I felt like I understood in the front of the leg. In reality my horses were just running forward and I was chasing with too much leg into a fixed hand. There was way too much tension. I slowed the tempo way down, went back to relaxation and getting the back to swing. Then the hind end got moving more effectively and then I was no longer chasing with leg and blocking with hand. I would review video from shows and see that everything looked rushed but for awhile I could not get the pieces together.
Remember that the road to a finished, truly rideable horse with sustained soundness is not a straight road. If we focus so hard on only one thing, convinced that will bring us some sort of guarantee of the perfect finished product, we fail to train the individual horse.
If I had spent years on my current horse (much like yours, I believe) going forward at the expense of all else, she would be ruined, a ball of running tension. If I had eaten the NH bait, hook, line, and sinker, she’d be a miserable, shut down git, also ruined. There is a middle ground for these horses and it’s our job to find it. You will see with the best trainers in the world, they treat each horse as an individual and avoid shoving them into a mold while still maintaining age appropriate advancement when possible.
My personal, partial definition of a horse that is in front of the leg is a horse who goes forward willingly into soft contact with engaged abs and a strong supple back, and easily maintains the speed and length of stride chosen by the rider at any particular gait with minimal interference. It has nothing to do with explosiveness unless explosiveness is being mistaken for well harnessed and easily managed age and level of training appropriate power. If you get the feeling that you are merely sitting and the horse is carrying you along and you also get the feeling that you could ask for a change of speed or gait without upsetting that feeling, then congratulations your horse is in front of your leg.
The only place explosiveness has in good dressage is when feeling out the upper limits of how much you can get from a horse at any particular point during training before tipping the scales from relaxation to tension. Maybe it’s a walk canter transition this week, maybe 2 years from now it’s getting a really active transition from piaffe to passage.
Now, to your mare in particular - I’ve found the best remedy is to install a really, really good loose rein walk. By good I mean relaxed and ground covering but not over tempo. Once that is accomplished, you will have that to fall back on when you feel the tension creeping in. With these horses you can always ask for more and they will give it. You have to get them comfortable consistently giving a little less before you can correctly ask for more. Make a solid citizen, then ask for pizazz in due time. It will be there for you, and far more correctly than if you go for the big fancy right from the get go. A truly hot horse won’t be made dull by chilling them the hell out. They will learn to accept the leg and wait for the aids rather than barging through us because as my mare still occasionally likes to say, “Faster is better! Faster is easier! Why we no go fast like wind?” FWIW, and I am so guilty, I think some of us when we ride hot horses get too lazy with our legs. I mean they’re going forward anyway right? Why should legs be anything more than ornaments? Lol So, when we finally get our horses to the point of accepting the leg, we’re a little disappointed that we actually have to start using them and not just admiring them in the mirrors.
p.s. be glad you’re not dealing with phlegmatic and several screws loose - those are the worst. Trained one up to 4th + 2s + working on singles and piaffe, and that horse was never predictably in front of the leg. If I could go back in time I’d look further into medical issues, but all those years ago we found nothing to explain his bizarre behaviour. He’d feel perfect and boom all hell would break loose no warning. Literally no warning. Dropped the jaws of a couple of international clinicians with the no warning thing, “He looks very good in the medium tro … OH! He’s quick! Didn’t see that coming at all!” Heartbreaking and nerve destroying. Gimme one that wants to be consistently over-tempo and communicates even a millisecond before spooking and I’m happy after that nonsense of the heartbreaking horse 
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This thread is great! I have just about the laziest horse, he is exhausting to ride. I’m squeezing so hard every step it’s hard to work on equitation when all you can think about is just going forward.
So if I understand correctly, I shouldn’t have to squeeze every step? If I squeeze he should be able to maintain the speed himself? Then once you start adding more contact how do you differentiate the contact between “slowing” and the " I want you to accept the contact and maintain gait", do you squeeze as you ask for contact then take leg off once they are on the bit?
