I know there’s a thread here somewhere…
How do you engage a horse’s back correctly when they have never done it before? How do you know what it feels like when it has been engaged and raised? How do you encourage a horse to travel long and low when they never have in the past, without the use of gadgets like chambons and neck stretchers?
thanks,
an inquiring mind.
And that is dressage… The how is the journey. It doesn’t happen easily or suddenly, it is a gradual riding, training/fitness process. Have you ever been on a horse when it pooped? Did you feel the back come up? Now, do that with more energy… Long and low is a matter of acceptance of contact - again, a training process.
Transitions, leg yield, transitions, lateral work, transitions - and good eyes on the ground to help you…
I can tell you what has worked best for me… I retrain TBs from the track. They obviously don’t come with factory installed buttons for learning to use their back, so you have to teach them to.
First, I teach them to accept contact. That can be done many ways, but what has worked best for me is to teach them to lunge, and then lunge in side-reins. The side-reins are judicial and fair; they always have the best timing, and are more forgiving than any hand. I keep the side-reins on a fairly loose setting - loose enough that it does not have contact with their mouth unless they engage it by stiffening or inverting. This is done in hand until they learn to lunge, and what I will do is instead attaching the side-reins near the girth area, I attach them from the bottom of the girth with the girth ring. I pull the side-reins through a neck-strap (or stirrup leather, or whatever) so that the full weight of the side-reins don’t jangle on their mouths when they’re moving. This is simply to teach them to accept and give to the contact - I don’t expect them to work in side-reins once that basic understanding of contact is there. They catch on pretty quickly, so I usually will do two weeks of lunging sessions that are kept short and sweet with side-reins and then put the side-reins away for the rest of the year.
To get a young horse, or TB, or whatever - to use their back, I start on the ground. Like MysticOakRanch said, this does not happen overnight. Most horses don’t even know how to leg yield, or to do lateral work… so this is the most important part.
In hand, I ask them to move over by touching their barrel with my hand, right where your foot would be. I ask them “over”, and nudge until there is a response. Release immediately, reward. Try again. At first, you are looking at the horse doing something like weird turn on the forehands, but do this every day for 5-10m before you get on (and if you’re ambitious, 5-10m after you get off) and very soon you will have a horse that understands that “over” means move his hind end away from the pressure.
Once he understands that, I graduate to asking him to walk along-side me, and ask him to move “over” every couple of strides. I am walking alongside him, so visually can see that hind end; ask him ‘over’, nudge - the timing is important. You want to ask him just about when you see the inside hind begin to engage in push-off - a split second before is ideal, but it takes time to develop perfect timing. Each stride of the inside hind pushoff, ask him to push off and push inside hind OVER, think about having his inside hind end cross over his tracks and almost where his outside hind would be tracking. THEN he is using his back!
If you do that for 5-10m a day, walking alongside and asking him to leg-yield (as that is what it is now, a leg yield!) towards the wall, you will eventually see his back start to engage, as he has to push off with his hind end to oblige your request. If you really work on getting a big, active push from that inside hind (remember to change direction) every day before you get on, you will be halfway there as he will already be using his back before you have your feet in the stirrups.
Doing a leg yield correctly will loosen the horse’s back, and engage it - they have to step under themselves to move their HQ away, which is why I always hand-walk and ask them to do a lot of moving over and leg yields before I get on. You want him to move over without speeding up - this will take time (rhythm).
Once you are certain he understands that, you can graduate to asking it undersaddle. In the walk, ask him to do lots of figures, changes of bend inside and out, TOH/TOF. Lots of greenies will collapse their inside shoulder when you ask them to leg-yield, so you need to keep that in mind once you start asking to LY under saddle.
Under saddle, remember to do lots of transitions. I like to do a four loop serpentine and halt or walk in the center of each loop, resume trot, change bend, halt or walk again.
I find that if I keep my contact light, but my legs strong, they start to offer reaching for the contact themselves. It won’t happen in a day.
Generally, study the training scale and have a good set of eyes on the ground for you.
When a back is engaged… it feels different. It is different for every horse, but generally, it feels like “the pieces fell together” - light contact, uphill swing of the shoulder, and you should feel a “push” from behind that almost pushes you out of the saddle. To me it reminds me of a coil, or bedspring - coiling in and out. Generally the trot will feel “bigger” without being faster, and the canter will feel more uphill. The walk will feel purposeful, and YOU should feel like you are dictating every stride with coiling, elegant purpose.
