Getting 7-9 hours of good sleep each night helps your body recover and restores your energy for the next day. In fact shoot for 10 hours if you need it. Take your recovery and sleep seriously!

And don’t forget to manage stress through mindfulness or relaxation techniques, as stress can negatively impact both physical recovery and overall well-being.

 

6. Mobility and stability

Maintaining stability and suppleness becomes even more important through menopause. To support joint health, it’s essential to work on your range of motion so that you can effectively perform functional movement patterns that build strength.

As estrogen levels drop with age, joint health can be affected, making it crucial to keep your joints moving and providing them with regular, varied motion and actively working to create improved and/or simply maintain suppleness.

The less you move, the stiffer you’re likely to feel, so working on the suppleness and elasticity of your joints now can prevent many injuries that stem from reduced mobility and compromised connective tissue health.

These injuries are often very preventable with regular mobility work. This is what our hip suppleness program is specifically designed to help you with.

Alongside mobility, stability is equally vital. Joint stability and proprioception (your body’s sense of spatial awareness) can decrease through menopause, making it key to focus on stability exercises and core strength.

Improving these areas will help you feel more secure in the saddle and enhance your confidence during rides.

 

7. Feed your gut flora

Feeding your gut flora is important and especially during menopause for overall health and well-being, particularly as your body undergoes hormonal changes. As estrogen levels decline, gut health can be affected, which can impact digestion, mood, and even immune function.

To support a healthy gut, focus on including a variety of fiber-rich foods, fermented options like yogurt and sauerkraut, and plenty of fruits and vegetables in your diet. These help to nourish your gut microbiome, improving digestion and helping your body better absorb nutrients.

Maintaining a balanced gut is not only key to digestive health but also helps regulate inflammation, boosts mood, and supports metabolic function during menopause, helping you feel stronger and more energized.

 

Stay Strong, Ride Stronger

Menopause doesn’t have to mean slowing down—it just means adjusting your approach.

What worked for you in your 20s and 30s wont be working the same for you as you age.

By focusing on strength training, intervals, suppleness, proper nutrition, and recovery, you can stay strong, confident, and balanced in the saddle for years to come.

Remember, it’s never too late to start!

Whether you’re looking to improve stamina, build strength, or simply feel more in control during your rides, these simple strategies can make a huge difference.

 

Ready to Take Action?

If you’re ready to start building your strength and optimizing your riding through menopause, make a start with our 5 minute a day program. Over 21 days, get into the habit of showing up for yourself.

Then slowly build your strength and stamina up with rider specific training that applies these principles above to help you enjoy your riding even more.

My passion is to help riders spend more time in the saddle doing what they love. There are options for all levels and we have riders as old as 82 doing our programs. So its never too late!

Avoid all the confusion and make a start by getting into a good routine over the next 21 days with a systemized training approach for riding.

Why 5 minutes? Because often we make it all too complicated. And my job and passion is about removing the noise and helping you take action with training that makes you consistent long term!

This program, is just 5 minutes a day! Because in order to get the changes its about implementation! You now know the information, the key is doing it sustainably, long term and consistently.

So thats where I hope I can help you.

Here is a snippet, covering what this FREE 21 Day program is all about.

Get started here. Your horse will thank you.

 

 

 

 

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