Is a high head the sign of a disobedient horse?

Is a horse, carrying its head high, a sign they are resisting you?

Is that resistance then disobedience?

For a long period of my riding career exactly that. I thought a horse flexed through the neck and soft in the mouth was submission and anything else was resistance.

A horse that worked with its head up or out was being disobedient.

And then I became a trainer and rode professionally…

And I quickly learnt that a horse could still work with its head up and have submission and that initially green horses and green broken horses do need to lift their head and work for periods of time with their head up.

Whether their head was in the air had nothing to do with how submissive they were.

A horse that works with its head up can still listen perfectly to the halt aid and the steering.

In fact in my experience I have found more horses with better submission working out of a frame then in a frame.

Think about it - how does a horse differentiate between the aid that asks it to tuck their nose and the aid that ask them to stop? The aid is essentially the same - (preferrably) a light, backwards pressure on the reins.

An experienced rider will say seat, of course.

But there are a lot of riders that don’t yet know how to ride with their seat, that can tuck their horses head into a false frame and then the horse has now lost its brakes. So they put on harsher bits and nose bands to try and get the brakes working but what is truly missing is the communication.

But its not just the rider, sometimes it’s the horse.

It can take a little bit even when using the seat for the horse to differentiate between a frame aid and a halt aid, especially if they have been trained without that differentiation previously. Even if they have had that differentiation trained in, with a different ride who doesn’t use their seat the same the horse can still get confused.

So the type of riding that is typically called resistance under saddle I would say is more closely akin to limited musculoskeletal development than actually resisting and challenging the aid.

My green horses on training these days have far better submission to the aids while working hollow than the horses I trained for frame equals submission in my younger years, because submission has to do with communication whereas frame has to do with musculoskeletal development.

And it isn’t easy to get there. It doesn’t happen over night.

I remember as a kid my idealised instructor got a new horse that was green and was not yet ready to work in a frame. I saw her riding it hollow and thought well maybe she isn’t as good of a rider as I thought. Maybe it was just the horse that was not good.

It takes a green broken horse with no injuries or trauma at least 6 months to 2 years to work steadily and consistently in a working frame that positively compliments the musculoskeletal system - and that’s something we don’t talk about enough.

It’s not an easy process to develop the forwardness, engagement, swing, elasticity, core, topline elasticity and postural skills for the horse to work in good self carriage AND understand its aids well that perfectly primes it for the balance needed for the career we are hoping to follow with our horse.

This is why we developed a whole course for it.

If you are not sure what a healthy working frame, self carriage and good aids should look like so that you are ready for collection, then check it out.

Using Your Seat In Canter And Sit Trot

Want to work on improving your canter and sit trot?

Join us at our independent seat workshop April 6 2019!

The Independent Seat (part 2)

Using your seat as a tool for communication

This article is best to read after you have done our course “3 weeks to improving your riding”. In this course we go into depth about the angles and lines we need in our posture that allows for maximum range of movement in both ourselves and our horses and also how to move and follow our horse. It includes 3 weeks of exercises designed by a personal trainer to help you hold this posture easier. This will also only work if your horse is working correctly in self carriage and connection. --Katie

Everything we are trying to do with our horses is to create more engagement, more self carriage, to create a stronger, more elastic top line so that our horse can move more freely, move with more power and agility, to reduce the concussion of the movement on their body and develop their core strength and soundness for a long and healthy riding career. The tighter we are through our thigh and the more we pivot at our knee and our hip in our dressage seat, even if we are trying to lean back to keep our upright, the more we are putting our horse onto the forehand. This is why all the angles and lines we discuss in “3 weeks to improving your riding” is so important. When we break these lines and angles we distribute our weight away from our centre of balance and then try to counter balance ourselves. Our horse then tries to counter balance our imbalance and both ours and our horses posture “shrinks and curls” to try and protect our balance. If we start with our center of gravity and work out, engaging the same balance points as we do on the ground we have the best opportunity of maintaining our posture and guiding our horse to maintain their balance, posture and center of gravity.