[QUOTE=beowulf;8856729]
When a back is engaged… it feels different. It is different for every horse[/QUOTE] Apparently it’s different for every rider too. The feeling when a horse is about to drop manure feels horrible, and nothing like a raised back. It feels like a tight back. A raised back does not feel like it is pushing you out of the saddle. It feels like you have a good place to sit in the saddle. If something feels like it is pushing you out of the saddle, then is is croup high.
[QUOTE=Justice~for~Horses;8856763]
Apparently it’s different for every rider too. The feeling when a horse is about to drop manure feels horrible, and nothing like a raised back. It feels like a tight back. A raised back does not feel like it is pushing you out of the saddle. It feels like you have a good place to sit in the saddle. If something feels like it is pushing you out of the saddle, then is is croup high.[/QUOTE]
When a horse STOPS to poop, it doesn’t feel great, but if you can take a bit of that up feeling along with FORWARD energy, it is a bit of the feeling. Another way to get that feeling (while standing) is to sit on the horse, then ask someone on the ground to push along its belly mid-line - the horse will raise its back. This is just a way for someone to get a little bit of the feel - OP sounds like they are starting from scratch. Of course, as training progresses, you refine feel:)
[QUOTE=Justice~for~Horses;8856763]
Apparently it’s different for every rider too. The feeling when a horse is about to drop manure feels horrible, and nothing like a raised back. It feels like a tight back. A raised back does not feel like it is pushing you out of the saddle. It feels like you have a good place to sit in the saddle. If something feels like it is pushing you out of the saddle, then is is croup high.[/QUOTE]
No comment re: pooping, that wasn’t me – however, a horse that is using his back has more impulsion and more push from behind, which changes the power of the gait. With more power behind, many horses will have a more springy, uphill trot. . To me, it almost feels like a gentle push out of the saddle; posting becomes easier, everything becomes easier, the pieces fall in place, the horse is soft and supple… There is an elasticity and the impulsion and energy circulates from the body right back down to the HQ again in a nice cycle. Hard to describe, but I think it’s very easy for people to feel.
It is one of those things for me that when you feel it, it’s like a lightbulb! As my mare comes through more and more, she has moments where it really feels like she has the huge engine behind. It’s amazing. At the moment she can hold it for a while and then we fall back to a more “normal” contact and swing. as she builds strength she’s able to hold it longer and longer.
I will say if you can ride a horse who is already able to move like that with a relatively competent rider, it will help you know when you’re there. But seriously when they find that gear, the feeling is unmistakable, it certainly doesn’t feel like a normal trot in the field.
[QUOTE=Justice~for~Horses;8856763]
Apparently it’s different for every rider too. The feeling when a horse is about to drop manure feels horrible, and nothing like a raised back. It feels like a tight back. A raised back does not feel like it is pushing you out of the saddle. It feels like you have a good place to sit in the saddle. If something feels like it is pushing you out of the saddle, then is is croup high.[/QUOTE]
It’s interesting - my gelding feels good when he poops, and my mare feels horrifyingly awful. My gelding is naturally very uphill, and my mare is not so much plus she has a long back. It just gets her off balance.
I was lucky my gelding was my first dressage horse, because correct use of his back was DRAMATIC. The first time he really used it, I was posting and all of a sudden I couldn’t clear his withers. I just started laughing because his entire gait changed as well. Now that he uses his back well almost all the time, even when he’s not honestly through the difference isn’t as dramatic. But for him, the withers come way up, and a viewer may have thought he was through before but he gets very dramatically uphill. For a very long time his back was much softer when really using himself well, because he had a lot of tension we had to work through. Now he comes out relaxed so that change isn’t there anymore.
https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/549271_800013000376_376349933_n.jpg?oh=0490538e6a3421d4a6678cf39e0b5d3b&oe=583927A6
This ^^ was early in our dressage career and didn’t look BAD, but you can see the hind leg isn’t coming under as well and doesn’t match the front leg’s expression. There’s a reason people harp on front and hind legs matching and steps being the same length behind and in front - it indicates more of what’s going on in the body.
This one is about a year later, and you can see the withers are much higher than his hips and his shoulder shape looks entirely different from the lifting. You can also see that he has overstep instead of only possibly tracking up. (Note: I look awful in both photos and am proud to look back at them and realize how much I have improved!)
My mare is MUCH less dramatic feeling. With the gelding I can always feel his hind legs because he has such a short back. With her, essentially I start to be able to feel her hind legs more clearly, and like there is power available. The gelding is a powerhouse and if he’s in front of the leg there is always power available, but she is young and building strength, so there’s a huge difference in her ability to use herself. Recently she has gotten enough movement in her body that I start to actually feel her moving my hips if sitting instead of feeling as if I have to move myself to give her somewhere to move (not driving - allowing.)
