I am hoping someone clearer then me can explain this to you because it is the most basic of instruction, so I must be butchering it for you to not get it.
If my shoulders are the horse’s shoulders, then on a circle my inside shoulder is slightly back and my outside shoulder slightly ahead and it has to be otherwise I would not be aligned with the horse and my outside hand would be blocking the bend.
Completely agree on all the other aids. Which is why I am thinking you do ask for a spiral seat but you likely call it something very different.
Nope, I know exactly what you are talking about, I just disagree. I don’t think the horse is properly turned like a bicycle, there are no handle bars. I keep my outside shoulder back in line with my inside shoulder, I don’t advance my outside shoulder past/over my hip. That would make me unstable and piss my horse off when I “dropped” him <LOL>
I know that the spiral seat is taught, I personally think it is a BIG misunderstanding that the outside comes forward for the horse to bend and that the horse would be blocked if you don’t. I don’t, and the horses bend just fine. I do, however, keep the outside contact alive, I want energy coming thru on both sides. I think a big difference here might be that I don’t want my horses to bend thru their neck, but thru their whole body, so that I could barely see their eyelashes on the inside.
Here is a pic - my shoulders are in line and my hands are at the same horizontal plane but the horse is clearly bent to the inside.
If the rider maintains a fixed rein length with a horse that is contracted on its left side and then tries to bend the horse to the right without allowing room for the left side of the horse to stretch forward and elongate, the only way the horse can bend to the right would be to scrunch the right side of its body short.
If the rider helps the horse bend to the right by encouraging the horse to stretch and reach forward with its left side, the left side gets longer and the rider needs to allow enough room for the horse to reach forward with the left side into a continuous light elastic contact. I hope that it’s clear that I have not been talking about dropping the contact of the outside rein.
When I look the the Mueseler’s drawings (Mueseler’s Riding Logic)the rider’s shoulder always appear to be aligned with the horse’s , which means they are slightly turned from the waist, yet held squarely, on a circle…page 110 , bending to the right, although I have the German version of the book. It maybe on a different page in the English edition.
Yes, that is correct. Your shoulders should be in line with your horse’s shoulders. The horse’s shoulders don’t turn very much in a regular bend though, but in a shoulder in the rider should turn their shoulders to the inside (to the same degree as the horse), while staying on the inside seat bone.
But what do you see when you look at pics of people actually riding horses? I think CdK teaches the spiral seat but you never see him DOING it!
Am sitting here, flipping thru books of the worlds finest riders - right now its Arthur Kottas - and if he is turning his outside forward it is SO SUBTLE that you cannot see it in these pics. And it is not seen in his hands, which are right next to each other, and his outside elbow is over his hip.
“The Athletic Development Of The Horse, by CdK” Page 98, Arthur Kottas doing a shoulder-in. Page 64, Elizabeth Ball (what IS her married name now?!) doing an extended trot on a circle. Her outside shoulder is back, hands together in the trademark CdK position. In fact, her outside hand looks possibly a hair back.
I think the bicycle terminology is what is creating this vision of the horse turning his neck in. Its meant to give a visual aid to starter rider to not be stiff and rigid. If you read my posts, I tried to be clear that the outside rein creates the bend and that there is contact. And I agree with seeing just the eyelash, I mentioned that in an earlier post as well.
I just did a bit of searching and found this quote from a Shumacher article it may be clearer then all my words put together:
“The position of the rider determines the position of the horse. Schumacher describes the rider’s bending aids as the “twisted seat.” Your inner seat and leg are relatively forward, and your outer seat and leg are a bit back. Your hips are parallel to your horse’s hips and your shoulders are parallel to his shoulders. The quiet strength of your position controls your horse’s bend.”
If you seat in that manner, you have to spiral your torso slightly so that your shoulders are aligned with the horses.
Anyway, you are right that its ok to disagree, I just think in this case it may be my inability to communicate clearly something very basic.
Well thank you, he was brought to the barn to be sold and that was the first time I had ever ridden him. He was a hunter <LOL> but he liked dressage well enough as you see, fun horse.
I really think you are being very clear, I understand exactly what you are saying, because I struggled with that idea when I was taught it and then eventually discarded it as I found that rather than asking the inside hind for more engagement/the horse coming up and filling the outside rein, when I did the spiral action the horses frame got longer and the inside engagement and accuracy were lost. So I quit doing it.
I DO think that when the horse is up and working there is a sense of the outside rein being very elastic, and that it has been interpreted that the hand comes forward. I know it is written everywhere, I just find that I don’t ride that way, and neither do the people I admire and emulate. I guess I just think its one of those things that got lost in translation somewhere and we are stuck with the idea <LOL>!
