Winter has been absolute hell fire 
2 Likes
I have one of these and it’s currently sitting in my basement gathering dust. I’d love to use it effectively - do you have any resources you could share on exercises utilizing the trampoline that are particularly helpful for riding?
Thanks!
I like your advice.
usually once you get this forward momentum the connection issues resolve themselves.
I struggled with my baby horse for a while. one day when I was in the indoor for myself I really ran into so many issues, she even started to stop that I dismounted and lunged her. but then another rider entered the indoor and I got back on her to try again. and simply because of the other rider present, I was more confident and rode her without too much thinking. and all our problems were gone.
I am taking lessons with her now and the trainer really insists that I keep her in front of my legs, and so I focus more on my core and legs and less on my connection which is always fine as soon as she feels forward and reacting to my aids….
2 Likes
On a daily basis I tell my young one “you’re for sale!” after she spooks at nothing for the 100th time.
6 Likes
Every day it’s hmmm do I really feel like cheating death for the 100th time this week or do I choose to lunge or free work ahhaha I choose safety. F this
4 Likes
I was hysterically laughing yesterday. I talk a lot when I ride, it’s bad habit. I was pushing the young mare up into my hand at the canter, trying to get her to step a little deeper. I repeated “take me somewhere! Take me!” and she spooked at nothing and took off. “Yeah, NOT THERE though, dumba$$!” as I reined her back in.
Every single day something stupid happens. I’m so OVER it.
6 Likes
I also like that advice and this anecdote, and hope we’ll be in an environment that makes these things possible when we move! Right now, the riding area I have access to is pretty small. Riding a full dressage test would require a lot of imagination and improvisation, I think I lack the spatial intelligence to work that out
I am actually curious how my horse will cope with another horse in the arena. I have never experienced it. That will be another thing we’ll get to work on when we move. Part of me hopes that moving into an environment with other horses with jobs will be a real inspiration to him.
1 Like
I’m hardly an expert on exercises, as I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a spork than go to a gym, but I know that I need to work on my core strength and hip mobility as a biggie, and my posture.
I went looking on YouTube for things I could do without killing myself that would target those areas. There are a ton of different workouts on there, many of which are designed for young, fit and athletic people with great senses of balance. (Not me!)
I think the ones I find most useful are the jumps with a twist from side to side, like a skiing movement, keeping the upper body straight and twisting through the waist and hips, the kicks back and sideways while not tipping the upper body and the jumping jacks with no arms but crossing the legs, if you see what I mean. I also do running on the spot and a bunch of other things. I keep my posture in mind at all times. You kind of have to. Too much tipping can have unfortunate results!
I try to incorporate some arm work as well just because, but my delicate shoulder isn’t so keen on that. I do about 15 - 20 minutes most days and try to do a bit longer on the weekends.
It’s pretty lame and I’m glad I’m doing it in the privacy of my basement. But Im doing it.
3 Likes
It’s hunting season for us young horse riders and we’re the prey
I have a giant raven that flys around here and always over my arena and this weekend it was screaming and then lands on the roof. With the coverall roof it looks like it’s flown in from Jurassic park. Huge shadow and just hearing its feet splat splat across the arena roof, then takes off screaming again with a big shadow flying away. My poor horse was trembling and had her head straight to the sky I could see the top of her nose…. Im like OK time to get off I don’t even know how you got your neck in that position, danger zone incoming 
Spring please come soon
5 Likes
Winter shows no sign of ever ending around here. It warms up just enough to send vast roofalanches cascading off the indoor arena, then it gets cold and snows again. We are due another 6-9" tomorrow, then God only know how much again next week. Oh, and the wind is howling and clanking the icicles together. Yum.
So very over it.
2 Likes
My answer will be different since I am not a dressage rider, I ride Forward Seat which is the origin of our modern hunt seat.
Since I only ride lesson horses now I end up having to train these horses (often in their 20s with decades of bad riding) to accept contact. How I end up doing it depends on the horse of course.
I rode two Arabs with the most sensitive mouths in my 50 years of riding. They “faked” their contact but they were not reaching for the bit because they had not reason to ever, ever trust a bit. My riding teacher and I agreed that these horses showed no signs of ever being trained properly and no signs of ever being introduced to dressage.
I would ride them at the walk. I would take light contact, with the first Arab I told my teacher that I felt like I was keeping contact with a cobweb. Both horses inverted for any reason whatsoever and they wet around with gaping mouths, frantic eyes, and doing anything they could to avoid real contact.
I would ride with the super light contact for several strides until the horse relaxed, reached for the bit a teeny-tiny bit, and I would relax my fingers and move my hands forward a little bit. At 30 minutes a week it took me a month or two with these horses before they decided that in my hands the bit was not an instrument of torture.
That is when they started reaching for contact with my hands. As I added leg the contact would become firmer but still elastic because the horse was not gritting its teeth. After a few more months I got to the point that I got what I wanted from a horse when it reaches for contact, reaching for the bit with their tongue first, meeting my contact with my relaxed supple fingers, relaxed elbows and shoulders, and the horse keeping its mouth, tongue, poll and neck relaxed and supple while my hands followed the horse’s mouth. I found out with these two super sensitive mouthed horses that the horse reaching for the bit with its tongue first was the key to getting the light, responsive contact I desired.