The canter is really an entirely different beast, too, and I’ve found it has even more difference in how it feels from one horse to another. The one consistent difference regardless of horse is it feels like the horse can keep going forever and holds a tempo instead of trying to rush the tempo (mine) or get slower and stop.
When lifting the back and looking at how it makes you feel, I would say looking at the two extremes can show you what the horse is doing.
So when a horse is sluggish and dragging around at the walk, you have to ask a lot to get him to trot. Once trotting posting is going to feel very unsteady - like he may just drop down to the walk at any point and like you have to work to keep posting.
With a very active high-energy horse that is not working correctly, you may feel the exact opposite - that you are fighting the trot so it is not a zooming around with choppy strides.
When a horse lifts his back he should move into the trot gracefully, and sustain the trot with little effort. Not like he is throwing you out of the tack, but like the impulsion he is creating from his hindquarters is mimicked in your hips. transitions should feel more like teamwork than falling or fighting.
OP, I found a few old videos that show the difference between a horse ‘on the aids’ (not the same as ‘on the bit’) but not using his back - actually, he’s very tense in his back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNKgfN5Ai9Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8dFLbYgjzM
And a video of the same horse, truly using his back and much more ‘on the aids’:
https://www.facebook.com/betsey.reeves/videos/10157482011745512/
Same horse, taken a few months apart. Obviously not FEI talent, but you should be able to relate if you have a horse that is similar in type/build. The horse is an OTTB. The second video the horse could be tracking up a bit more, but the ground is very hard and uneven so I am not judging him too much. There is a lot of relaxation in the second video, a stark contrast from the first – though there is a loss of impulsion. There’s a long way to go, you see, and that horse has only cracked the tip of the iceberg in terms of dressage training and education. Welcome to the world of dressage! 
Hopefully that helps you develop and eye for what the differences are between the two.
Thank you everyone. I am not a dressage rider by training, but dressage is always useful and I’d love to get into it. My horse has predisposed leg issues (conformation and whatnot) and suspected kissing spine, so getting her back and hind end engaged is especially important for us.
I remember a young friend saying " ah! I get that great feeling that he’s giving me his back. Then I realize, he’s manuring." :sigh:
As said before, it takes time and work, to encourage a horse to engage his abdominals and lift his back. For some horses it is conformationally easier, but all horses can be taught. It is best taught when the rider is able to communicate gaits and tempo without over use of the reins, as it is very important that the horse be able to reach down with his head and neck, while trotting strongly forward, ditto with the canter.
OP, to give you another way to think about it:
You actually aren’t looking to “engage” the back…phrasing like this is where dressage and I butt heads.
“Engage” means to contract, in this case, and we want anything but. Because if the long muscles of the back contract, we have a hollow horse, and a hollow horse is the opposite of what we are looking for. What you are truly looking to do is engage the horse’s ABS, which in turn lifts up the free span of the back.
You start getting a horse to think about using their abs simply by starting with teaching them how step under their body with their hind legs. Think turn on the forehand. You will also hear it called “disengaging the hindquarters”, “untracking” or “rolling over the hind end” depending on who you talk to.
You can Google this and find a number of ways to teach it. But start there, asking from the halt either on the ground or with you in the saddle. Then start asking from the walk, riding essentially what becomes a square: walk a straight line, ask horse to roll hind end over in the corner (at which point you have made a 90 degree turn), walk a straight line, ask horse to roll over hind end, walk a straight line, etc…
That is the stepping stone on which we teach horses about the inside leg, and the inside leg is the ultimate cornerstone for lift and softness and bend.
For a horse that’s spent most of it’s life upside down I suggest starting with Dr Clayton’s carrot stretches. Sometimes riding with a shadow roll helps because the horse has to look over and down it.
By asking from the walk, and then asking for the “box” exercise, you need a degree of sophistication that accepts the fact that the horse already knows how to engage his abs, and raise his back. A properly ridden “box” is a useful prelude to walk pirouhette, which is not a basic movement.
The carrot stretches are far more useful.
[QUOTE=beowulf;8857027]
OP, I found a few old videos that show the difference between a horse ‘on the aids’ (not the same as ‘on the bit’) but not using his back - actually, he’s very tense in his back:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNKgfN5Ai9Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8dFLbYgjzM
And a video of the same horse, truly using his back and much more ‘on the aids’:
https://www.facebook.com/betsey.reeves/videos/10157482011745512/
Same horse, taken a few months apart. Obviously not FEI talent, but you should be able to relate if you have a horse that is similar in type/build. The horse is an OTTB. The second video the horse could be tracking up a bit more, but the ground is very hard and uneven so I am not judging him too much. There is a lot of relaxation in the second video, a stark contrast from the first – though there is a loss of impulsion. There’s a long way to go, you see, and that horse has only cracked the tip of the iceberg in terms of dressage training and education. Welcome to the world of dressage!