This is also how I learned it from James Shaw (Tai Chi for the Equestrian) - he describes it as imagining your belly button pointing to the outside ear of your horse while turning your shoulders squarely slightly to the inside at the waist. This allows the rider to square up the hips with horse’s hips and the shoulder’s with the horse’s on a circle or bend. Works really well for me - horsey complys very nicely each time unless I overdo it , which happens
oh mbm, give me a break…in one or more of your posts you asked the OP to listen to Tonja and Karoline, the traditional people. It was clear to me what you were advising.
BTR, when you do that, do you feel that you are just maybe creating enough core resistance to stay in position? I really think that this whole idea is a misinterpretation of how you use your middle body to stay stable (not collapsing into the bend). When I do what you describe, I don’t actually turn my shoulders, but it creates a firmness and tone in my core, as if the two actions were resisting each other to keep me in place.
He uses the belly button instruction to ensure that the outside seat bone stays in the saddle that the hip stays in place and the leg stays long. And the shoulders turn originates in the waist. Do you think perhaps it is trying to actually move your shoulders that feels so off? And the rotation is very small though when you learn, for your body to understand how to do the movement you can exagerate it.
You have it just backwards here, Tonja. It is the bending of the inside hock that is important. Not the giving of the outside rein. This allows the horse to elasticize his outside arc of his body on a circle.
I don’t know. I do know that the concept of the outside aids/outside rein was never hard for me to learn (believe me, other things were <LOL>) I actually do not remember a time that I did not ride that way. I remember reading about it, and trying it, and feeling the frame lengthen and the neck want to overbend and the horse distinctly gave me feedback that he did not care for what I had just done. I asked my instructor at the time and she said to forget about it as it was not an issue for me. Hmmmm, what did that mean? But seriously, I think it is something we are told that is really not quite what it seems to be… like, inside leg at the girth. No, it’s not really at the girth, but because of our pelvis position, it is more forward than our outside leg. But really, NOT at the girth.
When I started actually teaching I realized that we say all kinds of things that are really not accurate… “stretch your leg down” “heels down” “sit up tall!” it may FEEL that way but that’s not actually what is being done when the rider is effective. I don’t take too much as written in stone anymore, after all, it is all an interpretation of how it feels to someone else.
I think it is because the horses shoulders move to the inside to straighten him that the outside rein length does not need to change to bend him. He is alreayd filling the rein, when the inside hind leg engages he comes up against the outside aids that are already there and here are the beginnings of collection. The horses body does not need to lengthen to bend, it can also step up and into the outside aids, which eliminates the need to lengthen the outside rein to bend.
When I bend a horse, I expect their frame to stay the same or even get shorter from the extra activity of the inside hind. When I stretch a horse I expect his frame to get longer. I do give the outside rein forward to stretch.
When you use the spiral seat, does the horses frame get shorter/stay the same or longer when you bend it?
"I remember reading about it, and trying it, and feeling the frame lengthen and the neck want to overbend "
“When you use the spiral seat, does the horses frame get shorter/stay the same or longer when you bend it?”
At least for me, I do not want the frame to lenghten the neck to overbent. I want my horse to step under more with his inside hind leg and I want to see his eyelash on the inside of the circle. And I want him to be round not spread out. So while I am in a spiral seat position my outside rein is short - but the contact is elastic. My position and my rein allow for the bend to happen. I do not block or hold. My rein is not longer, my position is different, it allows the bend. If I did not spiral my shoulder would be back and I would be pulling the outside rein back.
If my horse is strung out I will be told to shorten your reins, re-balance your horse.
We are talking about a 20 meter circle here. And a horse and rider working an honest first level.
Now you’re talking…it’s too hard for me to precisely describe how I ride a circle- I know that quick releases are needed for the stiff side to become supple and that those are done in minute increments…I know that I don’t think when I ride- I intuitively seek inside of me the balance with the horse and the rythmn- from that I evolve everything- when I ride a circle I change nothing other than that I travel the shape of the circle- I initiate it and stay on it- while essentially riding the same way I ride when I ride straight except that I adjust my balance to the horse’s balance and the two of us travel the circle line.
It greatly helps to draw out a circle in the beginning, and when you are inexperienced and the horse is young, it can be very hard to put it all together…in the end it is always a function of balance and rythmn.
Some of you classical purists might be surprised to know that Walter Zettl says to keep the outside shoulder back on the circle. I have seen him teach this and I was also taught this from a long time student of his. I have had ‘outside shoulder back’ yelled at me numerous times ! It was different from what most other coaches had taught me.
But it’s always good to keep an open mind and if you experiment while sitting in a chair, you’ll note that it is a lot easier to engage your inside seatbone when your outside shoulder is kept back(straight). Try it. There can be a tendency to weight the outside seatbone if you swivel the shoulders.
Like most things, I think there is more than one way that works. There is no absolute right way. You do what works and follow your trusted coach’s system.
Your shoulders should always be in alignment with the horses shoulder but your outside elbow should remain at your side and not giving to the inside rein when you make an aid with your inside leg. Zetl may have said keep the outside shoulder back because your shoulder was giving forward and out of alignment to the horses shoulders…a common error when learning dressage.
