Acceptance of contact vs Submission to the Bit

For a lot of my riding career I was taught and rode with "submission to the bit" for a "light mouth"

ie. the horse was seeking the release of pressure and finding it behind the bit therefore working behind the bit.

This is completely detrimental to the horses physical development.

Now I aim to ride for and teach communication through the contact.

This means we need to feel the subtle nuances of what our horses are communicating through the different amount of weight in our hands. Once our horses are "in to" contact there is also a slight amount of resistance that is felt which is the horses balance.

Think about it like a dance partner. The resistance they put in to you isn't them pulling you in the opposite direction, it is their level of balance and agility and how it integrates with your level of balance and agility. You wouldn't get complete submission from a dance partner unless you picked them up and carried them around and even then they need to hold themselves with poise.

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The horse in the video below is the first horse I ever broke in, and he is the first horse I really felt put his mouth in my hands and ask for guidance.

And the feeling was just magic.

I definitely went on to ruin that with my coach- asking for submission to contact but the feeling really stuck with me and I think its something a lot of people don't know the feeling of.

So what is the difference?

Acceptance of contact is where our horses seek our hands to communicate to us through contact. We can feel through the weight they put in our hands what they are thinking and how they are balancing. Their mouth is soft and communicative and they can confidently describe their needs through the contact to us.

Submission to the bit is teaching our horses to seek the release of pressure by going behind the bit and working behind the vertical, and typically results in our horses not having any brakes and needing to get stronger bits and nose bands. It is done by see-sawing on their mouth, forcing or holding their head in a frame and does long term damage to the soft tissues of their mouth and back.

Horses that are taught to submit to the bit break down with severe musculoskeletal injuries.

In this video I share with you our 3 tricks for developing acceptance of the contact and communication through it without see-sawing or forcing our horses onto the bit or having to use artificial aids.

All about contact...

You have heard the term many times, right?

Bu what is contact?

Simply put, contact is a feel of your horses mouth. Through contact we can have a subtle conversation with our horse and this becomes connection.

Contact should be a straight line - elbow, hands, and reins to bit. If we break this line by either lowering our hands or lifting our hands we interrupt the conversation with the bit to the horses mouth.

Quite often, contact and frame get confused for one and the same thing. You can have contact and your horse isn’t in a frame. You can have your horse in a frame and not have contact.

Contact also shouldn’t mean control - but some riders can feel like they are out of control when they don’t have contact.

It is important to ride your horse both in contact and without contact. Riding your horses in contact is important horse getting them to hold themselves together and in balance as is required for the athleticism demanded of them for the different disciplines we ride. Riding without contact is important for getting our horses working with us without “controlling” them with the bit.

If you don’t feel comfortable letting go of their mouths you are only get part of the conversation.

If this is you, and you feel you need more support with contact, feel and getting comfortable letting go of your horses mouth, join our free workshop “Riding with Heart”, which focuses on uncovering how to begin developing feel and connection in the saddle.