Hopefully that helps you develop and eye for what the differences are between the two.[/QUOTE]
I do not agree with your videos… the second video doesn’t show a horse using his back in my opinion… It shows a horse slurping along without connection… look at the rein…
This is not the right way to create impulsion and working over the back…
I think this video shows how to work a horse over his back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8_rdDjGwyQ
You get a teacher because they have spent their life learning how. You will too.
YES!
think this video shows how to work a horse over his back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8_rdDjGwyQ
[QUOTE=Manni01;8860347]
I do not agree with your videos… the second video doesn’t show a horse using his back in my opinion… It shows a horse slurping along without connection… look at the rein…
This is not the right way to create impulsion and working over the back…
I think this video shows how to work a horse over his back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8_rdDjGwyQ[/QUOTE]
We can agree to disagree, and it wouldn’t be the first time. The video was taken by a professional dressage trainer that has brought TBs along the levels, and I would go with her opinion over yours since she has higher credentials.
The horse is nowhere near trained by a rider of Ingrid’s caliber, and also nowhere near the education of that horse… I agree that Ingrid’s video is a good resource, however. As I pointed out, it’s the tip of the iceberg but shows a clear difference in the horse’s way of going.
Watch the horse’s SI and pelvis, you can see the engagement there. The light contact on the horse’s mouth shows that the horse is loose and relaxed and also on the aids. There is also a lot of looseness in Ingrid’s video too - not every horse needs 10lb of force on the reins. Look at the lift of the tail and roundness of his back. There is a looseness in the gait, suppleness, the gait is amplified and more uphill. If you watch his inside hind he is clearly using it. All symptoms of a horse using his back. Once the horse uses his back more consistently and strengthens the muscles he is not used to using, he will be able to move with the forwardness of the horse in Ingrid’s video.
Is he collected? Obviously not. But he is using his back. I feel the video adequately demonstrates the baby steps that show progress in training, which is what dressage is all about.
[QUOTE=beowulf;8860660]
We can agree to disagree, and it wouldn’t be the first time. The video was taken by a professional dressage trainer that has brought TBs along the levels, and I would go with her opinion over yours since she has higher credentials.
The horse is nowhere near trained by a rider of Ingrid’s caliber, and also nowhere near the education of that horse… I agree that Ingrid’s video is a good resource, however. As I pointed out, it’s the tip of the iceberg but shows a clear difference in the horse’s way of going.
Watch the horse’s SI and pelvis, you can see the engagement there. The light contact on the horse’s mouth shows that the horse is loose and relaxed and also on the aids. There is also a lot of looseness in Ingrid’s video too - not every horse needs 10lb of force on the reins. Look at the lift of the tail and roundness of his back. There is a looseness in the gait, suppleness, the gait is amplified and more uphill. If you watch his inside hind he is clearly using it. All symptoms of a horse using his back. Once the horse uses his back more consistently and strengthens the muscles he is not used to using, he will be able to move with the forwardness of the horse in Ingrid’s video.
Is he collected? Obviously not. But he is using his back. I feel the video adequately demonstrates the baby steps that show progress in training, which is what dressage is all about.[/QUOTE]
I was wondering if you’d posted the wrong videos on accident.
I completely agree with Manni01. No connection. The girl has dropped her hands too low, elbows straightish and into her lap. There is no straight line of connection from the horse’s mouth to her elbow. There is a broken connection.
How is it that the horse is on the aids if the rider is not? The instructor asks her if the reins feel lighter. Of course they do, she’s not holding the reins properly and her hands aren’t closed. You can see her left hand open as she comes around past the camera, and she does that western open fingered waving motion to pull the head down. I think that explains the hands pulling the head down and the loopy rein. That is not how to get a horse to be on the aids, or to use it’s back.
There is no looseness in the gaits as there are in the first two videos where the horse is open, freely moving happily forward, swinging, has impulsion. The third video, the horse looks even more tense, not so happy, tight, suppressed, not swinging, but is mincing along almost looking strange behind (to me). Could be the bad footing.
When using the back, the energy comes from the hind legs, up/over the back, through the rider, into her hands, through the front of the horse and is recycled. I don’t see that here.
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