After a few years away coming back to riding I find myself questioning some thoughts. Since my mare wants to travel slightly bent right I try to ride with a slight left flexion. (thesis the right thing to do, yes?)
I remember being told that one should always ride with some flexion one direction or the other.
What got me wondering is thinking about the inside rein. I remember hearing that the actual inside or outside was not the orientation of the arena but actually how the horse was flexed. Bent left the inside is the left rein. So if one is walking straight is there always a slight flexion and so that determines the inside rein or is the ideal straight is actually straight? I hope that made sense. 
Thought experiment. How do you ride down center line to halt square at X?
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Straight in dressage refers to the hind feet being behind the forefeet and not to the left or right. On a 20m circle you should only have enough flexion to see the start of the eye. More with the bend on a 10 metre circle. With a dressage horse you should be able to put the head wherever you want, higher for collection, lower for long and low, in flexion, in contraflexion or straight. Most dressage horses are not as straight as they could be.
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Horses like people are born L or R sided. It is the purpose of dressage to make them equally strong on both sides. The younger a horse is ridden with straightening in mind, the easier it becomes.
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Yes the ultimate goal is straightness. Straightness means that the hind feet follow the front feet on straight lines and curved lines. There is direct flexion and there is lateral flexion. Whoever told you that there should be lateral flexion on a straight line is just flat out wrong. To straighten a horse you must work in both directions equally with many changes of direction being key. If your horse is bending right on a straight line you need to fix that with your seat and legs. Not your rein. My suggestion is to start on a circle and ride straight across the diagonal to change rein. At the moment you go from the circle to straight, lets say from the right rein, stick her with your left spur to straighten her body instantly and then go forward. This will teach her to go from a right bend to straight as soon as she enters the straight line. A lot of horses want to kind of drift into the straight line from a circle. This is where that outside spur is necessary.
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iâve not found this to be so.
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Have you had a chance to watch your horse âgoâ while youâre on her in a mirror? If not, have you ever walked or trotted her in footing that is fresh (just drug and youâre the first to ride on it)? I suspect (though I could be wrong) that while youâre flexing her in the direction away from her preferred line of travel she still might not be straight. Either of these exercises would tell you for sure or an eye on the ground.
As others have said the idea of keeping your horse straight is to have their hind feet track behind their fore feet and the amount of bend in the horseâs body from nose to tail is dictated by the arc of the circle or whatever geometry youâre tracking. My gelding does not like to load his left hind and is very reticent about bending his rib cage to or around my left leg. Simply maintaining a slight flexion left of his head (because if I allowed him to heâd always track with his nose pointed right) does NOT straighten him. This has been our struggle throughout his training and weâre competing third level with scores into the mid 60s. Iâve taken a break from competing until we get this concept not just sorted out but the hole permanently plugged because I will not ever have solid tempis until I do. Being able to ride and keep your horse straight is necessary to successfully get all the way up through the levels especially when it comes to riding lateral movements (you need a straight horse before you can do the lateral work correctly which within those movements, no the horse isnât straight but youâre dictating where each body part is to go and be).
So, to answer your question regarding always having a slight flexionâŠmy answer is, no. To help clarify my point, my horse halts straight, no flexion. My approach to the center line depends on if Iâm heading up it to halt (then no flexion) or if Iâve just halted and anticipate turning at C (left or right) Iâll proceed with my horse in slight shoulder fore position dependent on the direction of the upcoming turn. My decision to flex my horse is dependent on the movement Iâm doing and the one Iâm about to do. Another example is when Iâm preparing for a medium across the diagonal. When I come around the corner - I do have bend and flexion, then hit the diagonal for a medium - I will straighten his head, neck, whole body to have him in both reins evenly and his body perfectly squared up so that he can load both hind legs to âblast offâ for a medium with his withers elevated. I will begin to flex him a little as I approach the other end and in the direction I plan to travel. Hopefully this makes sense.
Now having said all thatâŠmy current project is to do the âjust stated exerciseâ with bend in his rib cage in whichever direction I choose while doing a medium in order to keep him supple as part of our training and my mission to teach him how to use his body and not ball up or seize up like a tight little spring but this is for training purposes and not so much how I would ideally ride a test.
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If by âleft flexionâ you mean relative to her desire to flex right, then yes, thatâs correct.
But that âleft flexionâ shouldnât be to create actual left flexion, if you are travelling on a straight line and want the horse to actually BE straight.
