BioRider: Equestria
Most dressage riders take fitness seriously, but
rider and fitness coach Bridget Braden-Olsen
takes things to a whole new level and her business, BioRider, is helping other equestrians,
world wide to do the same. We were fortunate
enough to have Bridget sit down to answer
some questions about herself and her exciting
fitness programs for equestrians.
Q: Can you tell me a little about yourself and
your background in fitness?
A: I played a ton of sports as a child and followed my dad around the gym when I was 13.
I’ve always loved fitness and was taught at a
young age how to train for my body type, my
father played basketball for the University of
Michigan and he was my first personal trainer.
My family had horses when I was teenager and
I always rode, but I didn’t get competitive until
age 16. I learn to ride in Brussels, Belgium before coming back to the States and we never
had one discipline over there. If you jumped,
you did dressage and that was how you trained
the horses. Needless to say, I love doing both
but dressage chose me.
As a teenager, it was tough to do both Varsity
Basketball with Young Riders, so I let basketball
go. I noticed a huge difference in my fitness
soon after basketball was gone and I had to
come up with a fitness program that I could
rely on for the rest of my career.
Q: How did you come up with the concept of
a program catering to equestrians and their
unique fitness needs?
A: Training under Steffen Peters at a young age
and needing to engage my own peak performance, I had to do something in the gym to
help me increase my performance for riding. I
started my reconnaissance of fitness training,
basically trying programs and seeing the results in the saddle. Riding the FEI in dressage
gave me my guidelines for what worked and
made things worse, which went on for a while.
I remember one time doing the body builder
exercises regimen, my legs got so big that I
couldn’t fit into my designer jeans. That was a
problem and when I saw myself on the horse,
my legs were short and knees were high. My
training changed and as I got more creative, I
developed a specific program for equestrians. I
discovered direct muscle correlations to specific functions in the saddle. The BioRider Fitness
Ladder was created to give us (Equestrians) a
guideline for muscle prioritizing so we keep
the seat sound and increase only areas that we
need for our level of riding.
Q:. Can you give me some details on how your
online assessments work?
A: Riders who are training under the Gold Membership have the advantage of submitting riding, fitness &/or nutrition assessment through
the ‘My BioRider’ department. I review theses
assessments, along with any videos and/or
pictures, and create 2 custom workouts with
a training plan. The workouts are constructed
around each personal training and riding ob-
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Passage Magazine