My Horse Is Leaning On The Bit!
Help! How do I stop it?
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
There is a special skill in identifying when your horse is ready to be 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:
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
Here is what you need to know to perform this task effortlessly.
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!).
Riding On The Bit - The True Meaning
It is a term used often with poor understanding
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.
Getting Your Horse “on the Bit” is Easy...
What is riding on the bit and why do so many of us struggle with it?
Getting Your Horse “on the Bit” is Easy – Keeping Your Horse There is Hard
Riding your horse on the bit is both one of the easiest and hardest things you will do in your riding career.
The reason it is easy is because to get the horse to be on bit and flex at poll is the use of pressure & release to get your horses to give to the bit pressure.
The reason it is hard is because of the way the horse has to engage its core to do it well – which gets harder when we start moving!
In the same way that we can stand still and engage our postural muscles, it’s easy - but then you are asked to move, or run, or dance – not so easy.
These are the things we are expecting of our horse – to move gracefully forward with acceptance of the bit.
The actual teaching of the acceptance of the bit, to be on the bit, is easy; the hard part is conditioning the involved for the horse to maintain it easily and with forward movement.
Issues with attempting to get your horse on the bit when they aren’t conditioned to it:
False flexion
False flexion. Note the bend at the 3rd vertebrae.
The horse breaks away at the 3rd vertebrae as opposed to flexing at the poll and bringing its head on the vertical. This puts its head too deep, leading to them working on the forehand, pulling with the shoulders and then working behind the bit.
You will still get rewarded in your dressage test for your horse being slightly behind the vertical or slightly on the vertical but still on the forehand, but you will have comments like lacking forward or lacking impulsion. And that’s essentially because you have pulled the horses head down without learning how to ride them forward through to contact.
That is the conditioning work that we do to maintain the horse in frame while on the bit in forward movement.
Twisting Pelvis or Dropped Shoulder
We use bend to establish the suppleness for the horse to be able to put its head down in the first place. So rather than bending through the rib cage, they will twist through the pelvis or drop the shoulder. This allows them to put their head down without technically having to engage their postural or self-carriage muscles.
This further enhances them travelling on the forehand, pulling with their chest and shoulders, working with false flexion and working behind the bit.
Tips to work your horse to truly be ‘on the bit’
What being on the bit actually is is between being too hollow and too deep.
What I teach my students is to ride them forward, hands out of their mouth and let them be hollow. Then use their half halt (which you have taught them to give to bit through pressure/release), and they might come behind the bit slightly, or your just asking them to tuck their chin in, and then you want to ride them forward out of that again. You are using your circle work to keep them nice and supple. Eventually, the horse will develop its core strength and the stability of its postural muscles to be able to ride forward, into contact. So that when you ride your half halt, they don’t come behind the bit, and when you ride your forward, they don’t hollow.
What happens, though, is we get super excited that our horse is on the bit, and we want to keep them there, not change up the exercise or allowing strengthening. In doing that we end up with our horse coming behind the bit, behind the leg, and going on the forehand.
So it is important for us riders, in these first few stages where the horse is learning and developing how to work on the bit, to allow them to go hollow, and then bring them back in again, then letting them go hollow, and bring them back again.
You have to give your horse the 12 months it needs to condition their body to that exercise.
Using the half halt to bring them in and then letting them out forward and hollow allows the correct toning for the muscles during the development stage
It takes 6-8 weeks to develop the coordination and balance, followed by 3-4 months of muscle conditioning – the muscles they need to develop to actually hold their head there (we want it to feel natural and good for them to hold their head there while they are moving) – and finally, 6-12 months for bone and ligament density, so that this environmental stress that we have created in their bodies becomes part of their conformation. That’s when you can just hop on your horse and they are already there.
The ‘on the bit part’ is quite easy. The conditioning part is the hard part, where you are giving your horse the time and the environmental exposure for their body to adapt to it and be able to do it easily and maintain it consistently.
Obviously, part of that is you, as the rider, understanding how to apply the pressure release so their head can come down, but also having the sensitivity to know when your horse has come behind your leg, or when its dropped the hip, or fallen out through the shoulder, or when it’s not moving forward to your hands, or when it is not moving forward with thoroughness.
All of these parts of part of your journey as a rider to learn, so that you don’t inhibit your horse’s range of movement.
You don’t want to stress about whether the horse’s head is on the bit or not, you want to learn the foundations of how to work the horse correctly into contact. And once you learn those foundations, and apply those exercises, the horse will come onto the bit.
The ‘on the bit’ part is just the last piece of the puzzle of good self carriage from your horse.
Foundations of Equine Development Green to Self Carriage program is coming soon - register your interest here
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