Satori Center

 
 

 

For appointment: 512.869.7903
Amazon-Store
Old Favs ~ Books & Such

Resources

Tidbit

Horses lend us the wings we lack.

~ Pam Brown

Back ] Home ] Next ] [Previous]
Is your horse a little stiff?

Is your horse a little stiff on one side?

In Riding Masterclass, Lessons with 10 of Today's Top Trainers, edited by Jo Weeks, Carl Hester advocates a simple exercise to remedy this and teach correct aids to boot!

Here it is, p37:

When a horse is stiff and doesn't want to bend to the inside, the temptation for the rider is to try to bend him by pulling the inside rein.  

....

Always think about turning your horse with your outside aids more than the inside ones....  so you ride in a shoulder-fore position.  Hold this position for about four strides and then straighten up again.

I use this exercise a lot with 'crooked' horses, but it is really important to do some straightforward trot work in between to keep them fresh.  Make the whole exercise four strides of shoulder-fore, then straighten the horse up, trot for half a circle, walk, and repeat.  That way, you keep your horse listening to you and focusing on your aids.

Here's what's going on and why this works.

 

Let's say you're tracking right, ie on the right rein, and it seems to be going good.  Then you track left and it feels like you've got a board underneath you - not only is your horse's nose not to the left, it's over on the right somewhere!  Why is this?

If you look closely at how the horse is traveling to the right, you'll notice it's not actually 'bending' through its body.  (Whether or not a horse actually bends is an whole 'nother topic!  so I'll skim over that for the moment...)  

For the sake of simplicity, consider that a horse is bending properly on a circle when a smooth arc can be drawn that passes through the sacroiliac joint, between the withers, and between the ears and this is the same arc the horse is traveling on in forward movement.  (The 'ideal' picture.)

In the horse that is stiff to the left and 'supple' to the right, the middle point for the withers will actually fall to the left of the arc.  And rather than smooth 'bend' from hip to wither or wither to poll, there is likely to be two 'boards' connecting at the withers but jackknifed to the right.  ie the tail and the head are to the right and look like a jackknife closing to the right.  In essence, the head can't go left because the shoulder is over there.  The shoulder is over there because the right hind is weak.  (there's a whole host of stuff going on, actually, but these two aspects are the more salient two for this discussion.) 

The solution is to put the withers in front of the hind end (hmm?  where have we heard this before?!) with a shouder-fore.  The left shoulder is 'caught' with the outside rein which acts like a guardrail while the inside leg has to do a little more work than it's used to.  This strengthens the inside leg.   (you may need more inside leg yourself, but be careful not to overpower your outside rein as that probably contributed to this problem!)

I usually see results in half a circle but continue on to do two circles to make sure.  By the end of two circles the horse feels pretty fluid and 'booking.'  really moving well. 

ideal

reality solution result

 

Copyright © 1/15/14 Lynn S. Larson
Back ] Next ]

BooksAmazon Assoc. / Old Favs

Links

  Books 

 

 

"The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities." 

~ James Allen

 

lynn@satoriconnections.com   512.869.7903