Does your horse need more forward?

Have you been told your horse needs more forward?

Do you think that means it needs more speed?

There’s a good chance your horse doesn’t actually need more speed, which is what we are inclined to think and try to do, but it actually needs more power!

When we ride our horses for more speed it pushes them out of their naturally stride, rushes them on the forehand and makes the stride short and choppy. This makes the ride less pleasant to watch but more importantly makes the horse less structurally sound.

The forwardness that we are looking for is power and the horse tracking up (prints of the hindquarters stepping into the prints for the forehand).

The power and tracking up that allows the power to travel through their body, lifts the forehand and develops impulsion. This connectedness and lift of the whole body engages the horses’ core postural muscles and improves their overall long term soundness while in the frame. It does this by:

• Shifting their weight off the forehand thereby reducing the concussion on the forehand.

• Getting them to lift their tummy muscles so they hold from their core instead of bracing their back.

• Lengthening their neck thereby reducing the compression and pain through the neck and pole.

• Increasing overall freedom of movement, elasticity and tone.

So to get more forward we actually need more slow!!!

Say what?

To build the strength and power of the hindquarters and also tune the sensitivity to legs mean go, we need to ask our horses to slow, wait and sit into their haunches and then drive forward out of it kind of like squats.

So now not only are you using an exercise that BUILDS your horses ability to give you that forward but also an exercise that TUNES your horse in to the aid.

And this is how we like to work at Equestrian Movement.

It doesn’t matter how good you are at applying an aid, if your horses can’t physically do what you’re asking it won’t respond to it until it is. So we use exercises that build our horses musculoskeletal system to ride a frame, and incorporate the aids within the exercise that will be our cues or words that we will use with our horse once they are physically ready.

This way, we are NOT desensitising or deadening our horses to the aids, but we ARE developing them for longevity of their career.

Interested in how we do this?

Check out our course Green to Self Carriage, where we break down all the aids and exercises so that they build on top of each other all the way through to your horse working in a working frame for soundness & longevity.

3 Secrets That Will Progress Your Dressage Riding

If you missed the webinar on April 4th, here’s a sneaky replay!

Interested to learn more about the Green to Self Carriage Course? Click here for more details!

Why Green to Self Carriage Just Works

I’ll be honest. I’m still a bit green when it comes to training at higher levels.

I’ve never competed at novice level or higher.

I’ve never had an established horse to work with that I haven’t had to correct physiologically to be able to pursue those higher levels.

Every horse, of the half dozen or so I have worked with for any significant length of time, had to return to some basic level of work if I was really going to hold true to the philosophy that we hold at Equestrian Movement - FIRST DO NO HARM. And that philosophy is what guided us to the creation of our latest online course Green to Self Carraige.

I’m not saying that I couldn’t work at these higher levels, just that I haven’t had the opportunity.

I would prefer to work a horse for it’s own health than to push it into false frames and damage what potential that horse has for any length of career (or life) with any person. If that means going back down to prep & prelim levels, that is what I will do. My ego can take it.

And this is why Green to Self Carriage will work for all horses:

It is designed to take a green-broke horse through the stages to develop true self carriage, but can be applied to ANY HORSE

Yes, that’s right. Even a horse that is well established and winning ribbons MUST step back to these lower levels rectify missing elements in it’s education to be able to continue further in it’s carrer.

The course is designed to scale up and down as your horse and you identify deficits and rebuild the correct physical structure - which horses just seem to relish buggering up in the weirdest way (hoof in rabbit hole, anyone?).

The course is designed to work at your pace

So regardless of if you ride once or 4 times a week, you can create your own lesson plans using the exercises as they are outlined.

If an exercise is too easy for your horse, there is the next progression to up the anty on the challenge.

If the exercise is not possible for your horse, it leads you where to go down the scale to build up the capability for the horse to complete it first.

And you have the added bonus of ongoing support as you work through the program, so if you come across something you really struggle with, you can submit a video to Equestrian Movement and have it critiqued with recommendations on where to go from there!

You can take a break and come back to it - to the advantage of the horse

If you need to take some time away from riding, you will find that a horse that has been developed correctly through the self carriage phases not only handles the break but flourishes from it, coming back to work faster and ready to move up the training scale.

