I know nothing. I’ve heard its good, I’ve heard its horrible. I don’t know why its good, I don’t know why its horrible. My intention is not to start a heated debate, I am honestly just curious.
thanks.
If by “toe flick” you are meaning the front toes of the horse are flicking to the front in the trot (so that the horse’s front shoes are visible from the front), this is caused by hyperextension of the horse’s front legs. When the horse’s energy is being blocked from traveling freely through its body, its front legs are flung forward and the legs hyperextend, instead of being carried forward in a smooth arc.
When the front toes are ‘flicking’, the hind toes are usually also flipping to the back (pushing instead of carrying) http://www.ridingart.com/toe-flip.htm
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Buck22, it depends on what ‘toe flick’ means.
If it means that a well trained older schoolmaster with a novice rider on his back is ‘coasting’ and not working properly, it’s not much of a big deal. The rider will learn in due time to ride better; no problem. If it’s at a horse show and your pal is beating his chest about how bad everyone else rides, it’s time to give them another wine cooler and hope for the only possible good outcome, that you can get them drunk enough that they pass out and stay passed out for the rest of the afternoon.
MOST riders, for quite some time, even years, all they can possibly do, is get that toe flicking kind of stride from a horse. It takes a long time to learn to do better.
If it’s a professional trainer on the horse and it’s YOUR horse going like that all the time, it’s possible it’s time to have a Dear John with the trainer. It can be pretty hard to teach a horse that is taught to go incorrectly, to redo his training and teach him the right way.
SOME horses will never EVER be able to do an extended trot, no matter how carefully they are trained. Some horses, all they can do is a medium or lengthening. Horses have their limitations. They’ll ALWAYS flick their toes and have problems. The horse can still be a very useful schoolmaster and score moderately well at local shows. No big deal.
Generally, people are referring to the foreleg being rigidly thrown forward, and the hoof flicks upward so that someone standing in front of the horse (shortly before they get run over) can see all or nearly all of the horse’s front horseshoes.
You can very often see this when the horse is not pushing sufficiently with his hind legs when he is asked to do a stronger trot, either a lengthened, medium or extended trot. It can be because his back and hind leg muscles haven’t been developed properly, because he’s losing his balance (incorrect riding), because the rider is pushing him beyond that point where he can balance, etc.
But it tends to be the most obvious in the extended trot which the horse starts to develop around third level.
You can ALSO see the toe flick in some horses that are working fairly well, and just don’t have their full strength or are getting a little excited and tight in the shoulder, or even, the rider isn’t quite keeping them balanced by coordinating the use of his seat, leg and rein. It’s VERY hard to tell the difference between ‘on the right track and just being a little excited’ vs ‘really on the wrong track and a big problem’.
What you can see is the hind leg will not be driving forward as hard as the foreleg and shoulder are working, it will seem to pause or not move as fast as the foreleg (be careful, the foreleg can easily look quicker-moving just because it’s more straightened out). If you can see the footprint of the front foot on the ground, you won’t see the hind foot landing forward enough; it should be landing quite near the print of the forefoot, ideally, in that hoof print or even in exceptional cases, a little further forward.
IF a horse is very, very light in front, and his hind legs are really driving, he can get some lightening of the shoulders and foreleg, so that the foreleg can lift quite a bit in the extended trot. So getting out the ruler and looking for hind and foreleg cannons to stay exactly parallel doesn’t always work. SOMETIMES the raised foreleg is due to incorrectly working, dragging hind legs, SOMETIMES, it’s the culmination of ‘lightening the forehand’ by the correct work of the hind legs and back.
The IDEAL is that rather than the forefoot being flicked upward by the shoulder and forearm muscles tightening up and the knee lowered so the foreleg is very straight, the foreleg is gracefully lifted, the knee is lifted, and instead of the toe being pulled up, the toe points DOWN - to a spot on the ground and lands on that spot on the ground.
