Why is my half halt not working?
Have you ever had issues with your half halt working?
What about even knowing if you are doing it correctly?
The reason why the half halt is so difficult to understand is because how you ride it with your body and what you are trying to achieve changes with the different levels of riding.
The half halt is a cue that communicates a specific action - "anticipation of what's next".
There is a mental and physical component required.
The horses mind has to ask "what are we about to do" and in their ask their body and movement rebalances to be ready for the next ask.
We also use the exercise to train the cue in, so you're not trying to control the horses body to be more balanced. You are changing what you are asking your horse to do. And it is in the preparation to change speed, direction, pace etc that your horse organises and rebalances their body for the change.
If you ever get the opportunity to ride a green, unbalanced horse, it will be good to understand how much we affect their ability to balance on their back.
For example:
riding a green horse, they don't have a whole lot of balance or a whole lot of clarity of complex aids. So a half halt for them looks like trot, walk, trot, walk, trot, think walk, trot on. In that hesitation where they thought they were about to walk they have organised and rebalanced their trot to be less strung out and on the forehand.
As they get more experienced, the aid refines and we can tidy it up. If you're horse is doing laterals and you are riding inside leg to outside rein, your outside rein starts to say sit, wait and your inside leg starts to say forward. In this way your riding your horse like a stick car. Your leg revs the energy and your rein is either engaging and building the energy or letting the energy out to be speed.
Caveat here: this doesn't work until you know how to ride true engagement, eg. The horse has to flex deeper through the hocks. Often the first big mistake riders make is trying to create a frame from bit pressure and then you have no way to communicate sit deeper into the hocks. As a result the horses rotate their pelvis for engagement instead of sitting through their haunches. In this case there is no way to communicate to the horse, "sit, rev, build energy" without forward because all they are thinking is tuck their nose from bit pressure.
The seat also increases in complexity as you move up the training scale, but basically it’s your body saying “get ready to” - you are switching on your balance muscles as well! I teach to turn the pelvic floor on and engage the core and then relax. This becomes an integration of movement. You switch your balance muscles on to change direction and in doing so the horse feels that and anticipates (half halts) the change and switches its balance muscles on so that when you do change direction or pace your horse is ready and waiting for the ask and can execute.
From the point where you say "get ready, were about to do something different", an educated horse takes 1 - 3 strides to switch their brain on and think about what's about to change (if you're good at cuing and clear in your aids and communication) and then another 3 to organise their body to execute. Green horses, well, they can take half an arena.
This is where things go wrong.
The rider thinks the horse should respond immediately.
The horse gets labelled as resistant and naughty - but it literally hasn't been given the time and the space to translate the question, figure out the answer and organise their body (aka half halt/hesitate/anticipate change).
This is how we introduce the idea or concept to our horses for the half halt. "Get ready to change" but then we don't change anything. We are teaching a new word/a new cue. That word/cue is balance.
If we are riding our half halts and we can't execute an upward or downward transition, we are no longer riding an effective half halt and we need to go back to doing transitions.
Using the half halt in the trot as an example, if too many times we say "get ready to walk, trot on" our horse stops thinking about the walk and is only thinking about the "trot on". Our horse is no longer organising their body in anticipation and only thinking trot. So we need to intersperse our "get ready to" cue with "continue on" and "get ready to" cue with "now change".
Do you have any questions about your half halt? Pop them in the comments, follow our podcast, or check out this video on youtube!