Annette Willson

Applied Posture Riding

is a complete rider-biomechanics training system that teaches horse riders to test, strengthen and correctly use their core, seat and posture muscles. Built by physiotherapist Annette Willson, it gives you an online membership program, structured courses, and a foundational e-book that walk you step by step from unmounted muscle work to a stable, independent seat in the saddle. If you bounce in the sit-trot, lose your balance, lean, perch, collapse to one side, or never feel truly “connected” to your horse, this is built for you — including riders returning after injury or riding well into their fifties, sixties and beyond. Start with the e-book or the membership program and begin retraining the muscles that actually drive correct riding.

What Does Applied Posture Riding Offer?

The heart of the offering is the Applied Posture Riding membership program — an online course that combines rider-biomechanics coaching with genuine physiotherapy expertise. You also get the foundational e-book, Applied Posture Riding — The Fundamentals of Riding, with instant online access, plus rider-biomechanics training that targets posture, core strength, balance, flexibility and an independent seat.

Alongside the rider program, Annette offers an equine APR Topline Strength Training System — a graduated resistance protocol for building a horse's core and topline — and a curated set of recovery aids such as posture braces and light-therapy pads. The throughline is simple: train the rider first, because, as Annette puts it, “the horse is only as good as its rider.”

Who Is Annette Willson?

Annette Willson is a physiotherapist and lifelong horsewoman from the Clare Valley in South Australia, raised by two veterinarian parents. She holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Physiotherapy and a Master's Degree in Physiotherapy, qualified as a physiotherapist in 1987 and completed her post-graduate Master's in 2002. She is also a Pilates trainer and educator, a functional core-stability teacher, and a rider-biomechanics assessor.

Her riding career spans nearly fifty years across eventing, dressage and jumping — she won her first three-day event and earned a place in the South Australian Olympic training program. A serious back injury at twenty-one ended those Olympic ambitions, but it also became the engine of her method: she rehabilitated herself, rebuilt her riding, and turned hard-won knowledge of injury, posture and core control into a program for other riders.

How Does the Program Work?

Annette's core belief is that you cannot fix posture problems in the saddle. The program follows a deliberate sequence: first you test for strength, length and flexibility to find weak or inhibited muscles and postural asymmetries; then you retrain them out of the saddle with rider-specific movement patterns; then you transfer those new skills onto the horse.

Every rider begins with the foundational “Core Crunch” before progressing through a series of movement patterns built specifically for horse riding — including the neutral and non-neutral spine work that sets it apart from standard Pilates. Riders learn to switch the deep core on demand, isolate the legs and arms for refined aids, and absorb movement through correct spinal alignment, all of which have made the method especially effective for learning to sit the trot.