Here is a question that may sound stupid but as I am a beginner at dressage can someone please tell me which is the inside/outside leg when travelling in a straight line? I always thought the inside leg referred to the leg that was inside the circle and the outside leg the one outside the circle. Which means it would change depending on whether you travel clockwise or anti clockwise.
Also, say you are riding in a straight line and you want to move your horse right to avoid a tree, would you put pressure with your left leg at exactly the girth position to move the whole horse right?
And then, if you wanted to travel around a barrel in a clockwise direction, would you then put your right leg (inside leg?) slightly to the back of the girth and the left leg (outside leg?) slightly in front of the girth? A bit like bending a stick around the barrell (simplistically speaking). And if so, would you put more pressure at the shoulder with the outside leg than at the back end with the inside leg? Sorry if this is a bit confusing but I find it very confusing to understand.
In the case of an arena, the inside leg is closest to the center of the arena, and the outside is along the wall, fence or edge. On a trail there is no inside or outside, except to create a bend. On a circle or to go around a tree, the inside leg remains at the girth , and outside leg moves slightly back, Your outside leg simultaneously brings the shoulder around, and keeps control of the quarters. In a leg-yield, the inside leg moves only slightly back, and sometimes doesn’t need to move much at all depending on the responsiveness and education level of your horse. The outside leg supports, and helps keep the horse straight.
To get all of this right it is important to have a good instructor.
On a straight line, most people would say there is no inside or outside leg. But you pick one to be the inside and one to be the outside. You’re eventually going to to turn one way or the other, and a little tiny bend (one that someone watching would find impossible to see, it’s more of a ‘bending feel’) always helps the horse to be straighter - horses always have one side that you need to supple or work on a little more so you’re working one side and bending it a tiny, tiny little bit.
Going around the barrel, you’ve got it mixed up. Any time you bend, around a barrel, a tree, a post, or just make a circle or turn in the arena, in dressage, you always use exactly the same aids, because you’re always just tracking along a curve.
Inside leg at the girth, outside leg is only a ‘guard’, preventing the hind legs from flying off the bending line - so that you use only as much leg pressure on the outside as you need to keep the haunches ‘on the track’ (it doesn’t matter if ‘the track’ is curved or not, it’s still ‘the track’).
Now suppose you weren’t going to make that beautiful smooth curve, or part of a circle.
Suppose, just to be really advanced, you were going to just leg yield right, til the post was on your left.
It’s almost completely the same as your circle or turning or bending aids, but you keep the horse straighter with your outside rein, and he just goes toward the right from your left leg AT THE GIRTH.
you always use your inside leg, at the girth, to bend your horse around your inside leg. you always use your outside leg to ‘guard’ or ‘control’ the haunches, a little further back.
[QUOTE=slc2;3345400]
On a straight line, most people would say there is no inside or outside leg. But you pick one to be the inside and one to be the outside. You’re eventually going to to turn one way or the other, and a little tiny bend (one that someone watching would find impossible to see, it’s more of a ‘bending feel’) always helps the horse to be straighter - horses always have one side that you need to supple or work on a little more so you’re working one side and bending it a tiny, tiny little bit.
Going around the barrel, you’ve got it mixed up. Any time you bend, around a barrel, a tree, a post, or just make a circle or turn in the arena, in dressage, you always use exactly the same aids, because you’re always just tracking along a curve.
Inside leg at the girth, outside leg is only a ‘guard’, preventing the hind legs from flying off the bending line - so that you use only as much leg pressure on the outside as you need to keep the haunches ‘on the track’ (it doesn’t matter if ‘the track’ is curved or not, it’s still ‘the track’).
Now suppose you weren’t going to make that beautiful smooth curve, or part of a circle.
Suppose, just to be really advanced, you were going to just leg yield right, til the post was on your left.
It’s almost completely the same as your circle or turning or bending aids, but you keep the horse straighter with your outside rein, and he just goes toward the right from your left leg AT THE GIRTH.
you always use your inside leg, at the girth, to bend your horse around your inside leg. you always use your outside leg to ‘guard’ or ‘control’ the haunches, a little further back.[/QUOTE]
Thank you. I understand this! I think? Should I imagine that the inside leg is always at the girth (at least for basic stuff) around which you bend the horse? And the outside leg is used to direct, ie control the haunches, as you said, by putting the outside leg back of the girth? And in that case, can I use the outside leg to go forward of the girth to control the forequarters? Thanks for your help.
