This week’s blog is another practical tip that comes out of mistakes I made in the past. Every time something goes wrong it is an opportunity to look more closely at what is happening, how it is happening, and why it is happening. It is a great chance to learn something new and to gain deeper insights into the biomechanical and psychological causalities in riding. So, in many ways mistakes are blessings in disguise because they can push us further along and help us attain a higher level of understanding and competence.
This week’s tip is the kind of thing that teachers usually don’t address and that you don’t find in the books, although it is quite important and actually quite logical once you have discovered it.
It has something to do with where we focus our attention when we ride. Many years ago I had a very eye opening experience that became the starting point for this realization. One day, as I was riding I felt that I needed to release the reins a little so that the horse would not start bracing against me. But when I did release the reins, the horse fell apart. I didn’t understand why, because I thought I had done the right thing. So I put the horse back on the aids and tried again, and of course the same thing happened again. After several failed attempts at releasing the reins while keeping the horse on the aids I started to pay attention to what the rest of my body was doing and I noticed that I was not only releasing my arm and hand muscles, but I also softened my core muscles at the same time, which promptly made me lose the horse off my seat. As soon as I had made this discovery I started to focus on my core muscles and tried to make sure that they remained engaged while I was releasing the reins. From that moment on, my problem was solved. The horses stayed on the bit and on my seat while I released the reins.
So, the principle behind this anecdote is that while you are focusing on one part of your body, other parts may be doing things that they are not supposed to do because you are not watching. When you release one muscle deliberately, your body may release or disengage others in addition that actually need to remain engaged. Conversely, when you consciously engage one muscle, your body may engage other muscles that really should stay relaxed without you noticing it. Our body’s natural tendency seems to be to either engage all muscles together or release all muscles together. At least, that’s how it felt to me when I was a beginner. It was all or nothing. I was unable to differentiate between the individual muscle groups or to isolate individual muscle groups in order to engage one specific muscle, but not its neighbors.
Once I had observed this principle in one area, I started seeing other examples in my own riding as well as in my students. For instance, if you engage your core muscles, focus in addition on your glutes and your hip flexors, because our body likes to tighten them when we engage our core.
When you drive with your calf, check if you are tightening your hand around the rein at the same time.
When you rotate your femur inwards in the hip joint, check if your elbows are rotating outward at the same time. That’s a pretty common issue.
Observe yourself closely and let me know if you discover other instances of this principle in yourself or others.
When you notice these unwanted correlations, you can address them in a two-step process. First, engage the muscle you want to engage. Then release those muscles that your body tightened unintentionally, while keeping the engagement of the former.
Conversely, if you need to release a muscle while keeping others engaged, increase the engagement of those other muscles a little first, and then release the muscle you intend to release, while keeping the others engaged.
By following this strategy I learned over time to differentiate between the different muscle groups and to engage or relax individual muscles without affecting others.
The same principle exists also with respect to the horse. For instance, when riding lateral movements it is very common to focus predominantly on the crossing hind leg and drive with the calf on the same side. By doing that you may not notice when the opposite hind leg no longer steps under the center of gravity but starts to escape sideways. In the shoulder-in it is the outside hind leg that likes to deviate to the outside, so that the horse loses his bend and falls onto his inside shoulder. In the haunches-in and half pass it is the inside hind leg that evades to the inside or starts to lag behind which also results in the horse falling onto the forehand, losing his bend, and no longer crossing correctly. To avoid these mistakes we need to focus not only on the crossing hind leg, but also on the other one that needs to flex and support the body so that the first one is able to cross.
Try using your outside calf in the shoulder-in or your inside calf in the haunches-in and half pass sometimes and watch how the horse responds to it.
Another instance of this principle involves the independent adjustability of the horse’s hips and shoulders. This is something you can observe best when you set out lines of markers along the quarter line, center line, or a diagonal to practice lateral movements. In lateral movements one end of the horse should move along your designated line of travel while the other end is moved away from it and then maintains the same distance to it.
In the shoulder-in the outside hind leg travels on the designated line, and the front legs are moved to the inside. If the horse moves his haunches a little to the outside, he can unload his outside hind leg and support himself mostly with his inside shoulder, which defeats the purpose.
Alternatively, the horse may leave his line of travel to the inside because his haunches move to the inside together with the shoulders. This also removes the weight from the outside hind leg and shifts it onto the inside front leg.
If you only focus on the inside hind leg in the shoulder-in you will not notice that some of the other three legs are no longer where they are supposed to be.
If you are asking the haunches to move to the inside for a haunches-in, the outside front leg should stay on the line of travel. But the horse’s shoulders may come in as well, which would shift the weight onto the inside front leg instead of the inside hind leg, and the horse would no longer be on the intended line of travel.
Alternatively, in the haunches-in the shoulders may escape to the outside if there is no solid wall there, which puts the majority of the weight onto the outside front leg.
So if you only concentrate on the outside hind leg, you may not notice it if the horse leaves the line of travel with his front legs.
The same thing applies in the half pass. Towards the hollow side, the half pass often ends up steeper than intended, because the front legs move towards the inside and away from the line of travel as well.
In the counter shoulder-in and renvers the possible mistakes are very similar to those in the shoulder-in and haunches-in, respectively.
There are many other examples of this issue. If you want to lengthen the stride, observe the tempo. Many horses will speed up their tempo, rather than lengthening the strides.
If you want to ride a transition from shoulder-in to renvers, watch that only the bend changes, but that the angle of the horse’s body with the line of travel stays the same, that the tempo and stride length stay the same, and that the horse’s energy output stays the same.
In other words, don’t lose sight of the big picture while you are working on a detail. If you examine your training sessions you will probably see many examples of the principles I explained above. It’s good to raise your awareness of these things because it will make you a more precise and effective rider, and your horse will become more supple, more balanced, straighter, and more permeable.
