Although riding-free equine-assisted interventions (EAIs) —activities that do not involve mounting the horse—can improve older adults’ health, objective evidence for young adults remains limited. This study examined the physiological and psychological effects of a 15-minute riding-free EAI activity in healthy young adults. Sixteen participants with no prior experience of horse riding or grooming were recruited and randomly assigned to either a brushing group (n = 8), which involved brushing a horse, or a polishing group (n = 8), which involved polishing a full-body horse skeleton model. Subjective mood states and salivary amylase activity (SAA) were evaluated before and after the activity, while heart rate variability (HRV) was continuously monitored. SAA levels did not significantly change in either group. However, in the brushing group, the high-frequency component (HF_log) of HRV was significantly higher after the activity than during the activity, and the low-frequency to high-frequency (LF/HF) HRV values were significantly lower than in the polishing group. Additionally, the V–A score in the brushing group exhibited a non-significant increase (p = 0.081) after the activity. These findings suggest that even a brief 15-minute riding-free EAI activity may enhance autonomic and emotional regulation. However, further research is needed to explore whether these effects vary with the duration and frequency of EAI.

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Sports environment among young Japanese people is provided by their schools in most cases. However, many junior and senior high school sports club members do not receive satisfactory instructions from their coaches as many coaches are also teachers. Therefore, they also have considerable work towards their own respective teaching classes in school. Leadership ability is an important factor in sports teams, especially regarding the leader position, to implement sports activities. This study analyzed whether leadership ability was enhanced via the leadership performance-maintenance (PM)-theory and confirmed the positive effect between leader’s leadership and follower’s morale. The PM and morale survey were conducted with students in leadership position (n=33) who belonged to “KOSEN” (college of technology) sports team from the Tokyo area. Consequently, two evident conclusions were reached. First, the sports team members who followed the PM-type and pm-type leaderships had high-morale and low-morale related to their sports teams, respectively. Second, in sports teams that had low motivation in competition, the members morale would not increase even if the student leaders had high performance-ability. They also required high maintenance-ability.

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