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telling people that their horse needs to be “very, very light” in front is often a big mistake. Since we are addressing an insufficient execution of a required movement starting at first level (lengthened stride) I think it’s best to focus on the amount of throughness it requires to get a horse “very, very” connected to the bridle from the hindleg first. People who try to make their horses really light in the hand because that’s what everyone tells them is ideal are usually the ones who have problems like toe-flicking.
OP, just work on throughness and impulsion and connection - the toe flicking will take care of itself once proper connection is there.
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[QUOTE=Gucci Cowgirl;3811396]
OP, just work on throughness and impulsion and connection - the toe flicking will take care of itself once proper connection is there.[/QUOTE]
^^ ha, I’m not at this point yet personally, toe flicking isn’t an actual concern for me.
But I’m trying to learn more about correctness, I want to be able to distinguish more accurately between the correct and not so correct - sometimes that can be tricky.
I was under the impression that a toe flick is essentially wasted energy. But I see significant flicking going on at higher levels, and I’ve heard people remark on how ‘powerful’ the horse must be because ‘look at that flick!’. Toe flicking, in the sense that you all are describing, doesn’t feel right to me, but I had no way to explain to myself why.
I’m doing my best to burn the images of good habits and correct movement into my brain 
when working solo, without a trainer, its very easy to get caught up in a bad habit and not know.
thankyou every one so much.
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‘Look at that toe flick’ is a phrase some people use just to mean the foreleg brought energetically forward.
But a great many people DO think when the foot flips up and the foreleg is jammed straight, that that’s ‘good’.
But people think a great many wrong things about dressage -
- that reins hanging down loose is 'self carriage'
- that 'back to front' means you never touch the reins, and that 'front to back' doesn't exist
- that half halts happen by maginc
- that getting a horse's nose in is the be all and end all of dressage
- that ying-yangin' back and forth on the reins is correct training as long as it's 'gentle'
- that pirouettes that look like a series of mini-rears are correct
- that a piaffe where the forelegs are 1 inch from the hind legs is 'classical'
- that crouching hind quarters and mincing tiny steps are 'collection'
- that a passage where the horse holds its legs up motionless and drops its back and hind quarters is done with good suspension
- that the extended trot should be in slow motion
- that you train a horse without ever using your legs, seat or reins
- that just by breathing and sort of thinking about it you get a good position
- that it's never any work or effort
- that you don't need a good trainer, you can just read books and watch videos
- that a novice rider can progress on a few lessons a year
- that only non-competitive riders are any good
- that all the judges are blind...
honey, the list goes on and on and on and on.
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Photo of toe flick?
This is something I am interested in knowing more about too.
Over on the “Andalusian and Lusitanos in Dressage” thread this link was one of those posted with a photo of a PRE. I am bringing it over to this thread because it seems to be an extreme example of the toe flick.
Can someone break down this picture for me and talk about what is happening to cause this in the photo?
http://www.elpre.com/media/fotos/brcxopkl.jpg
Much appreciated!!
^^^ thank you jmurray! thats exactly waht I wanted to discuss… thank you!
[QUOTE=slc2;3811503]
But a great many people DO think when the foot flips up and the foreleg is jammed straight, that that’s ‘good’.[/QUOTE]
I’m surrounded by this sort of thought thats why I’ll likely be presenting questions along these lines with regularity here.
Right?!?!?!? not that your list wasn’t spot on, but seriously ^^^^^ wtf?
I saw a lovely lovely lovely cp on youtube once (I cannot find the vid now, it was under 30 seconds) it was simply delightful… the team cantered along, paused for a moment to execute the pirouette, and then just continued on their merry way as if the detour was just a simple sight seeing, etc, as if the movement practically never existed, as natural as the canter itself, with a sense of abandon… it was gorgeous. It is etched in my mind.
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In a proper pirouette, the horse’s shoulders and neck do not go up and down like a pump handle. In a proper collected canter, the horse’s head and neck don’t go up and down too.