Atomic Top,
Yes, you get it:yes:
And the outside leg is used to direct, ie control the haunches, as you said, by putting the outside leg back of the girth?
YES.
And in that case, can I use the outside leg to go forward of the girth to control the forequarters?
I don’t know what you mean by ‘control the forequarters’.
When your leg is back behind the girth, it does one of two things
-
it ‘guards’ the haunches from flying to the outside, like the end of a firetruck on a sharp turn.
-
it actually increases its effect so it’s not just guarding, but actually pushing the haunches away from it.
the two effects, guarding or pushing, are both the same, one is just a little more.
your aids for circles and any lateral work are always exactly the same.
your outside leg is either a guard or a pusher of haunches, behind the girth.
your inside leg at the girth is always the ‘hammer’ that bends the horses body. not that you HAMMER with it, but it bends the horse’s body.
your outside rein draws the circle line, your inside rein makes the bend in the neck.
the two reins work together. one makes the bend, one drawas the circle line.
the best thing for you is to get lessons from a good dressage instructor who will show you that there is a ton of commonality in everything you do in dressage (circle, leg yield, shoulder in, haunches in, renvers, half pass - ALL use the same basic aids), and that it is not really different at all, no matter what you’re doing.
I’ve never heard of using outside leg to control the forequarters (is that even a word?). I thought that was what the outside indirect rein was for.
I was hoping no one would bring up indirect reins, thereby saving the Original Poster from a nervous breakdown.
“inside”, in dressage, is supposed to mean ‘the inside of the bend’. “Outside” is supposed to mean, the outside of the bend. But there are times when an instructor will abandon that, and refer to “outside” for “closer to the rail”, and inside for “towards the inside of the ring”, if he feels the correct terms are totally confusing a new student. Eventually, “outside” will be the outside of a bend, and “inside” will be the inside of a bend. Since a horse can be bent toward the outside (renvers, counter bending, counter canter, leg yields), and the rider’s legs are going to function always 'according to the bend" and not where the horse is in the ring or what he’s doing, the correct way makes sense.
Ambrey, an outside indirect rein on a circle would be a serious problem. You would not have a correct bend on the circle, either in the neck or the body, and you would wind up stopping the circle and going away from the circle on an entirely different (and straight) line.
Let’s look at using an indirect rein on the inside of a circle. If you were to be circling right, for example, and used a right indirect rein, the effect would be for the horse to STOP circling and go sharply left with the body more straight. i assume you don’t want that.
If you mean an indirect rein of opposition in front of the shoulders the effect would be be to turn your horses shoulders abruptly left and his haunches right, and also stop the circling.
if you mean an indirect rein of opposition behind the shoulders, the ffect would be to move both the shoulders and haunches diagonally left.
Any of these rein effects would cause your horse to stop circling right and go to the left.
I would not use an indirect rein to turn or circle a dressage horse or do lateral work, not in the correct sense, nor in the sense that most people teach it (crossing and sometimes also lifting the hand over the mane, or creating a line that crosses over the body of the horse). The horse needs to circle and turn without the dressage rider ever crossing the line of the mane or using an indirect reins.
It is quite common to call any rein that goes toward or across the mane an ‘inidrect rein’, and most of the time, the indirect rein is used incorrectly and with an erroneous understanding of what it’s supposed to do and what leg and seat aids accompany it.
Some instructors use the term for any rein aid in which a line drawn back would not go diirectly to the rider’s hip on the same side of his body. Even so, this so called indirect rein is still not the type of rein aid I was taught to use to circle, or to do any lateral work.
You will hear about using the leg to move the shoulders (‘forequarters’?) on von Blixen-Fienecke’s video (if i spell the name right, which i doubt), he used a leg on or toward or with the idea of affecting, the shoulder and called it ‘the shoulder button’, but he has invented his own set of aids, and it just makes things all the more complicated for someone learning. Even if you like it, I’d suggest forgetting all about it until you have trained several horses to GP and competed successfully with them nationally, and then decide, before altering the simpler system of classical aids, mixing systems together, or the like.
