In which saddle do you think you get a more calorie-burning workout: the pleather one on the exercise bike at the gym or the one you place atop your horse’s back? I’m assuming since you are reading a blog with the words “saddle” and “horse” in the name that you are like me and prefer horseback riding over spin class and hope it’s riding. Well, equestrians, rejoice! The results based on data from my Fitbit Blaze are in and riding seems to be more rigorous than spin class. (For me at least–each of us is an individual so your workout might yield different results.)
Yoga burns the least calories, and walking my dogs burns more calories than I thought.
If you glance at the image of my Fitbit workout log, you’ll see that on March 6th I burned 473 calories riding less than an hour! That lesson was a private one and we worked on trotting most of the lesson. Serpentines and trotting poles and spirals in and out with a few canters thrown in all amounted to almost 500 calories burned. Burn, baby burn.
If you noticed the Friday lesson (also a private) burned fewer calories. During this lesson the instructor broke down my position and built it back up all shiny and new. She was merciful enough to let me do more walking than usual so I could get used to my improved seat. She required me to squat to sit into the saddle. Bye, bye chair seat!
Horseback riding for the win!
I believe this was the first riding lesson I’ve ever had that gave me the same pain in the butt (literally) and quads like a squat workout at the gym. The phrase “Baby Got Back!” ricocheted in my brain while I cantered. I’m sure I wore an about-to-crack up grin the whole time.
Spin Class Riding
Moving on to the pleather saddle. . . If you look at the Saturday spin stats I burned fewer calories but had a higher heart rate. I sweat way more in a spin class than I do riding, which I don’t get. (Anyone who can explain that in the comments section will get a gold star). By the way, this particular spin class was taught by someone who could easily have been Richard Simmons’ brother (he high-fived us individually during the class and served up slightly raunchy comments here and there), and he made us post constantly. He didn’t call it posting, mind you, but “up and down.” It was on the more intense side of the spin spectrum.
Our bodies are all unique and perhaps for some people spinning is a more intense calorie-burning session, but I was happy to have further evidence that riding is exercise and when I choose saddle time at the barn, I’m making a healthy lifestyle choice as well as connecting with and enjoying my horse.
Your Turn: Have you found workouts that are on par with or more intense than riding? Share your story in the comments section!
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I'm Susan and this is my horse Knight. We have been a blogging team since 2015 and we're glad you're here. Tally ho!
That’s really interesting! Thanks for sharing 😀
Thanks for reading! 🙂
Very interesting! Speaking of yoga, check out dressageridertraining.com or the YouTube or Pinterest channels of the same name for some really good stretches, exercises, and yoga. It took me a while to get back to you, but I finally found something good.
Oooh. . . thanks for the tip. Will check out. And thanks for reading and stopping by.
I’m a little sad that yoga doesn’t burn more calories, but it has so many other benefits that it probably doesn’t matter. Thanks for the info, it’s very interesting! I really need to get a fit bit because I’m really curious too see how much my work affects my fitness. I know that I average almost six miles of walking a day, but I’m also cleaning stalls, grooming, tacking, etc.
Wow! Six miles is awesome. I feel the same way about the yoga. However, I should have said that I hadn’t done yoga in a few weeks and so I opted out of some of the poses and did child’s pose more than if I had been doing yoga regularly. My wrists were killing me. So my guess is that if someone does yoga regularly and is pretty good about doing all the poses he or she will burn significantly more calories than I did–but probably still not as many as riding. Just a theory.
I have always thought horseback riding was good exercise and loathe when people act like I need to do both activities in the same day. Horse and workout. Say whaaaaat? But I have a hard time believing results from the fitbit. I had an older model (one without the HR monitor) and it always told me I ran 6 miles or something crazy when I was riding. I’m curious if the HR monitor fitbits are more accurate than the older, glorified pedometers were. What do you think?
Hey Erika, thanks for chiming in. I never had an older, non-heart rate monitor so I can’t speak to that, but I will say I think it’s pretty accurate. The thing I don’t like (and wrote an open letter to the Fitbit CEO–not sure if you saw that blog post) is that you can’t subtract the horse’s footfalls from your overall step count. But just based on comparing my spin activities and riding activities, I think it IS accurate because I feel equally tired out from both a hard lesson and a hard spin class. I know when I’m gasping for breath from both saddles. Also, if the HR monitors weren’t accurate, I don’t think they could have such a successful product. Also, you might want to check out my blog post where I wore my hubby’s heart rate monitor and used Strava and talked about that versus using Fitbit.