Even a larger circle should have the horse pretty darn straight in terms of poll to tail - the whole spine. The circle at that early stage of development, of those bigger circles, is done by each stride having the front end move slightly in the direction of travel, not because the spine is laterally flexed. Itâs only as the size of the circle decreases, do you start to add in spinal flexion. Yes, on the bigger (20m) circles you want to just see a hint of the inside eye, but thatâs not coming from the whole neck being cocked to the right, itâs lateral poll flexion
Yes, that is true - counter-canter has flexion opposite the direction of travel, because the horse is flexed based on the lead, not the direction of travel.
But if you want to walk a straight line, the horse needs to be aligned straight from poll to tail
It entirely depends on what body part is drifting. If itâs the shoulder, thatâs an outside rein issue. If itâs the haunches, itâs an outside leg issue which, as a goal, shouldnât require a spur to correct. This is assuming of course that the rider is straight and not pushing the horse out - always check position before assuming the horse isnât paying attention to an aide
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So, iâm weird i know, butâŠ
When that big shoulder bulges out, what i like to do, is use the outside rein some, not much, and lightly touch her right there to let her know, without a doubt, what iâm TRYING to tell her. I want her to know so she can work on it herself too. Weâre a team.
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As exvet said, there is a big difference between âhow you ride the testâ and âhow you fix the problemâ.
For riding the test, a slight shoulder fore is often correct.
But for fixing a âdoesnât want to bend leftâ problem, that wonât help much.
For âfixing the problemâ you want to work both sides equally, and do LOTS of changes of direction. It is the CHANGE from one bend to the other that gives you the most âbang for the buckâ. Lots of figure 8s, and serpentines(full or shallow) are usually your best tool.
Even if it FEELS as if the right bend is âbetterâ there is probably a corresponding evasion to the right that you are nor picking up on.
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Thank you all. This has clarified my thinking!
Straigtening comes from behind. All the flexion in the world will not help if the body bend is not straight.
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Please change your opinion to outside leg being necessary. This makes me wonder if people ride without spurs?
My answer is I have never ridden with spurs.
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Coming back to expand my own comment.
I have (more than once) had a horse who FELT as if he/she was bending better to the right than to the left.
But in reality, the horse was popping the left shoulder (to the left) BOTH when going to the right and to the left. So the right bend wasnât REALLY correct either. To fix it I had to work just as much on NOT popping the left shoulder going to the right as I had to work on not falling on the left shoulder going to the left.
Neck bend is NOT the same as body bend.
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Yes. All kinds of counterbend walk and trot can be useful here.
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I used to get confused by this terminology because at training level and green horses they are like a ball of melting puddy and you have to keep rolling the ball and fixing it so it feels âstraightâ and all the wheels are aligned so you feel like youre moving perfectly and smoothly and over the back with nothing bulging etcâŠbut thats actually âsupplenessâ but you are correct in your feeling that you are seeking a feeling of âstraightnessâ but straightness is like at 3rd level when you ask for a change and your horse dive bombs their shoulders to one side - or at least thats the lack of itâŠobviously they should change and stay straight.
You are correct in trying to feel âstraightâ and training just be careful of the terminology when you move up the levels.
So to make your horse feel more straight at training when you track right counterflex left but move the shoulders right. Thats the added key component of difficulty that nobody has mentioned here. Its not just the neck - you gotta make those shoulders supple too and line them up first for the neck to get in the correct position. Once your shoulders are correct then you can right bend on a circle right.
So right circle left bend shoulders move right bump bump with your left leg and when your horse lowers his heads a little ask for right bend.
Dont ask me to verbalize the mechanics of that - but i promise it works.
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I love this analogy!
And yes, working to solidify that does have a lot to do with suppleness for sure, which involves both flexibility and mobility - more mobility than flexibility
Straightness (and everything) is simply part of the Training Pyramid. The L1 horse isnât going to be nearly as straight as the GP horse, or as impulsive, or relaxed, or forward. Every rider should work to aim to get a horse as straight as possible, and that goal should be move farther and farther out as the horse progresses in his training. More straightness makes it easier to get more impulsion, and then more impulsion actually makes it easier to gain more straightness, and so on, itâs all a scale that you repeat on a scale level
We know what ideal straightness is, we just also know itâs a work in progress to get there.
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Question. Are those three videos you put a screenshot of Pay-per-View? Or is there a trick to playing them?