It can be applied to any horse, regardless of your discipline

Whether you trail ride, compete dressage, or ride endurace, a horse that has been taken through development of true self carriage correctly is not only a healthier horse physically but also a much smoother ride.

You can work a horse of any age with a number of potential ailments

Outside of those too young to ride or those that are living in well deserved retirement, your horse is never ‘too old’ to be redeveloped through the self carriage process.

No case is any truer to those words than my Custard. At 22 years young, coming from a life of where little regard for his physical, mental or emotional welfare was given, he has continued to surprise us with how he develops.

Even his attitude in the paddock has changed since working through the course. He used to have limited movement and would only run if he was chased (and could barely keep that up for any length of time). Now, he plays and on occasion even canters all the way from the back of a very large paddock just for the heck of it!

His arthritis (and my weight on his arthritic limbs) limit his ability to hold extended time of work under saddle, and transition into faster paces is taking a long time, and yet he not only builds on each exercise EVERY SINGLE LESSON but is actively seeking and asking for specific exercises which make him feel good - which leads me to…

Your horse will enjoy the process of movement and ASK for more

Nothing is more thrilling than a horse that can perform an exercise you have been working on - EXCEPT for a horse that asks you to up the challenge on that exercise!

When a horse is developed into true self carriage, the pleasure they derived from the movement and scaling up the exercises fills my (and their) heart with joy. Movement truly can feel good and horses are no less likely to recognise that than your personal trainer.

And when movement feels good, and our horse is asking for more, we have a truly willing horse that is engaged in it’s own learning.

It allows you to keep working with the Training Trainability mentality

When we work through green to self carriage correctly, we can continue to implement the Trainabiltiy method - in that our horse has a say in how it developes, will trust us to develop them to avoid pain, and follow our guidance through the movements, knowing that we will keep their emotional, mental and physical wellbeing first in mind always.

So, if you are just riding your horse for the glory of winning quickly, the Green to Self Carriage isn’t for you - but neither should your horse be for you.

But if you love riding, and your horses welfare is the priority in your work, then I encourage you to work through the training scale correctly and provide the best for you and your horse.

Would you like to learn more about how you can access our Green to Self Carriage Course? Check it out here!

Inside Leg, Outside Rein

Why is this touted as being so important?

Inside leg to outside rein is considered the holy grail of riding, especially in dressage.

But it is just one piece of the puzzle.

Part of the reason it is touted to be so important is because it is often the first time a rider feels how the rein contact can affect hock flexion.

When the rein contact connects to the hindquarters instead of just the head placement, the movement and the horse comes so much lighter, softer and more balanced. It can truly feel like a magical moment that we pursue again and again.

One of the problems that commonly comes up with the development of inside leg to outside rein is that our horses love to cheat! They love to find the best way of keeping us happy with minimal effort on their behalf, and so instead of sitting deeper into their haunches they twist their pelvis. We will find our inside leg to outside rein normally works really well one way (normally the left), the direction our horse likes to bend to and not so well the other way.

We feel it not working so well because we have too much weight in the inside rein and no weight in the outside rein (normally the right). This is often not picked up by the rider though, because most of us are right handed and more comfortable feeling the extra weight in the right hand and not the left.

Inside leg to outside rein is also where we learn how to drive into contact. It starts us down the pathway of elevation and impulsion. Because it shows both us and our horse how to stay sitting in the haunches and push off their haunches, we start to learn how to recycle the energy and establish connection.

When we establish connection we start to communicate through our seat, and this is where we really start to refine the art of riding. However, if our horse is working twisted through the pelvis, we end up getting stuck and feeling like we are going round and round in circles - never moving forward.

So not only do we need to be able to ride inside leg to outside rein but we also need to be able to ride outside leg to inside rein, inside leg to inside rein and outside leg to outside rein. Because what we are truly doing when we ride inside leg to outside rein is connecting the action of the hind leg to the flexion of the rein. This can then shorten and lengthen the stride, collect, elevate and create impulsion. And what we are truly establishing when we connect the rein contact to the hock flexion is throughness, straightness and balance. We are asking our horse to distribute their weight evenly onto all 4 legs which engages their postural muscle and the core.