But the idea of indirect and direct reins of opposition goes along with very precise seat and leg aids, and is part of an older system of 6 basic types of rein aids that was very complex, and most people no longer teach it (or teach it by those names, or teach all of it) unless they have a burning need to get their students totally confused…or are biblio-francofiles…the french themselves no longer teach it…LOL.
For someone starting out, it’s really a subject best avoided. Otherwise they wind up not establishing their basic position (leg, seat, hand) correctly.
Too, this system or rein aids is complex and even a lot of people who teach it don’t quite understand it, even though at one time it was common to see them in books on horseback riding, even books intended for those riding show hunters. it was considered a part of ‘academic study’, and and like many other things, was ‘an ideal never to be emulated’.
There are the opening rein, the direct rein of opposition, the indirect rein, the indirect rein of opposition in front of the shoulders, the indirect rein of oppoisition behind the shoulders, and since many of these have a student crossing his hand over the withers, most instructors, even thouse who ultimately finish a rider using them, don’t teach them to a person at the stage of the OP.
The spanish riding school was really the one to popularize a much simpler way of looking at this, and it creates far fewer faults in the rider and far less confusion.
OOps :winkgrin: I just coined a new phrase “forequarters”. lol What I meant was “shoulder”. I must have had “quarters” on the brain. Could I push the shoulders over with a foot in front of the girth instead of pulling the direct rein? I read it on a western riding website. And, yes, I get the indirect rein. Bl**dy confusing I say, but not really something I would use on the trail anyway.
“Could I push the shoulders over with a foot in front of the girth instead of pulling the direct rein? I read it on a western riding website. And, yes, I get the indirect rein. Bl**dy confusing I say, but not really something I would use on the trail anyway”
We don’t do that in dressage, using the foot in front of the girth. We don’t give any leg aids in front of the girth.
Western and dressage aids are different and can’t be blended together without causing a lot of problems when you get to the next level in dressage. The dressage aids are the way they are for very, very good reasons. Alot of people try to make up their own aids for dressage, and they get some very irritated, angry horses.
For example, you teach horse to do leg yields with your leg held further back. Fine. It is possible to do that. Then, when you try to do a shoulder in, half pass, turn on the haunches, or just about anything else, you have a battle on your hands, and horse is saying, ‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND’. If you use the dressage aids the right way, none of that stuff is a problem. You just start doing the next level and everything works ok. Every level is based on what you taught in the previous level. You do it right, you don’t have problems with the next level. Furthermore, you can get on a dressage horse in Russia, Holland, Hong Kong or Resume Speed, Iowa, and they all go by the same aids.
Basically in dressage, the reins position/control the shoulders, and the legs position/control the haunches.
Basically in dressage, the reins position/control the shoulders, and the legs position/control the haunches.
I used to think that too until I rode a schoolmaster and learned to use my thigh properly. 
I can only say is how I interpret what my trainer tells me, and that is that the shoulders are controlled by the OUTSIDE (indirect) rein, the haunches by the outside leg.
All indirect rein means is that it’s working on the shoulder, not the head. Not so confusing. The outside rein goes against the neck/shoulder and keeps the shoulders in place (always just above the wither, and never crossing over the wither as I am told daily ;)). The Inside rein can be used to adjust bend in the neck, etc.
Just from someone else in the early stages of learning, because I am not understanding what SLC is talking about, LOL!
Egon, that’s right, the thigh, as well as knee, calf and very subtle use of the weight and seat, all play a big role with the more advanced horse and rider, and like detailed discussions of the multitude of rein effects, only serves to further confuse the person new to dressage who is trying to master the most important basics, and understand the differences between those and other instruction he or she has gotten before in other riding styles.
There’s a point where detailed discussions of academic horsemanship are timely for a rider. Before the basics are established, all it does is cause trouble. Yes, a rider should be able to control his horse ultimately with invisible aids, with delicate use of the reins and seat and hand, with the merest pressure on the stirrup to go forward and the slightest passive non-following of the seat to create a half halt…and to expect that before basics are established is unrealistic and only confuses and frustrates the student and causes him to ride incorrectly.
How does one understand “inside leg to outside rein” (a very basic concept) without understanding that the outside rein works on the shoulder?
I think you’re confusing a bunch of different things, if you could state what your definition of ‘indirect rein’ is it might help the discussion.
