Pandering to overweight riders

criso said:
The information I found was that Henry VIII weighed 15 stone in his 20s and 28 when he died however not typical and I don't think anyone was going to tell him he was too heavy

500 years later: Henry VIII, leg ulcers and the course of history - PMC

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I did find an article about Cavalry in the Napoleonic wars that suggested the if they weren't killed or injured in service then they expected 10 years plus service from the age of 5.

Current weights for the cavalry seem to be rider up 13 st plus 4 st of kit/tack for ceremonial use. If 15% was decided to be the limit, that would mean you'd need a horse of 720kg, not sure how many actually weigh that.
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That's very interesting! Thank you.
This thread has been very informative.
 
ycbm said:
I don't understand why RDAs can't offer driving experiences to people who are too heavy and/or unbalanced to ride?
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The biggest reason, certainly in my area, was access to a RDA driving group! They're ever decreasing in number, and when you have six/seven riders coming from the same care home like my group did, the logistics just simply are too much I think.
 
This thread has made me feel a bit large 🙈 I’m 5 foot 7 , dress size 12 but weigh 11 stone 8, thankfully I have a 580kg cob and ride in a TCS but I’m looking at all these weights thinking shit I’m fat. I found up to aged 28 I was naturally very slim, now I eat less and exersise more but am 2 stone heavier….. I do have an average under active thyroid and am on sertraline which seems to add the weight. Now I’m overthinking maybe I’m too big …
 
motherof2beasts! said:
This thread has made me feel a bit large 🙈 I’m 5 foot 7 , dress size 12 but weigh 11 stone 8, thankfully I have a 580kg cob and ride in a TCS but I’m looking at all these weights thinking shit I’m fat. I found up to aged 28 I was naturally very slim, now I eat less and exersise more but am 2 stone heavier….. I do have an average under active thyroid and am on sertraline which seems to add the weight. Now I’m overthinking maybe I’m too big …
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You're well within 15% and have no need to worry
 
criso said:
Current weights for the cavalry seem to be rider up 13 st plus 4 st of kit/tack for ceremonial use. If 15% was decided to be the limit, that would mean you'd need a horse of 720kg, not sure how many actually weigh ththat.we
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We had an Irish Draught go to the vets for surgery. He was 17.2 and a modern stamp of Draught- sporty, not an old fashioned four square type. They weighed him at 783kg. He was in nice 5 yr old condition - not yet fully muscled to carry a rider and certainly not fat.
 
Going back a few pages now, but the reason why controlled weight lifting/weight bearing exercise helps protect your joints was, afaik, because you are overloading the body for a short space of time and then the overload is taken away, allowing muscle to build up over and above the baseline muscle you need for general mobility. That extra muscle then alleviates the wear and tear on your joints because you are better supported mechanically.

Whereas if you are just overweight you are carrying that weight all the time so your baseline muscle for general mobility needs to be higher, but your body never develops the even higher muscle requirements needed to now support your joints properly.

There is also issue that when you are overwight, the extra weight is not carried in an even or optimal way, because wherever external fat is laid down you are basically going outwards from your centre of gravity, ofetn in a fairly uneven way. Whereas during controlled weight bearing exercise the extra weight is a nice compact shape and you generally manoeuvre or position yourself to support it in as mechanically optimal way as possible.

And finally external fat also generally means internal fat, that can mess with the correct functioning of all sorts of organs and structures and just make it harder for your body all round.

Fat horses is certainly a problem for long term welfare, fat horses with fat riders even more so, because now you've got two dynamic structures moving around together, with a whole load of weight that neither of them can control, leaving a whole bunch load of structures in the horse having to throw in compensatory movement just to keep moving forward
 
spacefaer said:
We had an Irish Draught go to the vets for surgery. He was 17.2 and a modern stamp of Draught- sporty, not an old fashioned four square type. They weighed him at 783kg. He was in nice 5 yr old condition - not yet fully muscled to carry a rider and certainly not fat.
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Didn't say a horse can't weigh that just that a lot used by the cavalry won't.


