One of my teachers often reminded us in lessons that each work session should consist of four parts: a warm-up phase, a segment during which the horse is “closed”, i.e. the hind legs are brought more under the body, a phase during which the horse is collected, i.e. the hind legs are flexed more, and a cool-down phase. The segment of collection only applies to horses who are already somewhat advanced in their training.
The warm-up is a very important part of every ride, but it is often misunderstood. The purpose of the warm-up is to balance the horse, to supple the musculature, to increase the blood flow to the muscles, to make the horse focus on the rider, and to tune the horse to finer aids. It’s comparable to tuning a musical instrument before playing it.
There are several things that must be carefully avoided, if the goals that I just outlined are to be achieved. The horse should not become tired during the warm-up, because the workout proper, during which the hind legs have to be engaged and flexed (closing and collecting the horse), requires a fresh, energetic horse. As E.F.Seidler (1837), Friedrich von Krane (1856), General Faverot de Kerbrech (1891) and other authors explicitly stated, a tired horse is incapable of doing high quality work. He cannot respond to light aids any more, and he is already too tired to focus on the work. The higher the demands are, the more energy they require. The higher the degree of collection becomes, the more impulsion is necessary and the hotter the horse needs to be. Conversely, the less energy is wasted on the warm-up, the fresher the horse is during the collected work, the better the quality of the work will be. That’s why so many of the classical authors prefer frequent, short sessions over fewer, long sessions. High quality work, especially at the upper levels, requires a fresh horse!
If the rider wears the horse out, the movements will be of poor quality. The horse will not enjoy his work, and sooner or later he is bound to feel exploited and become resentful. If this happens regularly, the horse may end up completely refusing to cooperate with the rider any longer.
Another very serious danger of working the horse to the point of fatigue and beyond is that the muscles can no longer support the skeleton once they become tired. Then this task falls to the tendons and ligaments, and a torn suspensory ligament or a bowed tendon becomes inevitable. When soft tissue injuries like that occur during the work, it is always due either to a loss of balance or to fatigue, or both. These types of injuries are largely avoidable through intelligent work.
Another common mistake is that riders will let the horse trot or canter thoughtlessly for long periods of time under saddle or at the longe line without balancing him or suppling him. This will achieve the exact opposite of what the warm-up is supposed to accomplish, because the longer the horse is forced to remain unbalanced, the stiffer he will become. In the long run, this will cause arthritic conditions like ring bone or spavin. In the short run, it can also lead to the soft tissue injuries mentioned above.
Imbalance and stiffness are the enemies of the horse, because they result in uneven loading of the legs, excessive wear and tear and hard, jarring gaits. Alfred Knopfhart summarizes this very poignantly (1977, translation: TR): “It is the rider’s job to lead his horse into a state of complete relaxation within each lesson by eliminating existing tensions and their causes before the workout proper can begin. One must not believe that relaxation arrives on its own by prolonged, simple (in order to avoid the word ‘thoughtless’) trotting and cantering around – on the contrary, some horses may become stiffer and stiffer, especially when they are being chased around, just as eggs do not become any softer with extensive boiling. The task is, rather, to recognize individual unevennesses in the gaits and then to smooth them deliberately.”
There are people who like to warm their horse up by trotting and cantering around without rein contact. But without rein contact there is no recycling of energy, no circle of aids – and without energy circuit the rider is unable to lift the horse’s withers and back, or to engage the hind legs. The longer the horse is ridden without rein contact, the more strung out he will become and the more he will fall onto the forehand. The more the horse is forced to stay unbalanced and strung out, the stiffer he will become. The longer the rider lets his horse fall apart on the forehand without rein contact during the warm-up, the longer it will take afterwards to undo the damage.
For these reasons, riding without rein contact will increase the wear and tear on the horse’s legs and ultimately lead to lameness. It also violates the principle of the unity of the work that Adolph Kästner (1876) addressed in the chapter on longeing. According to this principle, everything the rider does with his horse has to follow the same rules, and has to be serve the same goal, regardless of whether one is training the horse under saddle in the arena, or whether one is longeing, working in hand, long reining, trail riding, or jumping. Letting the horse fall apart and become stiff and crooked during the warm-up, only to change all the rules in the second half of the ride in order to ask him to become balanced, supple, and light, is a complete contradiction that makes no sense to the horse. It is easy to see what a great disservice the rider does to his horse, if he allows him to be strung out, crooked, and on the forehand due to the absence of the appropriate rein contact.
The opposite is just as bad: warming the horse up with his chin on his chest. That does not allow the horse to find his balance, either, but it forces him to fall onto his shoulders. The base of the neck is turned into rubber, which creates a false bend that acts as a “black hole” and swallows the impulses of the hindquarters as well as the rein aids. The hind legs will stay unflexed, the croup will be pushed up, and the half halts will not go through, because the horse will yield to the rein aids with the base of the neck, instead of the haunches and the poll. The disruption or prevention of the energy circuit puts the horse’s poll and hips out of the rider’s reach, so that they can remain stiff and locked up without the rider even realizing it. There may be a feeling of lightness, but it comes from the wrong part of the horse’s body. It’s an evasion, not true lightness.
There is yet another type of warm-up that is unfortunately quite popular, but also damaging for the horse as well as for the training. It’s the chasing of the horse at the longe line or in the round pen. Some people make their horses run around frantically, in order to make them tired. The disadvantages are obvious, yet you can see it very often. At the longe line, those people usually don’t use proper tack. They attach the longe line either to the snaffle bit or to a halter, which is inappropriate and ineffective. They typically don’t use side reins, either. And they crack the whip and literally scare the horse into running around at top speed. This is extremely damaging for the horse’s legs, due to the centrifugal forces. The tempo must match the size of the circle. The smaller the circle, the more collected the horse has to be. This type of longeing at high speed throws the horse onto the forehand and makes him stiff. It also scares the horse, so that by the time the rider gets on, the horse is actually much worse than he was when he came out of his stall, whereas an intelligent, thoughtful warm-up at the longe line makes the horse easier and more pleasant to ride than he was when he came out of his stall. Round penning has the same disadvantages, since the horses always seem to be scared and chased at high speed, so they end up tired and frightened, and eventually mentally shut down, not interested in a dialogue with the rider any more. These are heartless, cruel ways of warming a horse up that are mentally and physically highly damaging.
The warm-up should lead each horse to a physical, emotional, and psychological state of balance and relaxation. The phlegmatic horse has to become alert and responsive to the rider. The timid, nervous horse has to become calm and confident in his rider as well as himself. The hot, overly reactive horse has to become relaxed and more tolerant. The distracted, spooky horse has to become attentive and focused on the work.
The negative examples outlined above will never accomplish these goals. They will only damage the horse’s mental and physical health and make progress impossible. In the next blog entry, I will give some suggestions for a more intelligent approach to warming the horse up.
Feel free to e-mail me with questions and comments. Read some of the feedback we've received on our Letters and Testimonials page.
Thomas Ritter
