I’m trying to teach my horse the concept of working r e a l l y long and low to introduce some “horse yoga” which I discovered recently to help with his relatively mild kissing spine. Today I abandoned all training and habits as to where my hands should be and put them down by my knees (I ride with split reins) to help encourage him to put his head down. Now at the walk he pretty much got it. He did a decent job of actually keeping a soft contact and not sticking his head up or pulling on me. He doesn’t really “get” the long and low thing at the trot. If I give him the length of rein needed to allow his head to go down below his withers, he prefers to stick his head up and hollow his back. I’m just not sure what I can do to make it clear to him “THIS is what I want you to do!” Overall he caught on to the yoga stretches at the walk really well and was very relaxed. His back actually felt better when I got off than before I got on so it’s doing some good. We just have to get a little more on the same page.
The horse must at first learn connection and accept contact. Then you can “unreel” the length of neck and ask the horse to lift his back.
Maybe ask for smaller increments at trot instead of full out long and low, also try trotting over ground poles, maybe try it on longe line at trot as well
Agree with CCF.
First you must have contact and connection. Then you lengthen the reins and they will follow it down. Super simple if you have a good connection.
No need to widen, lower, fiddle with your hands or reins. It’ll just make them brace against he contact, or suck back to avoid it.
[QUOTE=CFFarm;8339666]
The horse must at first learn connection and accept contact. Then you can “unreel” the length of neck and ask the horse to lift his back.[/QUOTE]
This… then when you “unreel” the neck you follow with your hands forward then down always keeping a straight line from your elbows to the bit. Let him go as far as he’s willing and prepared to stretch, while maintaining contact, balance and rhythm.
Low wide hands is not the correct way to achieve LL. What you want is for the horse to seek the contact and not putting his head down because you’re pulling down on his mouth. All it does is wreck your balance and block the energy and does nothing for our goals.
eta: Courtney King Dye did a really great article on this for Dressage Today a while back. I’ll see if I can find it.
[QUOTE=CFFarm;8339666]
The horse must at first learn connection and accept contact. Then you can “unreel” the length of neck and ask the horse to lift his back.[/QUOTE]
This exactly. My instructor has me package my mare up into a fairly collected frame, and then slowly let her out. She then wants to go long and low to stretch.
As others have said, you can’t have long and low without a connection, which it sounds like your horse is lacking. Hands being that low merely tells the horse that it hurts to have his head higher, because of the action on the bars of the mouth, so he puts his head down to recreate that line from elbow to hand to bit.
When the horse is connected back to front, and already working over the back, they are by definition seeking the contact, and therefore when you lengthen the reins, they lengthen their neck and lower their head, which is when you are actually working the back muscles that will help with kissing spines. Simply going with his head on the ground does not work those muscles, it’s using his hind end and back while being low that works those muscles.
I’d suggest finding a good dressage trainer and explaining what you’re trying to achieve. You’ll have to work him truly on the bit for a while to learn the feeling and timing to be able to maintain that connection when he’s lower.
Yep… I agree finding a good trainer will help you immensely because it does sound like the connection is not there for this to be beneficial to your horse.
I’m originally from HunterWorld, so you might want to take what I have to say with a grain of salt. I’ll add some more information to the “how” to get your horse to take contact so that you can “unreel” it. And I don’t know that I’d teach collection first with the intention of expecting the horse to stretch, second.
- Remember that it takes more core strength on your horse’s part to trot (or canter) with his head so low than it does at the walk. And thinking about his anatomy and biomechanics makes it obvious why this is so: With his extending his heavy head and neck down, he’s got to do something to keep from falling on his nose!
So trouble you mention-- if your reins get long enough for him to stretch down that the walk, he instead flings his head up at the trot-- has a clear cause and a solution. It’s caused by your horse doing what he has to in order to keep his balance. The solution is to ask for less stretch (and riding with shorter reins) initially.
Ideally, you have taught your horse to raise his ribcage up between his shoulder blades so that when he’s stretching down, that’s actually from the base of his neck that is pretty high. That’s the right way to do long and low, IMO, and it might be a tad sophisticated. I’m not sure every young horse doing long-n-low has that version of it.
So you need to decide if you’ll accept his shoulders in any position while he’s stretching down or not. IMO, it will change how much leg you’ll add to get the job done. If you have taught this horse to raise his shoulders, first, last and always (no matter where his head is), you can add leg with impunity. If not, and you ask him to put his head way down, you’ll have to accept that he’ll be pulling himself along on the forehand a bit, even as he’s stretching over the top.
- The big question behind that “teach your horse to take contact” is how to do that. It is kinesthetic. If/when you are good with your hands-- you have a lot of feel, timing and independence-- you can decide to spread your hands wide or use them low. Or you can (for most relatively “made” horses), use them in the normal position ahead of the pommel.
But the point is that you take (eventually, this is just isometric tension in parts of your arm) until you feel the horse give and then you give. The key thing with getting a horse to do more than tuck his chin, and getting him to learn to stretch down is that subtle art of relaxing your arms, but keeping contact and closing your leg a bit. In effect, what’s happening is that horse gives to your hand pressure and tucks his head. That’s a hard position to stay in, so in order to keep his balance, he pokes his nose out and, perhaps, stretches his neck out at bit… just to keep his balance. The idea, here, is that you follow him. With his neck out, you might close your hand again and see if he doesn’t do the same thing, stretching more. And you follow him again.