The whole purpose of dressage, the art of riding, is to lengthen our horses career through movement. That career is established by our horses musculoskeletal health, and their musculoskeletal health is dictated by the strength of their core and the suppleness of their back.

My Horse Is Leaning On The Bit!

Help! How do I get my horse to stop leaning on the bit?

It was a question posed recently by one of my students, and inspired me to provide more information.

The short and simple of it is that a horse that is leaning on the bit is on the forehand.

They either haven’t learnt how to properly engage their topline and pull their forehand up by coming up into self carriage, or they are taking advantage of you not knowing how to ride up hill.

All green horses have to go through the transition of going from working on the forehand, pulling themselves with their chest and shoulders, pushing off of and out from the hind legs to transferring the weight onto the hind quarters and establishing relaxation, throughness and swing. It is a difficult transition for most horses to work through.

Most behavioural issues under saddle will pop up when the horse is learning this because it is so hard on them.

For the rider, you need to learn where your independent seat is and be able to ride your horse legs seat to hands. Any forward tip in your upright seat will result in putting your horse on the forehand.

It is important, therefore, that you aren’t gripping with your knees and your thighs and able to keep your pelvis rotated up. Griping with you knees and thighs rotates your pelvis down, tips your upper body forward and pivots you at the knee, pushing you away from the horse. 

Some exercises specific to horses that lean are:

• transitions,

• rein back,

• leg yield and

• changes of frame, working from long and low and back up to working again.

This step is so important in our horses physical development and crucial to the continued development of self carriage and further. It is why I use the training methods that we have created into a self-paced online training program, that you can use to scale up and down as your horse develops and tailor the training to suit your skills and horse’s phase.

What to know when our Green to Self Carriage Program will be released? Click here!

7 tips to tell if your horse is on the bit

How do you know if your horse is on the bit?

Understanding what riding on the bit means and encompasses (read more here), there are certain signs to watch out for.

When our horse is truly accepting the bit, working in self carriage with evenly developed haunches and topline, we have true frame and throughness, and the horse is working with relaxation and swing, we will begin to notice a few things:

1. The horse stands square everywhere and anywhere.

In the paddock when you catch them, when you tie them up at the stables to tack up, when you mount them, any time you halt when riding and most importantly when you dismount and untack. If they stand square at the end of the ride you know you have trained them evenly and balanced in their ride.

2. The horse tracks up.

The hooves of the hind legs step into the prints left from the front legs in trot. When the horse is tracking up we know they are moving over their back with relaxation.

3. The horse can lift its tail.

If our horse is lifting its tail and swinging lightly to the rhythm of the movement to work into contact, we know they are using and working over their back. If the horses tail is clamped down or swishing stiffly their back is tight, probably sore and they are rotating and twisting their pelvis under instead of transferring their weight into and sitting deeper into their haunches.

4. The poll is the highest point.

A horse that is not in self carriage but looks on the bit will break away at the third vertebrae instead of the poll, and actually be working behind the bit. When the horse is working on the bit their nose should be at 90 degree angle to the ground (on the vertical) or slightly in front of, depending on how far along the training scale they are. 

5. Lightness.

The idea of the horse working with lightness confused me for a long time. I thought that their mouth should feel light, which resulted in me working them behind the bit. The bit should feel almost like they are pulling through the bit but that you can half halt and ask them to wait. The lightness is in the way they move. Like comparing my noisy, elephant steps with an elegant dancer. The dancer has learnt through poise, balance and engaging their core how to be light and graceful on their feet.

6. The horse is seeking the contact.

When you give your horse more rein they stay the same and reach for the contact. You can give the contact away all together and they work the same. When you take the contact up they come more together and elevated in their stride but don’t change in tempo, relaxation and ground coverage. 

7. Your rein back works really well.

Part of getting your horse to work well in its haunches is a cue that gets them to transfer the weight into the haunches.

All of this is dependent on the correct development of your horse and your position when riding. To learn more about our training course that will help you develop on the bit correcly, click here.

How to ride "on the bit" correctly

We recently spoke about WHAT riding on the bit actually is (missed it? Read the blog here).

Now it is time to understand the underlying dynamics and conditioning we need to consider before putting it into action.

How to put my horse on the bit?