I had a 17hh warmblood on loan, big horse with a lot of bone, looked a heavier stamp than the household cavalry horses I've seen close up. He weighed about 650kg on the vets weighbridge when in good condition
 
Is there a 'rule of thumb' on how much a horse is over ( or under ) weight at each point on condition scoring? ie if a horse is scoring 4/5 rather than 3/5 is something like10% of weight is likely to need to come off?
 
ycbm said:
I don't understand why RDAs can't offer driving experiences to people who are too heavy and/or unbalanced to ride?
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In my area the person doing it retired & moved away to be near family. There was no one else to do it. The nearby RS offered but the roads in that part of town were too busy for it to be safe.
There just aren't many people driving at all in some areas, let alone that could take on the extra considerations of disabled driving. The RS does it ridden now and, yes, the horses are sometimes very overloaded imho.
 
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hock said:
Let’s be honest horses aren’t designed to carry any of us.

It’s too hot to argue with you lot I’m off for an ice cream and share it with my ponies who think the sun shines out of my fat arse!

Have a good weekend everyone! Even the skinnies 🤣
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I actually am dying from this comment 😂😂😂😂
 
ycbm said:
I don't understand why RDAs can't offer driving experiences to people who are too heavy and/or unbalanced to ride?
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It's not just about offering an experience but the benefits of riding and improvements to coordination and fitness so driving wouldn't be a substitute.

However that does have to be balanced against horse welfare.
 
criso said:
It's not just about offering an experience but the benefits of riding and improvements to coordination and fitness so driving wouldn't be a substitute.

However that does have to be balanced against horse welfare.
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The riders I was vividly thinking of would never get that benefit though, hence why I said ‘pony ride’. Their condition/disability meant they could only ever sit badly, and would never improve. Getting them on (and off too) was such a battle I wonder whether they truly gained everything from it, sadly, (say compared to another activity they could do) and a horse’s welfare was compromised as a result.
 
teapot said:
The riders I was vividly thinking of would never get that benefit though, hence why I said ‘pony ride’. Their condition/disability meant they could only ever sit badly, and would never improve. Getting them on (and off too) was such a battle I wonder whether they truly gained everything from it, sadly, (say compared to another activity they could do) and a horse’s welfare was compromised as a result.
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I wouldn't want to say that a severely disabled person wouldn't benefit even if they don't progress to sitting well and being able to ride in the way we would define it. It's not learning to ride as we would define it but physical therapy. Over a period of time a physical therapist may see small improvements that are significant to them.
 
criso said:
I wouldn't want to say that a severely disabled person wouldn't benefit even if they don't progress to sitting well and being able to ride in the way we would define it. It's not learning to ride as we would define it but physical therapy. Over a period of time a physical therapist may see small improvements that are significant to them.
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That's not what I said or meant though! The two riders I am thinking of - it caused them more distress getting on/getting off, than the 15 mins they were led round at a walk, sometimes the carer would say 'we're not sure if they want to do this but we'll crack on' and certainly no PTs in attendance or part of their care over the eight years or so I was part of that group (as we did ask!) They were very much at the bottom of the social care pile, sadly :(

My point is though that the horse's welfare was not at the top of the list of priorities weight wise (and general wider experience too) and that isn't ok to me. Nothing should top welfare, ever.
 
All you have to do is look at Asian weight standards and horse racing jockeys . To see how much people are overweight in the western country’s . People don’t want to admit it because they don’t want change there life style I generally think just riding a horse isn’t enough exercise especially people who only have their horses on full livery as they aren’t mucking out or doing yard jobs and generally aren’t lifting bags of shavings and feed. Horse being comfortable being ridden is so important so I don’t think people feeling should come into this if you are overweight you should addressed and lose weight. People are always complaining about overweight animals why should humans be any different.
 
teapot said:
The riders I was vividly thinking of would never get that benefit though, hence why I said ‘pony ride’. Their condition/disability meant they could only ever sit badly, and would never improve. Getting them on (and off too) was such a battle I wonder whether they truly gained everything from it, sadly, (say compared to another activity they could do) and a horse’s welfare was compromised as a result.
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I had to take severely disabled woman to RDA on a weekly basis for a while. As with a lot of other things it left me disillusioned and cynical. The person had no agency in the matter. She had started as a teen and had been taken for at least 10 years. The care company got extra funding to pay for the activity for as long as she went. Fortunately she was tiny. She was lifted on, held by a person at each side while the pony was led and she whimpered. Given a choice she would have stayed at home in her chair but unable to talk she got taken out as was required by the company.
 