In the srs/more simplified system. outside rein and leg control the shoulder without the rein ever being an indirect rein of any type.
“Inside leg to outside rein” does not involve an indirect rein on either the inside or outside hand. If you have a moment, reviewing the different rein effects might help (listed above, but keep in mind that in the ‘rein effects’ system, if you applied a ‘direct rein’, your horse would have been taught to respond by abruptly shifting his hind quarters very sharply to the opposite direction; the whole system of rein effects is very complex, and using parts of the rein effect system usually results in confusion rather than anything else).
You can use your outside rein to control the shoulders and ‘draw the outside circle line’ with out it being an indirect rein.
Your hands do not cross over the mane or make an indirect line to do a basic circle in dressage.
Indirect rein: pulls back inward in the direction of the horse’s outside hip, without crossing over the neck. This is usually used to correct straightness problems in the horse’s neck and shoulders, as well as for lateral movements such as haunches-in.
From wikipedia, although this seems specific to an inside indirect rein.
Outsite-Indirect Rein:[/b] The outsite-indirect rein is used to cue the horse’s shoulders to the inside (away from the rail), and to prevent his head from turning too much to the inside.
from http://www.equusite.com/articles/riding/ridingPivot.shtml
http://www.dressagemonthly.com/IndirectRein.html
Jane Savoie explains!
eta: Anyone else care to weigh in? I’d really like to know if I am getting it right or wrong 
I wouldn’t count on wikipedia for that sort of information. the other definition, from equisite, has incorrect definitions for both direct and indirect reins, though the instructions you quote are not for circling but for a turn on the haunches.
How do YOU define an indirect rein? What are you doing differently when you apply an indirect rein? What does it mean to YOU?
and again, you’re saying to use indirect rein on the outside of a circle, and i’m saying not to. you’re saying you need to use indirect rein on a circle in order to circle correctly, i;m saying you don’t, and you’re saying that if you don’t use an indirect rein on the outside of the circle, you can’t (comprehent, understand, apply?) the principle of inside leg to outside rein, i’m saying you don’t need an indirect rein in order to ride inside to outside.
let’s discuss your definition of indirect rein, what it means to YOU, what you do differently when you apply an inside rein, not a definition off wikipedia or equisite, but what you do differently to have an indirect vs a direct rein (if that’s the terminology you want to use), before we continue, or this is not going to be a useful discussion.
savoie’s discussion, sorry, i just don’t go along with that ‘turning the key’ thing for moving the hand around to give rein aids, or the definition of indirect rein being simply a rein where you put your hand close to the neck without crossing over (it’s ok because you aren’t actually crossing the neck, LOL) and the pull is in the direction of the horse’s opposite hip, and i don’t go along with using that to supple my horse, which is what she’s talking about using it for.
per your discussion, you’re talking about pulling the rein indorect rein on the outside of the circle, so towards the horse’s inside hip, and i don’t do that, and savoie doesn’t say to do that, either.
that’s her method and her terminology, and a redefinition of the term ‘indirect rein’ that hasn’t got anything to do with the original rein effects and the seat and leg aids that go along with them. lots of people like her, she’s very popular, she’s got dvd’s for sale and i don’t…so like…whatevah, LOL. just know, that isn’t what everyone teaches, but further, there isn’t anything there where jane says anything about using an indirect rein on the outside of a circle.
Actually, I am utterly confused at this point 
I’ve actually read the technical definitions of the different indirect reins before, but I do think there’s a more general definition that’s in use in all disciplines (including western). But anyway, what Jane Savoie said was pretty much what my trainer said (when you bring the rein toward the opposite hip).
Anyway, OP, if you’re utterly baffled at this point, come take a lesson with my trainer, he will make it more understandable (and I’m sure I’m butchering his explanation, but he tells me when I’m doing it wrong so it’s OK ;))
From what I am hearing here about the aids being used in dressage, I am getting the impression that dressage is something that belongs in the ring. It is “ballet one a horse”. It’s almost like an academic exercise in horse riding. As such my feelings are that perhaps it’s not something an endurance rider or someone on the trail really needs. I can’t imagine using the indirect rein in the great outdoors??? Am I misguided here? I’d love to hear people’s opinion. Perhaps Western would be more helpful.
