Horse riding injures hands in two unrelated ways: a slow, sustained problem from holding contact on the reins, and a sudden, serious one from coming off. Riders tend to worry about the second buuuuuut they usually get the first.
The reins
Contact means a sustained, controlled grip held for the length of a ride, with the wrist in a fixed position and the thumbs doing real work on top of the rein.
That is a static load, and static loads fatigue tissue faster than moving ones.
- Thumb pain and thumb-side wrist pain: De Quervain’s, from thumbs pressed down on the reins for hours
- Aching forearms and hands after a long hack or a schooling session: general overuse
- Inner elbow pain: golfer’s elbow, from sustained grip. Very common in riders who hold a strong contact or ride several horses a day
- Numbness in the fingers on a long ride: worth reading by pattern, and often positional rather than pathological
- Catching at the base of a finger: trigger finger, particularly in professional riders and grooms
Grooms and yard staff get the rest: carpal tunnel from mucking out and grooming, tennis elbow from carrying water and haynets, and thumb base pain from hours of repeated grip.
Soft hands are a technique goal and a medical one. The rider with heavy hands has a horse that leans and an elbow that hurts.
What to change
- Thumbs on top, not pressed down hard. The rein is held, not clamped
- Rein material and width. Rubber or webbing reins with a good grip let you hold lighter than slippery leather, which makes riders grip harder without noticing
- Gloves that fit, with a grip surface — same principle
- Carry with forearms, not fingers hooked through haynet strings and bucket handles
- Vary the yard tasks rather than doing all the mucking out and then all the grooming
Coming off
Riders fall with hands out, from height, sometimes at speed. Three things get missed:
- Tenderness in the hollow at the base of the thumb, X-ray normal or not: scaphoid fracture until proven otherwise
- A thumb forced back by a rein or a strap: UCL injury, exactly the same mechanism as a ski pole
- A finger caught in a rein, rope or strap as the horse moves: a serious traction injury, and if a ring is involved, ring avulsion. Never wear rings when handling horses, and never wrap a lead rope around your hand
A crushed hand between a horse and a stable wall or door is also a crush injury, where the swelling rather than the bones decides the outcome.
Get it assessed if
- Wrist pain at the base of the thumb after any fall
- A thumb that feels unstable when pinching
- Numbness that persists after you dismount
- A finger that will not fully straighten
- Elbow or wrist pain present before you tack up
Never wrap a rope around your hand. That is the one sentence on this page that prevents amputations.
Every article on this site is written using the Closing Window Method: name the window your condition runs on, find where you are in it, and act while it’s still open.