Most horses aren't born with the core strength to carry us — and the ones that are tend to sell for a fortune. Everyone else? We have to build it, deliberately and patiently.

In this episode, Samantha sits down with classically trained European rider Simon Cocozza, author of Core Conditioning for Horses. After years of buying and producing high-level horses across Germany and Holland, Simon kept hitting the same hidden wall: backs that weren't functioning, and horses quietly coping with pain they're hardwired to disguise. He shares the research that reframed his entire approach — including a study finding that 91% of sales x-rays showed some form of bone-to-bone contact in the back — and the method he developed to rebuild the spine from the ground up.

We get into the signs your horse's back isn't optimal (asymmetry, girthiness, "flat tires" in the downward transitions), why the spine — not the legs — is almost always the missing piece, how to actually stretch your horse so it does something, and why Simon does up to 50% of his work in hand even with finished competition horses. There's also an honest conversation about drilling, "karmic debt," and what it really means to make a horse 1% better every day.

Find Simon's book and his Core Conditioning audio warm-ups at coreconditioningforhorses.com.

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