I think I am going to really work on this at the walk for a while then add transitions.
sorry to hijack.
I wouldn’t even be squeezing a horse that you have to squeeze that hard. I would be “bumping” with my ankles, or even kicking. Give an aid, if you don’t get a response then escalate the aid (kick, spur, whip, etc.) until you get a response. Praise and reward every forward response you get - be sure you don’t hit your horse in the mouth or the back if they scoot forward when kicked. And as soon as you get a response, you take your leg off and leave them alone - that is the biggest reward for the horse. You will probably have to kick every other stride or so for the first few laps of each ride until your horse figures out that you are going to keep escalating the aids unless he moves his butt!
My horse used to be tiring to ride. He is now as sharp as the rider can make him (he is super good at working at the riders’ capability level) and is an absolute pleasure to ride.
As far as when you add more contact, you shouldn’t be thinking “slow down” with your hands - you should be riding TO your hands, not pulling your hands back. The more schooled the horse is, the more they can understand closely timed aids (as in leg, half halt to rebalance, give and voila there is the response you wanted).
Really focus on leg without hand, hand without leg while you are getting your horse sharper. That doesn’t mean a loop in your reins when you are using your leg, but it is about not actively using your hands when you are actively using your leg.
You have to stay classical in your position and not let your horse make you change it by working so darn hard. Think to yourself that you are going to sit upright, moving your seat in the saddle as needed by the motion of the horse, heels down, and that you are not going to sacrifice your position to make your horse move.
Remember- quick corrections/aids make for quick responses, whereas slow corrections make for slow responses. If you are just squeezing and squeezing and squeezing that is a slow correction. You need to change that and start using quicker/sharper aids.
Hope that makes sense!
Everything Samantha said - it was what I wanted to say upon reading this, and said better.
The one thing I would add is when you “take contact” as she said, you ride the horse to it. The big revelation for me, which REALLY helped me to get horses round without pulling (I still pull - it’s a terrible habit I’ll fight the rest of my riding career!) came when Jeremy Steinberg told me to think of looking for opportunities to shorten my reins. There are the moments when your horse shortens its own body up as you’re riding forward. Rather than thinking “this is the length my reins need to be!” if you think your hands have to move with the horse, but at those shorter moments you can shorten your reins correspondingly, you’ll find you get round without the fight.
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This all makes me feel so motivated. I ride hunters but it makes me really wish I had the opportunity to take some dressage lessons.
The other thing you need to be thinking of, too, is if you are blocking the horse in your seat/thighs/knees. I grew up riding at the very low level hunter barns and learned LOTS of bad habits that I still struggle with to this day including gripping with my knees. In order to have a horse in front of your leg, you have to be able to loosen your thighs and knees and seat and not grip anywhere. Any tension/gripping is telling the horse to slow down, so no matter how sharp you are with your forward aids, you might be inadvertently telling your horse to slow down.
Dressage is TOTALLY addicting. Once you can start to feel how you can influence the horse’s balance, it is mind blowing.
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Dressage thread or not, the best example I’ve seen of fixing this was in a George Morris video. The span of escalation from lack of reaction to squeeze through spur to stick was less than 2 seconds. That was from the moment he asked the horse to walk forward after mounting.
If you’re concerned about your balance, use a good old neckstrap. When crystal clear that forward means NOW, you can fix this very very quickly. I’ve seen the pluggiest old eye-rolling school pony sharpen up and decide that continuing forward is a spectacular idea this way.
With your transitions, try a philosophy of up 2 gears at a time, down one gear at a time. Walk to halt to trot to walk to halt. Walk to halt to rein back to walk to halt to trot. Don’t focus on the shape of the forward, reward the forward and reward the try. Leave out walk to canter, that one’s often to easy to make an up instead of forward transition especially for the hunter rider.
Quick question: What if you are mounted on an older, slow to warm up type that needs a good 10 minutes of plugging around before he suddenly wakes up and is forward and happy? I feel bad asking for forward right away as his joints are creaking and he’s trying to warm up.
