Your horse isn't a gym, so why treat it like one?
That's one of several lessons registered physiotherapist and equine rehab therapist Katie Wood is trying to teach equestrians at her business, The Equestrian Physio, a Guelph-based practice offering physiotherapy and performance services for horseback riders and their horses.
A lifelong horseback rider, Wood always wanted to be a vet but pivoted after getting into a bad car accident while working towards her master's degree in animal biosciences, upending her chances.
Once in school for physiotherapy, Wood said the more she worked through her degree, the more she realized how much of a gap there was in equestrian sport between riders treating and training themselves as athletes rather than brushing injuries off and toughing it out.
"I reflected on my own foundations in the sport and realized I didn't receive these foundations that other sports receive. I didn't know how to cross-train, I didn't learn how to lift weights, train my body or apply all of these things to treat myself as an athlete," said Wood. "I learned how to ride but that was about it."
First launching the Equestrian Physio on Instagram in early 2023, Wood quickly built a following of 30,000 by posting educational videos after graduation.
Currently sitting at over 80,000 followers, Wood now offers one-on-one consultation, equine rehab and equestrian physio services through her business, in addition to her training app The Equestrian Physio, a self-directed service for riders.
She is one of "the few professionals" treating both the horse and the rider as a unit.
"Your horse deserves more than to be your fitness equipment," said Wood. "They're showing up for you whether they want to or not ... and so because they're doing that for you, you should do everything you can to show up for them."
Wood describes equestrian physio as regular physiotherapy filtered through the lens of the needs of an equestrian. A unique sport, Wood said while equestrian does have pretty significant mobility, strength and body awareness demands, most don't recognize they're experiencing issues until it's critical.
"To be an effective rider, it requires a very high level of skill, strength, mobility so when you have an injury ... or if you have restrictions in mobility from chronic illness, all of these things can limit how you can perform in the saddle," said Wood. "What I do is combine my physio lens, where I'm looking at these conditions and how they need to be rehabbed, and then connecting the dots for my clients ... in the context of you on the horse."
On the rider side of things, Wood said she often treats people with acute injuries like ankle sprains and broken bones in addition to more chronic conditions like arthritis, lower back pain and multiple sclerosis.
On the horse side, Wood said she deals with a lot of tendon and post-surgical rehab in addition to general performance and maintenance conditioning.
For example, if a rider has a restriction in their left hip, Wood said the horse isn't going to want to bring its hind leg on that side quite as far underneath themselves because the rider can't accommodate that movement and they're going to block the horse.
"They (the horse and the rider) are both living beings, they feed off each other's energy and movement. If one has a restriction somewhere, it's going to feed into the other," said Wood.
Dealing with clients from all over the world, Wood said like most athletes, she often sees equestrians go for the most expensive, flashiest gadgets to try and fix their horse rather than relying on basic rehab principles.
Since physiotherapy for equestrians and their horses has been "overlooked in the industry for a long time," Wood said one of her biggest goals is to help riders recognize how to understand those principles on a foundational level so they can critically evaluate what treatments they're applying and why.
"We as a collective sport have been able to manage, especially at the amateur levels, without putting this kind've effort into ourselves and our animals," said Wood. "That's not to say these animals don't receive care ... but it's about being able to think critically about what you're trying to achieve, why you're trying to achieve it and then picking appropriate interventions for that."
Isabel Buckmaster is the Local Journalism Initiative reporter for GuelphToday. LJI is a federally-funded program