The point is that you are doing two things at once-- joining #1 and #2. You are taking with your hand to create the pressure that invites the horse to find a way to make it stop (for you to let go). You are letting go exactly and only when he has put his head and neck where you want it… or closer to your goal than previously. That’s the basic logic of teaching a horse to reach into contact. (And, of course, you make that “following but not loop-in-the-reins” contact his reward. That’s not true in all disciplines and it takes some rider skill/fitness to deliver.)
And at the same time, you are working on the horse’s fitness: As explained above, it requires core strength on the horse’s part to give you the right answer (head lower at a higher gait) even if he knows in his mind what you want.
I think it’s counter productive to get your reins so long that the horse has room to really fling his head up before you can shorten back up and regain contact. That’s why I’d ask for less stretch, but work on that conceptual part of the equation-- teaching the horse my signal for lowering his head.
Hope this helps.
While all the posters are right, you are dealing with a medical issue and you don’t have the luxury of “correctly” doing the training. You sound like you need to get something now of a stretched back and then work on correct. So, how do you compromise from classicaly correct? Yes, you do have to keep s slightly shorter rein through the transition to trot, but since he doesn’t understand the aids you need to do something to suggest the correct direction. Try a slightly shorter rein on the inside hand and do a 10 meter circle as you ask for the trot (about 1/4 of the way into the circle.) That should help encourage him to keep his spine up and slightly less hollowed. I agree that longeing would be smart and getting him to be really responsive to the voice so you can supplement your riding with the voice commands and need less on the hands as you transition to teaching him correctly.
Lots of walking correctly with gently working on leg yielding to teach him to soften and yield to the leg. Again, because of the kissing spine you can only do it when he doesnt hollow. If he starts to hollow, back off and try a different variation of amount, angle etc. The goal is to eventually get him correct but you have to deal with the physical now to ensure you aren’t making the kissing spine worse.
Focus on engaging the hind legs. Think about them as your rise, imagine the hinds taking longer steps, stepping deeper under his center of gravity and propelling each step with energy. LL is much more active than many realize.
Hello!
Check out Will Faeber Dressage or his YouTube channel Art to ride (I think). He’s great. His philosophy is to make sure they can stretch first and then pull up through their shoulders and wither before they can collect, etc…good luck!
Forward is the main part of long and low, while you simultaneously maintain and lengthen the contact. I put horses into long and low as part of warm up,no collection first. However the rider must be able to regulate energy, direction and pace without the use of reins.
This is where having help from and instructor comes in
[QUOTE=CFFarm;8339666]
The horse must at first learn connection and accept contact. Then you can “unreel” the length of neck and ask the horse to lift his back.[/QUOTE]
This is wrong. Any horse can go long and low naturally just grazing. No contact there obviously.
Rider needs tu utilize this natural state to engage hind end, get the horse balance its heavy head plus rider on its back and then the shoulders will lift and horse will come up and accept contact.
[QUOTE=kinscem;8341679]
This is wrong. Any horse can go long and low naturally just grazing. No contact there obviously.
Rider needs tu utilize this natural state to engage hind end, get the horse balance its heavy head plus rider on its back and then the shoulders will lift and horse will come up and accept contact.[/QUOTE]
Are horses in pasture better balanced under saddle?
I think that’s where the difference of opinions is. Many of us feel there is no benefit to long and lower until after the horse can get off its forehand… until then, just long and up/open is valuable for helping teach the horse to swing over its topline and also enable the hind legs to step under.
[QUOTE=kinscem;8341679]
This is wrong. Any horse can go long and low naturally just grazing. No contact there obviously.
Rider needs tu utilize this natural state to engage hind end, get the horse balance its heavy head plus rider on its back and then the shoulders will lift and horse will come up and accept contact.[/QUOTE]
Well, yeah. But rarely do you see a horse cruise along at the trot with his nose low to the ground. And you really don’t see 'em choose to canter that way.
And really-- again, perhaps not Dressage Correct-- you can teach a horse any signal you want in order to have him put his head down. That’s a training process worked out between the two of you. It works out, however, that we have the best luck enticing a horse to stretch his head and heck down, and to, concommitently, to use the rest of his body so as to not fall on his nose, by maintaining some kind of contact. FWIW, I think contact-- even light contact-- helps the horse stabilize his head while he’s down there. This isn’t, of course, a small rider physically holding up that heavy head and neck.
Take what you like and leave the rest.
I will also say that it takes strength for a horse to go long and low.
He is starting to get it in walk. Ask in walk and praise.
Then do it again the next day. A little longer and praise.
Then a little longer the next day and praise.
Once he has it in trot you then ask in trot, any lowering praise and then ask again the next day.
If you are trying to improve his back, you need to get him to lift his back. That’s the key much more than the position of his head. That all comes from the hind end.
I would be doing this on the lunge first, where he can get the concept of lifting his back without a rider involved. I would do it at the trot more than the walk because he’ll be less on the forehand.
Just food for thought.
[QUOTE=netg;8341756]
Are horses in pasture better balanced under saddle?
I think that’s where the difference of opinions is. Many of us feel there is no benefit to long and lower until after the horse can get off its forehand… until then, just long and up/open is valuable for helping teach the horse to swing over its topline and also enable the hind legs to step under.[/QUOTE]
Absolutely! Long and lower as offered by the horse. So long and open is perfect and valuable!!! That is my point.
PS:
Of course horses on pasture go long and low and getting them balanced under saddle/rider on their back is part of the training. It takes time.
[QUOTE=mvp;8341773]
Well, yeah. But rarely do you see a horse cruise along at the trot with his nose low to the ground. And you really don’t see 'em choose to canter that way.
It is not rare. Yes I do see horses cruise along at the trot with their nose to the ground all the time. On the ground looking ahead!
They sniff and go to see.
Horse with its head tucked in can only see its own feet!
