What is Bridle Lameness and how do you avoid it?

Have you ever had a situation where your horse perfectly sound on the ground, but get in the saddle and their stride becomes irregular, short, choppy, hindquarters not tracking up and even lame?

This is possibly something known as Bridle Lameness. And it is becoming increasingly common in the equine world.

When we are working our horse through and into contact, part of the process is showing our horses how to move freely within the restraint of the aids.

If our horses feel contact and are not yet accepting or working into contact our contact can create restrictions in the range of movement. It grounds the movement as our horses brace into their body to balance against the bit pressure instead of feeling the bit pressure and lifting into it.

When we are getting our horses to work into contact, what we are doing is getting our horse to feel the freedom of movement within the restraints of the aids.

Let’s be honest with ourselves: bridle pressure, whether bitted or bitless, is not natural and inhibits our horses’ balance.

Add to that the human on the back which they have to carry, which isn’t necessarily always balanced itself and changes the horses center of gravity and how they have to carry themselves.

Our horses instinct isn’t to softly follow and accept the contact. Its instinct is to pull into and against the contact to balance itself. If a horse is working with unsteady hands it can also try and “find the quiet” by going above or behind the bit, or even pulling in to the bit to try and hold it steady in its mouth.

When our horses “balance against the bit”, they use parts of their body that impede their true balance from their core and center of gravity. They do this by twisting at the pole, dropping the shoulder or the hip or bracing their underneck. All these actions affect our horses ability to move functionally and “work over the back”. Ie work with good posture and freedom of movement.

So if you have had a horse in and out of work because them constantly seem to be coming up lame, it could be the way they are using themselves when working under saddle.

We have a couple of things at Equestrian Movement that we do for this:

• Rein back over a pole. Rein back over a pole - when done correctly - shows them how to lift through their legs while rein pressure is being applied (again, whether bitless or bitted) so that it encourages them to engage their core and not ground their their legs to balance

• In hand work. I like to do in hand work to show the horses how to work in to contact and find their own center of gravity and balance with bit pressure before adding the rider and asking them to also balance the human

• Timing and feel. The biggest inhibition to your horse moving freely under saddle in contact is the timing of your aid. If you can’t feel what their legs are doing you are potentially grounding the movement just by when you apply your leg and rein aid combination.

Are you having problems keeping your horse sound, working over their back and accepting contact?

Enrolments for our course Green to Self Carriage are opening shortly, where we address and go deep into detail on how to work your horse correctly for a working frame and self carriage so that it enhances their quality of pace and makes movement feel good.

Is Your Horse Bridle Lame?

Is your horse perfectly sound on the ground when lunging (no muscle soreness, nothing picked up by the vet, chiro, masseuse or acupuncturist), but as soon as you start riding, it’s lame?

It could be saddle fit, but it could also be bridle lame.

A bridle lame horse is sound on the ground, in the paddock and the saddle fit is fine. There’s no heat, no issues with the hooves or abscesses, looks fine and not muscle sore. The lameness only shows up when ridden and looks to be somewhere in the front end.

A horse becomes bridle lame when it has become restricted in movement due to bridle pressure. This can be because they aren’t stepping through properly underneath themselves from behind. It can be because they aren’t extending properly through the shoulder. It can also be from tightness through the neck and jaw, or some combination of all the above. It usually is the result of being asked for a frame before they are ready.

The working frame should be the result of good self carriage.

However, due to the emphasis put on the overall frame and picture in competitions, this process can be rushed and compromised for the marks. When the horse is worked from front to back instead of from the hind to the hand, it doesn’t learn how to move freely within the restriction of the frame, doesn’t distribute its weight evenly and doesn’t engage the core. Instead they will load their weight into one shoulder more than the other - and in some horses this can make them look lame. This results in an irregularity of the stride which short term make them look lame, but long term ridden like this will MAKE THEM lame.

The only way to correct this before permanent damage is done is to take their training back down the training scale and retrain them back into true self carriage. The complication to this is the fact that the horse has already been incorrectly trained to respond to a particular cue (put your head into a frame without engaging the core or distributing the weight equally through all four limbs), and you are now tasked with re-teaching these cues, allowing the horse to first learn to flex through the hind legs, lift through the core before placing its head into the frame.

And the only way to prevent Bridle Lameness is to train them correctly in the first place, no matter how long it takes.

Would you like to know more about our Green to Self Carriage training course, which takes you through all the very early training stages for your horse up to the development of self carriage? We are looking for Beta-Testers - click here!