In a proper canter pirouette horse looks like he is cantering, and just for a second, someone holds onto his tail, and he goes cantering around in a tiny little circle, with his hind feet making a circle the size of a dinner plate. In a competition, few people take the risk of losing the canter rhythm or stepping backwards, and make a little larger circle with the hind legs, but still get a lot of points for maintaining the canter gait and the rhythm.
Some mistakes are a lot more important than others. Dane Rawlin’s ‘Priority Points’ goes into that. First maintain the rhythm and the gait and the figure, then start whittling away at all the nice stuff.
It isn’t good to get so you expect too much from most riders you see, buck22. You don’t often see 100% correct work or really superior tests, and at each stage, there are mistakes that are very normal and expected. Most people are learning. That they stay in the ring and do the work, that’s good enough.
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bump…
Back to the toe flick please!!
Any folks want to give buck22 and I a critique of the link? and a mechanical breakdown of what is happening to cause the horse to do this in front.
THAT horse looks fine. Other than him needing to open the angle of his head and neck a little more, so his nose is a little more forward, there is no indication of anything incorrect in that picture, though it is a pretty bad picture and not from the right angle, the hind legs still look very, very good and very reaching and quick, and he’s about a half a mile off the ground, his toe is lifting a LITTLE but everything else is very good and the hind feet are going to overstep the prints fo the forefeet. JUST because the foreleg is straight doesn’t mean it’s wrong. You have to look at the whole horse.
SOME horses always reach the peak of their extended trot stride with a straight leg if they just don’t naturally move with a very high lifted knee or are greener at that level. That doesn’t mean they’re incorrect.
When the hind feet land a foot and a half short of the prints of the front feet, when the knee is driven downward and the hind legs drag along, THAT’S incorrect.
Currently, if you go to www.google.com, click ‘images’ and type in the search phrase, ‘extended trot’ and hit go, you will get 20 pictures of extended trot, all of them correct for that horse, only one a little wtf looking. You cannot judge horses with a ruler and a pencil, the eye has to develop over time and learn to see the whole horse.
A pirouette that look likes a series of mini-rears is called a ‘rearouette’ :winkgrin:
Okay so you are saying that photo in my post is not an example of a toe flick. I was always told that was an example of a toe flick where you can almost see the shoe.
Now I am confused.
How about these?
Horse #1:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=41363250&l=e5eb5&id=5743445
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=37700368&l=37e22&id=5743445
Vs.
Horse #2 (who shows better push behind)
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=35743613&l=b3440&id=5743445
Horse # 1 is an older schoolmaster, Horse #2 is green.
What I think I see is a rider learning to ride on a trained horse. The horse IS ‘flicking the toe’, that is how it looks, and you can see the inactive hind leg very obviously in the first picture.
As I said, you need to consider the situation. That’s a normal thing to happen when a rider is learning. You can’t really (at least reasonably) expect anything else. At that level, if the rider gets the horse to do a little bit of a longer stride, that’s all you can expect. Please, folks, don’t be too hard on people who are learning, or expect them to make the horse go better than is reasonable to expect.
As I said, to evaluate what’s happening, you need to look at the whole horse, and ideally, NOT a photo, which prevents you from seeing the whole stride, and how the entire set of mechanics come together.
With the grey horse, as i said, the toe is lifting, but it is not really a sign of a problem. That isn’t a true toe flick that is just a symptom of a much bigger mess, this is just a ‘moment’. It cannot be otherwise, not when the hind legs are doing their job as they clearly are there. Some horses just wobble the hoof a little when they are reaching to their utmost, some horses are very loose in the foot; the toe doesn’t come up because it’s being drawn up by incorrect action behind and shoulder tensing due to loss of balance, it just wobbles up and perhaps the photographer snaps the shot right then.
Again, you have to look at the WHOLE STRIDE. Is the knee being driven down as the horse reaches forward, and the leg hyperextended so the knee looks ‘back at the knee’, and the shoulder joint stiffened, with the shoulder motion jerking forward, as the horse attempts to balance himself by tightening his neck and back muscles? Is the hind leg driving forward without a single pause in its motion, or just dragging or pausing in midair?