Gloi said:
I had to take severely disabled woman to RDA on a weekly basis for a while. As with a lot of other things it left me disillusioned and cynical. The person had no agency in the matter. She had started as a teen and had been taken for at least 10 years. The care company got extra funding to pay for the activity for as long as she went. Fortunately she was tiny. She was lifted on, held by a person at each side while the pony was led and she whimpered. Given a choice she would have stayed at home in her chair but unable to talk she got taken out as was required by the company.
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Agency is the key word there @Gloi - sad isn't it :(
 
This is a tricky one in my eyes, and I don't tend to be insensitive here. One of the livery yards I was at a while ago had a lovely family but the girl suffered from serious depression to the point of spending periods of time at a psychiatric unit. The pony was her pride and joy. I still have her on social media, she's now early twenties, pony in it's teens, slight built 14.2 Connemara. Girl is easily a size 14 and must weigh around 12-14stone at least, she could be more. I'm happy to see her out competing but every photo I just see a very large rider on a small pony. Where do you go with that? The pony seems to do the job but it isn't a pretty picture. Not that I would ever say anything but, if it's doing it's job and it's bringing her joy then is there a problem? They used to jump but then pony started refusing so they now do BD. I'm only aware of it as I've questioned my weight before for my guy. He's 14hh and cobbier, than her connemara, I'm smaller in height and averaging at 60kg's these days which is too heavy for me but I really struggle with metabolism now I'm in my thirties!
 
ihatework said:
We need to stop pussyfooting around the issue.

This was me at 15.5 stone when I stopped riding, mostly due to my weight. The horse was over 17hh.
I spent a year on a lifestyle change and got down to 11 stone.
No one told me I was too heavy. But it was blatantly obvious I was.

A sad farewell

My big eventer has sold. I’ve never felt so nauseous about selling on a horse as this one but am as sure as I can be he is going to a great home. It’s been a crazy few days I have to say with an influx of buyers this week (what is all that about???) but I will soon be one of them to because...
forums.horseandhound.co.uk forums.horseandhound.co.uk
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Well done 👍
 
Gloi said:
I had to take severely disabled woman to RDA on a weekly basis for a while. As with a lot of other things it left me disillusioned and cynical. The person had no agency in the matter. She had started as a teen and had been taken for at least 10 years. The care company got extra funding to pay for the activity for as long as she went. Fortunately she was tiny. She was lifted on, held by a person at each side while the pony was led and she whimpered. Given a choice she would have stayed at home in her chair but unable to talk she got taken out as was required by the company.
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We had a few like that too including one hyper sensitive non verbal autistic boy. My big lad was on working livery at the time and I turned up to hear screaming from the school. Confused draft horse and what I could make out from the young lad was he was wailing about the smell. His carers were laughing, but as I went to intervene (M was a saint but the screaming was getting louder) I realised my horse really did pong. Fox poo I think. Young lad hated coming to the stables it was a sensory nightmare for him.

We had many who had started out horse riding when young and sadly piled on the weight during their teens. Often given sweets and sweet drinks to occupy them. It's very sad when some of those disabled kids just got too large for any of the horses. We had a pony & cart for a while but after a tricky incident on the lane that was too hard to manage.
 
criso said:
Didn't say a horse can't weigh that just that a lot used by the cavalry won't.


I had a 17hh warmblood on loan, big horse with a lot of bone, looked a heavier stamp than the household cavalry horses I've seen close up. He weighed about 650kg on the vets weighbridge when in good condition
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Most of the house hold Calvary horses are ID and ID cross it’s my experience after years of having warmbloods for me and ID type hunters that the ID types weigh a lot more than you think even when they are fit .
 
Indy said:
How do you work out if you are within the 15% rule. (I'm not very good at maths)
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Open calculator on phone
Enter horses weight
Multiply by 0.15

And the answer is 15% of the horse's weight


If you want to do the calculation the other way:
Open calculator
Enter weight of rider
Divide by 0.15

And the answer is the horse weight that that rider will be 15% of
 
Indy said:
How do you work out if you are within the 15% rule. (I'm not very good at maths)
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Take your horse's weight and divide it by 100. Multiply the result by 15, and you will have 15%. Then compare your weight to that. Remember to allow for the weight of your riding clothes, hat, and saddle.
 
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