Then you spend those 10 mins plugging around. They need what they need, and I’d rather not create or further irritate a joint issue by asking for something they aren’t physically ready for.
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Thanks. That’s what I thought too, but just wanted to make sure!
I used to ride an older stallion that required 20 min of walk first per owners request due to being creaky. He could have done with less than 20 minutes, but it’s no matter. It’s okay if the horse needs this period of slow warm up, but they must know it’s time to work when you say so. Toward the end of this horses walk time I started gathering him and putting him together, he then knew it was time for work mode. That worked fine for him. It was clear when I wasn’t asking for work and when I was.
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Just 10 min? I almost always let them walk for at least 1 km before I start, at their comfortable pace. It takes from 10-18min depending on the horse. Sometimes there’s some lateral loosening in there but its still all about loose and stretch
I’m not sure I would let him « plug » around, but long, low and as forward as he could.
10minutes is really the bare minimum. For older horses, I prefer 15-20 minutes. A good walk on the trail, straight lines and all. And then the more gathered work can start. I do another 15 minutes of walk to cool down as well in that same forward long and low frame.
I also keep them warm at all time : blankets to quarter sheets to cooler to blancket when there is the tiniest hint of cooler weather. That SI joint likes its warmth.
But what is important is to do what the horse needs.
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I guess I should have clarified this is about 10 minutes of trotting before he feels like he can go a bit more forward and is happy to do so. I do walk him for quite a while before asking for the trot. Thanks for all the tips!
Try walking longer, and doing a lot of suppleness and FDO work in your walk. Once you trot, the horse should be in front of the leg (should be in front of the leg at the walk before you ask for trot). Some horses loosen up faster in the canter versus the trot too.
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Ah!
It’s common to ask for a « little » trot prior to real work. A lot of BNR do that. It’s part of a good warmup.
It doesn’t mean the horse should not be in front of the leg and « plug » around even if it might feels and looks like it.
But again, you know your horse and you are listening to him, it’s the best way to do.
My horse can come out creaky and so I just walk until his body is loose and swingy and then pick up the trot. I do let him plug around for the first lap or so at the walk, before asking him gradually to march on more, and then we start working on the free walk-medium walk transitions. I find this really helps get him in front of my leg with almost no effort on my part. I pick a spot to start my free walk, ride it for a 10, and then at my spot where I have decided to do a medium walk, I expect him to come back immediately.
We also do leg yields at the walk with lots of bend to get him to loosen up his body.
Between the transitions in the walk and leg yields in the walk, I don’t find he needs to do a little trot when I ask him to trot for the first time. But if he did/does, I would certainly allow him to do a small trot until he felt comfortable stepping out. It’s all about making him comfortable, happy and swingy/loose.
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This has been fun to read. I have young spooky tight but doesn’t want to be bad horse. We walk for 15 min on whatever contact is needed depending on what is happening around the boarding barn…complete long rein if its quiet, to on contact medium walk with lateral work to prevent bolting…until he relaxes enough to stretch and walk. Then we trot without pushing (CDK’s short trot if its a spooky day, long and stretching if its calmer day)…all the while aiming for even contact and body usage. My horse doesn’t trot well until after we canter so we trot only long enough that I feel we can canter without bolting. Trot canter transitions for a bit and then usually he is “in front” of the leg and ready to work. Some days though he is so hot that we don’t attempt work, just this warm up so his brain doesn’t fry. On the super reactive days he is literally so tight he holds his breath and when you touch him with a leg or whip even lightly he makes grunting noises, even if I work him in hand or on the lunge first. Our arena is super spooky (people have moved out when their horses couldn’t deal with it) indoor. He is way better in the outdoor.
I so agree with the above comment about making a good citizen first. I thoroughly believe that and even though my horse is capable physically of much flashier movement and power, it would just scare him more to be ridden that way until he is calm mentally and loose physically.
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