This is why it is dangerous to look for infinitesimal angles in a photograph, and why people who dissect too much get into trouble, and also why they look around them and see every rider and every horse as imperfect and are always saying how wrong everyone is.
This horse and rider are wonderfully balanced, with the horse reaching forward and active, quick hind legs.
Dissecting too much teaches you to focus too much on minute details instead of looking at the entire horse. You start getting your eye very distorted and missing the bigger picture.
The photo, even when bad lookin, has to be given credit as a moment in time; Neil Blake made a lengthy photo essay of the same horse and rider, one picture showing major faults in a movement and the next near perfection, with both photos often taken during the same test or even during the same three minutes; the key is not what every moment looks like, but what many moments look like together.
Straight foreleg, toe coming up, and yet a perfect moderately extended trot:
http://newspringfarm.com/images/baron_verdi/baron_extended_trot.jpg
On the left, an awkward looking moment of a beautiful extended trot during a test in a top international competition that was a personal best, where the leg is loose and brought forward quickly, so the toe tips up, but the haunches and back and shoulder are working correctly.
A beautiful classical photo from Nancy Later(amazing woman):
http://www.nancylaterdressagehorses.com/images/2004_cover.jpg
Watch the warmup (watch it all if you have time, it’s quite nice), again, the toe comes up infinitesimally, but the hind legs, back and shoulder are correct:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKbqokuTzh8&feature=PlayList&p=F413E65CD75AFF6D&playnext=1&index=17
Donnerwetter, an absolutely perfect example of a ‘loose foot’ that is on a very correctly working horse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPVvEuDe3mk&feature=PlayList&p=F413E65CD75AFF6D&index=16
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technopony wrote:
How about these?
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pi...e22&id=5743445
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pi...eb5&id=5743445
Just throwing them out there as a good example of the “toe flick”. Especially the first picture, where there are a lot of wrong things going on… but I will leave the discussion to others.
technopony,
In the first picture I see an off balance horse diving or falling on the forehand, caused by a rider with an overly driving seat and a pulling hand, who is also well behind the motion of the horse. You can see how the horse is tiping onto his front end and curling up, and his hind legs are out behind him. The horse is being not being ridden over his back, but downward on his forehand. The horse is also too short in the neck for his nose to be pointing toward where his toe is pointing.
In the second picture is I believe of the same horse and rider? Same problems as the first photo. From this angle you can see how the rider is riding the horse with a stiff connection and down hill instead of up and open, and allowing the horse to come through his back.
What do you see?
toe flicking is created by a horse that is on the forehand/jammed into the hand/over tempo/etc
all of the pics posted so far show all of the above to one degree or another. most of them are so jammed up in the front and being held by the hand - tehy look like the horse would fall on its face if the rider was to let go of the reins. not only is this ugly - it is just incorrect riding/training. of course any horse can be out of balance and will look like some of those pics… but if i just speak to what is being shown the above applies well.
and no - toe flick is not correct in dressage - in any way shape or form.
ETA - honeslty - if you want to work on training your eye - go to sustainable dressage and look at what she has there… very good for explaing why stuff like this happens and what is correct/incorrect.
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‘Mechanically’ it is caused when a horse throws his foreleg much more forward (in the swing phase of the stride) than where his foot actually lands. It can make the horse appear to be going more forward than it actually is, there is no co-responding ‘lengthening’ of the stride behind.
It’s ‘fake fancy’.
(There was actually some fairly good examples of that at the Olympics…)
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JMurray wrote:
Okay so you are saying that photo in my post is not an example of a toe flick. I was always told that was an example of a toe flick where you can almost see the shoe.
Now I am confused.
The photo in your post does show a ‘toe flick’. The fetlock and pastern clearly appear to be hyperextended.
The forelegs should be brought forward in a smooth natural arc, not just flung forward.
Notice the constrained necks that accompany the ‘toe flicking’. Constraining a horse’s neck blocks the horse’s energy and causes the horse to push itself forward on the forehand instead of carrying itself forward from behind.
Thanks Tonja!