Often at the beginning I could only get seconds of good contact. As the horse learned to trust my hands and the bit that increased to minutes of good contact so long as I kept my fingers loose and supple. Once I got my definition of good contact the horses required a LOT less leg to establish and keep contact and they no longer spent the whole ride trying to duck behind the bit.
Inversions disappeared. Their response to my leg aids improved greatly. They would move out and finally show my riding teacher what they were capable of, overstriding at the walk, balanced trots, and prompt, light response to my slowing down/halting rein aids.
ANY rider should be able to do this. I have MS, really atrocious bad balance, my coordination of my aids is often iffy, I have a hand tremor, I do not have a proprioceptive sense (I cannot FEEL where my hands or legs are) and I get exhausted easily. In spite of all my riding faults from my disabilities the horses decided that they could TRUST my hands and they kept on improving–all with just 30 minutes a week of me riding them and sometimes being used in group riding lessons.
My hands belong to the horse’s mouth. If the horse has problems with the bit it is MY FAULT.
Once I showed the horse that keeping contact could be enjoyable for them they always reached cheerfully for the bit in response to my legs. Then I could move on to higher training. It was useless for me to ask for higher level work until the horse agreed to keep proper contact with my hands. Once that was achieved everything else became so much easier to train.
On contact my fingers are in a “conversation” with the horse’s mouth, stuff like altering speeds within a gait, good transitions, and halting with the horse keeping its mouth relaxed and still accepting contact with the bit. I DO NOT accept the horse going behind the vertical and that fault also disappears rather quickly in response to my legs and light contact.
My riding teacher LIKES seeing how I can transform the sort of hopeless horses she has put me on to become riding horses that a competent rider can enjoy riding.
5 Likes
I’ve read all the replies and they are good, so I hope they are helping you. I’m going to suggest something that has me donning my flame suit. I will preface it with: don’t do it if you are alone in your barn! Here goes:
If your horse is good in the side reins when you lunge him, leave them connected when you get on, keep a soft contact and this will help you feel what you need to do to get the side reins to go slack. Horse can’t evade the side reins, and he’s not arguing with your hand. If you do that a couple times, you’ll find you are much better at riding him into the contact on your own.
And before everyone flames me and tells me how horrible and dangerous this is: I disagree. It’s something I learned at a German training barn. They don’t want the beginners mucking up their school horses, so until independent seats and hands are developed, the school horses go in side reins to protect their mouths.The students learn what the horse going correctly feels like, everybody wins. I have done this many times with my own students. It does work.
5 Likes
Good thread for me!
My coach will say: She’s looking for you. Take her. And also my coach will hold one end of reins and have me take and she pulls and says: This. And then i show my coach how much pressure i ride with and coach says: Take her like this. She wants it.
But i’m a seat rider. a body rider. I’m pretty loathe to take a mouth. And the outside rein/inside leg? Well i do the inside leg well enough, but the outside rein…not so much.
Too many years of bareback incl liberty riding. This contact thing is where i really am a looser. And whenever i watch a show and see the cranked in heads, and tightly curled neck…it does a number on my mind and i am even worse at it for a couple of weeks.
It’s like shaking hands with a strong, confident person…that’s my mare, and me, i’m the limp-wristed weak little grip. That she (mare) does what i ask anyway is nice, but i know i’m throwing away half my tools…
I just can’t seem to get over this hump.
1 Like
Sometimes the words we use are not the right ones that we need to hear. That’s why sometimes riding in clinics with instructors who use different words may help.
I would never take a horse’s mouth. I shorten my reins and present the bit, and the horse takes up the contact when I use my driving aids and drive the horse forward.
To me, the word take connotes pulling back, which we never want to do. We want to shorten the reins and hold them. We don’t let the reins slip through our fingers when the horse takes up the contact. We hold the reins steady and keep our hands where they are supposed to be. The hands are supported by the back (through the elbows and shoulders) and seat so the horse cannot pull the reins away.
The answer to almost everything about contact after that is using the driving aids. Present the bit and drive the horse toward it and the horse will take up the contact.
Those are the words that I use, and thinking about it that way helped me.
16 Likes
Yes. Need to go back and read the whole thread, but maybe a way to turn it around from the though to taking that might help @eightpondfarm - when you feel the horse on the end of the rein, play a game of driving forward from behind and pretending the reins feel like sticks that you can actually push the horse’s nose out with. It is not a taking it is a going that should feel like a lively fish on a line (swimming, not thrashing obviously). Contact can be surprisingly strong without being backward or putting the horse BTV, and the contact will vary over time with training and within a ride based on what’s being done and the stage in the ride.
4 Likes
OP - I am curious if you have experience riding other horses in solid, consistent contact, or if you’re figuring this out along with your horse?