The horse being on the bit is a combination of:

• establishing acceptance and willingness to follow bit pressure,

• understanding how to communicate flexion without tensing the neck against the bit pressure,

• and the conditioning for the horse to be able to hold the posture required for them to stay on the bit.

And I’ll give you a little secret for free:

On the bit has less to do with the arc of the neck and more to do with the flexion of the hocks.

The straighter the hocks, the straighter the back, the more resistance and pull you get into the bit. If you teach the submission to the frame aid without the hock flexion your horse will lack forwardness, throughness and impulsion. It will still be working on the forehand and will be working either behind the bit or heavy in your hand.

When you are truly & correctly working your horse on the bit, your aren’t controlling the angle of neck flexion, but instead the angle of hock flexion.

How to keep my horse on the bit?

Then keeping your horse on the bit has do with keeping them sitting into their haunches, hocks flexed.

This is why the conditioning is so important and why having your horse on the bit takes a while to develop and hold well with consistency. Our expectations is the difference between me going for a run and me going for a run lifting my knees. They need to learn the poise, posture and lightness of a dancer and then build the muscles to hold that extra effort for periods of time.  

How to get my young horse on the bit?

If you’ve just got yourself a young horse and realised that they aren’t as soft and easy to ride as your dressage school master, you’re not alone!

In the naivety that was my youth I thought all horses knew how to work on the bit and the ones that didn’t were because the rider didn’t know how to ride. How wrong I was!

In fact so wrong that I’ve written a whole course on the skills and prerequisites a horse needs to be able to work on the bit.

There is a lot to cover with a green horse in establishing relaxation, balance and suppleness, understanding of the aids, work ethic. Also the depth of frame often required in entry level dressage by far requires movements of an educated horse, such as leg yield, shoulder fore and canter through simple changes.

To be working your horse on the bit at a competition you want to be training at least one level higher than you are training. Most professional riders you will compete against will be training 2 levels higher. 

To teach a green horse to work on the bit, we believe it is important that you as a rider are educated in riding true self carriage and not just pull the horses head down. For the horse, they need to develop the strength and power of the haunches to sit deeper and flex behind and engage their core so they can relax and swing over their back.

Once these 2 skills are developed, “on the bit” happens naturally and easily. 

A little tip for free: green horses are great for eliciting the gaps in our own understanding and knowledge so you if are stuck on something, review the basics and see where you have missed a core piece of the puzzle in your own understanding and ability.

Riding on the bit requires skill and education, and can’t be achieved overnight. However, with the right effort and training, it will become natural and will look effortless flawless - bring those high dressage scores (as long as the judge likes your horse’s coat colour, of course!).

related blogs

Riding On The Bit - The True Meaning

Riding on the bit is a term thrown around quite a lot - but do we truly understand what it means?

Having our horse on the bit seems to be the gold standard we are rewarded for in the equestrian industry.

The biggest problem is that the term “on the bit” is so ambiguous. We see so many riders rewarded for having their horses head down without any of the self carriage pieces of the puzzle established - doing more harm than good to their horse.

There are a number of skills that both horse and rider need to learn to be able to work steadily and consistently on the bit. Let’s break it down”

What does riding on the bit even mean?

Firstly, your horse needs to accept the bit.

In dressage, acceptance of the bit means that the horse willing holds the bit in its mouth and follow and responds to cues from rein pressure. They can do this hollow, ie head high.

Not having acceptance of the bit is when you ask the horse to turn and they pull in the opposite direction, when you ask them to stop they keep running through the bit and if you ask them to back they pull through and walk through the bit.

Secondly, we start asking for flexion.

For true flexion, our horse is now being steered by our legs and body and our rein aids are light indications of which direction our horse should be looking in.

Flexion is the flexing of the neck muscles.

If we are using our reins to turn our horse will be counter balancing on that rein pressure and therefore flexing/tensing their neck against the rein and pulling/looking against the rein pressure. At this stage if flexion is asked of the horse and they aren’t steering from the legs they will suck behind the bit and fall out of the turn or circle easily.

Finally, your horse needs to be able to work in a true frame.

To truly have our horse on the bit, working over their back with elasticity, swing, impulsion, engagement and throughness, they need they’re postural, self carriage muscles well developed and the head comes down into a frame as an end result of self carriage.