Once we understand how to do this and our connection is established we can then start to use our seat to communicate. This is our ultimate goal. The more we can communicate from our seat, the less we interrupt our horses flow and balance with our hands. If we do this exercise describe below without having established connection our horse will “jack up” and potentially also rear. Our horse needs to know how to sit into its haunches and lift through its tummy so that it is shortening its body in a way that lengthens the crest. Which is why we have our foundation exercises of self carriage that ensure our horse can first do all these things and that we also have an adequate feel of how to distribute the horses weight and balance effectively. Once these skills are established this is very easy. If these skills aren’t established your horse will let you know if you try this exercise. Make sure you listen to your horse and get help by someone who understands these principles if you are unsure.

Establishing a half halt with our seat.

Katie demonstrating the correct position in the saddle to improve your independent seat

First have all the prerequisites of self carriage established. Tempo changes, bend and changes of bend, transitions within the pace and pace to pace, shortening and lengthening the frame, rein back over a pole, trot poles and canter poles, introducing leg yield and shoulder fore.

Have the angles and lines of an independent seat as described in “3 weeks to improving your riding”.

At the halt:

• Cuddle your calves

• Squeeze your butt checks together like you are trying to hold a poo in

• Lift through and rotate through your pelvis like your practised on the fit ball in “3 weeks to improving your riding”

• Draw your shoulder blades together and open your chest

• Increase the angle through your elbows, taking your hands towards your hips gently, keeping a straight line elbow hands reins to bit.

The end goal is that the horse squeezes together and their head comes onto the vertical. Release the pressure for this.

To get this right you want to balance the amount of energy you are creating with your legs to the amount of wait you’re are creating with your hands.

Think about driving a manual car if you have the clutch out of gear it doesn’t matter how much you put your foot down on the accelerator the car won’t go. In a horse that understand self carriage and connection the contact is like your clutch you are balance the revs (forwardness from your legs) with the amount of clutch that is engaged (contact). If you don’t engage the clutch (contact) as you rev (legs) the car won’t accelerate with power (your horse will be strong out on the forehand). If you have to much revs (legs) to clutch (contact) your car will accelerate uncontrollable and do a burn out (your horse will take the bolt and spit you out the side). We are trying to find the balance between just enough rein add to say wait without stopping and just enough leg aid to say stay moving powerfully forward without rushing and this creates impulsion. When we go into this level of detail you can see why our foundations need to be so clearly established for both ourselves and our horses.

What we are trying to do here is establish this aid above which is our half halt by tightening and lifting through our seat to squeeze our horse together and lift the forehand.

We are not going to be riding like this all the time it is an add. We cuddle, squeeze, lift and draw our horse up and to us and then relax and allow our horse to move. We are creating a controlled tension which shortens, bounces and re-energises the stride and riding forward out of it.

As we ride forward our horse will going onto the forehead and we also have an opportunity here to create acceptance of the bit. As we relax and allow our hands forehand we are asking the horse to follow our hands forward out of the frame, to poke its nose out. Just before it gets to strung out, we cuddle, squeeze, lift and draw our horse in and up to us and then relax and slowly inch our hands forward encouraging our horse to poke its nose out seeking the contact. Rinse and repeat. This is your new half halt. The more often you ride this aid combination the stronger your horse will get through the chest and the shoulders and the more impulsion you will create.

This ability to shorten and lift into you is also your prerequisite to collection and why the transition from novice to elementary is so hard for some. If you have learnt how to get your horse into a frame by grounding them and putting them more onto the forehand you have to go back to scratch and relearn how to work your horse uphill into the frame if you are to achieve collection. The impulsion is a natural progression of self carriage that becomes collection.

Activating this seat aid is part of the puzzle. Your horse can only come uphill if you do first.