I ask because no one on this thread as far as I’ve noticed has mentioned your bit/bridle situation. If the pro you had on the horse was getting consistent contact with your current bit/bridle, disregard, but if you’ve been able to produce it on other horses, and you and the pro are having similar issues with this one, it might be worth going down that rabbit hole. My warmblood mare has been very soft in the mouth since I started her, and lack of contact was a blockade to our progress. Started her out in the standard lozenge bit (NS Team Up), then tried a NS Turtle Tactio, followed by slight improvement with a HS NovoContact single jointed. I was finally able to start getting her to trust the bit and have a conversation with me in a titanium mullen mouth (this bit has been passed around my barn and worked well for other fussy-mouthed horses). That was a little too static, so I moved her to a Myler-type mouthpiece, which she did not like much at all paired with a regular caveson, but on a hunch I popped it on her Micklem bridle. Now she is a happy camper and goes on the contact much more easily and correctly. This is all over a couple years of experimentation, and of course training goes into it as well. Just thought I would mention it as it seems like double-jointed bits (not sure if that’s what you’re using) have become so popular that often other options aren’t considered. However, neither of my mares have gone well in double-jointed bits.
1 Like
Yes, I hear you! And especially because my horse’s behavioral problems are more “backwards” (balking and rearing, as opposed to “forward” vices like bolting and bucking), I used to feel like it was very important not to have any tension in the reins, to always keep that front door open.
But I’ve fully come around on this. It took me a long time, but I finally understand now that my horse’s balking comes from a lack of confidence. It has nothing to do with rein contact “blocking” the forward momentum. Legging him forward into contact—even kind of crappy contact—actually gets him to go much better and more confidently forward. It also helps me check in/redirect when I feel his focus wandering, which ends up improving his confidence that much more. So, it’s like a self-reinforcing cycle
That really was not intuitive to me. I thought that the more nervous he was, the more I needed to back off and not “trigger stack.” And I definitely gravitated to liberty training. Now I would say my perspective has changed a lot, such that I look at liberty training as demanding a lot of confidence from a horse.
7 Likes
Just no. Are you watching upper level rides at a show? Might be best to watch lower level rides for a better idea of contact. Your observation is one that so many new(er) to the sport make and it is incorrect. The heads aren’t “cranked in.” Quite the opposite. The riders at those levels are barely using their hands at all. I’ve never seen a “tightly curled neck” at a show. Horses working at FEI levels are in an entirely different frame than horses working at training and first. They are also in self-carriage (or should be) by then and what looks like pulling hands to you is actually the horse coming through from behind and carrying itself. Your misinterpretation of what you are seeing is simply a function of the fact that you are still (struggling with?) learning about correct contact.
You mentioned that your trainer “pulls” when she takes the reins to give you a feeling. I’m guessing (hoping) that isn’t what’s happening. When I do such a demonstration to a rider, I always say, “watch my hands.” That way they can see that I’m not moving my wrists, elbows, or shoulders. In other words, not pulling. The only thing I’m doing is squeezing my fingers. Like squeezing water out of a sponge.
13 Likes
I think it’s fair to mention that the “squeezing water out of a sponge” analogy only works if you aren’t going around with a big loop in the reins. First you have to get comfortable with short reins and keeping your fingers closed. Keeping a consistent rein length can feel like pulling if you’re used to slipping the reins at the slightest pressure… and if you do let your reins get floppy, it takes more than a subtle squeeze or wiggling your ring finger to get the horse to pick up contact. That’s why “short reins win gold medals”—a helpful Charlotte Dujardin quote I learned from one of the Amelia Newcomb videos someone posted earlier in this thread! And if it really does begin to feel like pulling and the horse roots the reins, the answer is to add more leg and not to drop the reins. I’m a reformed rein dropper, so I should know all about it.
9 Likes
You probably can’t create better contact with side reins or doing anything with your hands, because the issue is on the horse’s end, e.g. the horse is not maintaining contact with you because he is not working through his back. Please don’t drill in side reins or a chambon to fix this because unless used extremely judiciously it will turn into holding the horse in a headset without fixing the hollowness of his back. A horse can hold their head anywhere while still being hollow. While I’ve obviously never seen you ride so I don’t really know, your description of “wiggling” the reins concerns me, because bringing the horse’s head down is counterproductive (although it is what a lot of people do), the bottom of the neck and shoulders should actually lift upwards to “drop” the head onto the vertical when the horse is collected. Especially because you say the contact is best when in a fast trot after cantering, which is when the vast majority of green horses love to run on their forehand. I would watch video of your horse’s trot at various times during the ride and look at where their balance is, is the forefoot coming off the ground in front of the center of gravity or behind it, etc. Also is the horse soft and balanced if you ask for a halt from the trot with good contact, or do they brace against you? My advice would be to completely forget about where the horse’s head is at least until he is consistently in front of your leg, and focus on riding the back end, especially transitions and shortening and lengthening strides in all gaits. If you can get a good lengthening without the horse falling on the forehand then the neck will naturally telescope out to meet your hand. Your description of following the corners of his mouth without pulling sounds perfect. In terms of working on the ground you can definitely improve gaits on the longe or with long lines, especially using cavaletti, and I’ve found working on shoulder in, travers, and straight rein backs in hand very helpful.
6 Likes