Because movement is dynamic the “roundness” of the frame evolves and gets deeper and more elastic as you move into the harder dressage movements. 

Understanding what riding on the bit means can help you avoid hurting your horse as you work through correcting deficiencies in Self Carriage.

Why Does My Horse Feel So Heavy?

Do you feel like your horse leans on the bit, is heavier for a half halt, pulls through the bit or snatches it when you’re trying to ride a downward transition or rebalance the stride?

Your horse may be missing a vital piece to the puzzle that is his education: The rein back.

Rein back can be one of those exercises that people really struggle to get under saddle because they don’t understand how to teach it - so it doesn’t get taught.

Maybe you’ve tried? Pulled the reins, wiggled your bum a little maybe even attempted the leg aids and all you successfully taught was the horse to toss its head or snatch the bit. So rather than make things worse you gave up. “Oh well don’t need that any way... right?”

Well it may surprise you that you do need that rein back!! Especially if you’re struggling to get a square halt, a half halt or even steady head carriage and seeking the bit.

The rein back has an important role in the foundations of your horses training. It gets them thinking “sit” and “transfer weight onto the haunches” from bit pressure which is, in essence, engagement.

It is also important for head carriage.

Green to Self Carriage takes you through the process of developing your rein back to develop engagement, along with more exercises to develop true self carriage.

A true frame and self carriage (therefore head carriage) is directly related to the softness and flexion of the hind legs and hocks. The reins don’t control where the head is, they control how much flexion is through the joints of the hind quarters. This in turn influences the amount of roundness through the neck and crest.

A horse that just flexes away from the bit without getting into the haunches cannot develop an uphill action and will be working on the forehand and not able to half halt.

So before you give up on that rein back, think about all the flow on affects the exercise has on the horses understanding of the rein aids and how to use its body. And its actually really easy to teach if we start with using it on the ground first and then transfer to under saddle.

Get step-by-step tutorials in the Green to Self Carriage online program!

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!

Starting Again

There are many reasons why we need to start our horse over.

Pregnancy…

Injury…

Family commitments…

Holidays…

and the list goes on.

After an extended break, or sometimes even a relatively short break, you will probably find your horse cannot immediately work at the same level you left them at.

This may create feelings of guilt, annoyance, frustration, anger, or even inadequacy.

I get it because I am there right now.

After the loss of multiple family members and ongoing injuries with Custard (the gods, or whichever diety you choose to place your faith in, have a wicked sense of humour at times), I haven’t been able to work him properly for more than 6 months. And even before I feel confident with starting him again under saddle, I have had multiple professionals assessing and supporting his physical comfort.

The positive part to all this is that I get to beta-test our Green to Self Carriage Course along with some of our other students! The purpose of the beta-test is not to see if it will work (it will), but to see if it is easy to flow up and down the training scale for different horses and riders. Super exciting time for us right now!

So as Custard and I start again, I wanted to share some cold-hard truths I have uncovered:

A break

can be just as important for your horse as it is for you.

• Your feelings about starting again are valid, but irrelevant to your horse’s needs. As long as you have continued to provide to the emotional and physical needs of your horse during the break, your horse couldn’t give two hoots and a flying lollipop that you had to stop work (and in fact, probably enjoyed the break). So I am afraid you (and I) will just have to suck it up - perhaps using that flying lollipop you horse has hidden…

• You WILL NOT be able to start where you left off. You will need to go back to exercises that you horse finds easy, and work your way back up the training scale.

• You WILL have to move your goal post. Your horse WON’T care.

• Starting again is so much easier if you have the correct foundational muscular development already established (or establishing) in your horse - as that which we have outlined in the Green to Self Carriage Course. Healthy muscle and movement that feels good is easy for the horse to maintain in the paddock. Poor development is harder to fix and harder to scale up the developmental scale.

• Sometimes, a break is actually necessary for your horse and just as important as a vacation from work for us. Considering the time off a necessary mental and physical break, rather than the loss of time, will be much easier for your own mental well-being.

Join us on the Equestrian Movement Facebook page for videos and updates as Custard & I start out again. And if you are in the same position as I am, have heart - you still have your horse, and he/she still loves you just as much as before the break.

Want to help us beta-test the Green to Self Carriage Course? Click here to learn more!