Use of the neck

[anon55755751]

To my recollection, I’ve never seen or heard an instructor talk about detecting correct contact, balance, engagement and connection over the topline in terms of freedom of the neck. Head and neck position, softness, length, “reaching towards the bit” and so on, yes, the general framework of working under saddle as at liberty, yes, but specifically freedom to use the neck independently of the rider’s aids for balance, no. I admit I’m not well read in dressage literature; I have to assume it’s out there somewhere.

I’ve been a very bad rider for a very long time, but have had periods where circumstances aligned and I had enough of those fantastic “aha” moments with enough consistency to make some lasting changes to my foundations. When the right pieces came together, I was able to feel that I was supporting and influencing the horse without interfering, and a big big part of that was the ability to maintain balance and contact without constraining/restricting the neck, especially in corners and on circles. It’s self-carriage I guess, but that term was used by my instructors more as the opposite to “on the forehand”.

It just seems like such a key piece of information, and something that one can actually feel for, I wonder if anyone emphasizes it in their instruction? My paranoid self tells me that it’s obvious to everyone else, and I’m just a dummy for not being on the same page!

[MysticOakRanch]

I’ve ridden with several “biomechanics” type instructors, and all of them emphasize “oscillation” of the head and neck in the walk and canter. The L Program even talks about how important it is from a judging standpoint! Is that what you are referring to?

And all my instructors talk about giving - contact is following, not restricting, and at times you need to test by actually releasing the contact for a moment. Even the dressage tests have those moments of release!

[Huntin_Pony]

There was a wonderful article by Karl Mikolka called “The Neck of the Horse” published in the May 2005 USDF Connection magazine. (It was reprinted from the January 1974 Dressage and CT magazine.) I heartily recommend it.

Hopefully USDF can provide it from their archives.

[anon55755751]

Not quite. I think those things are somewhat superficial indicators of proper use of the neck? But maybe it’s the best we have, since describing feel is so difficult? As an analogy, depending on conformation, the same degree of overtrack at the walk exhibited by two different horses could arise from very different degrees of relaxation over the back. So we can say overtrack is a superficial indicator, but it’s just one part of the whole picture.

I’m thinking more like when jumping, the horse needs freedom of the head and neck in the approach to a fence to balance himself for takeoff. You don’t throw away contact, you just don’t interfere with his ability to balance himself. In my very best moments, I’ve felt the same independent-ability-to-balance on the flat, especially in changes of direction, circles, corners, etc. when the horse is obliged to rebalance. Freedom of the neck seemed like an essential part of that — even with shortened reins. I don’t want to give the impression that by “freedom” I mean riding with super long reins.

I also don’t want to just say it’s softness or suppleness of the neck, because I’ve achieved that with incorrect front-to-back riding as well…

[anon55755751]

@Huntin' Pony

There was a wonderful article by Karl Mikolka called “The Neck of the Horse” published in the May 2005 USDF Connection magazine. (It was reprinted from the January 1974 Dressage and CT magazine.) I heartily recommend it.

Hopefully USDF can provide it from their archives.

Thanks! I’ll look for it!

Found it I think:
https://www.usdf.org/EduDocs/History/Karl_Mikolka_2014-2.pdf

[mvp]

I’m not well-schooled in the Dressage Canon, either. But I do think about horse anatomy and biomechanics. I think what someone emphasizing “neck freedom” means has a few ideas built into it.

1. The horse’s build means that his head out at the end of his stalk-of-a-neck forms a nice counter weight to his heavy hind end. Particularly at the canter and gallop, he allows his head to sink low as he needs to raise and draw up that heavy hind end to reach under for the next stride. Think of the way the pump on an oil well works, but imagine you are using that the ends are reversed: You have weighted the head at the end of that long arm so that the great big lump at the back of that arm (a weight put into rotation) is being raised and lowered. You can see the horse using his head, long neck and also the nuchal ligament in side it at the walk, too. He allows his head to hang low and, with very little muscular effort, lets it lower each stride so as to make it easier to bring one of his kind legs forward. More generally, think about the way we might swing out opposite arms when we walk-- these are ways we use our body to maintain balanced without using too much sustained muscular effort.

2. That means, then, that the head and neck ought to be free and even “extra” for the strong, well-schooled horse. That means that, really, I don’t care how the horse uses his head and neck. I’m after him changing his posture between his front and back limbs. I’d like him to use his core (and he will use the muscles near the base of his neck on top, especially) to raise up the front end of his rib cage. He’ll carry his whole carcass in and “uphill” orientation and push- rather than pull himself along. And because I only care about his body, in theory, he’s free to use his head and neck however he’d like in order to maintain that posture and balance.

3. The strength and problem with contact and riding and such is that the architecture of the human and horse bodies together mean that we end up doing this “backwards”— we control the position of the head and neck and those, in turn, force the horse to use the rest of his body one way or another in order to maintain his balance. It’s really good and bad: We can influence a horse’s head and neck position a great deal by putting a metal bit in his sensitive mouth; a horse will contort his body a lot to keep pain at bay in his mouth. We can see the head better than we can feel the horse’s balance (at least most of us and at first; we do learn to feel that as we develop as riders). We are far more dextrous in our hands and even arms than we are with our legs, our seat and even in using out own balance in a purposeful, rather than reactive way. Ergo, we tend to ride the head.

4. When folks talk a lot about putting the head in this spot or that, what I think they really mean or should be after is getting the horse to use his core and the base of his neck ahead of the withers correctly. So any time you don’t have the right feel in his carcass, you might as well fix that or give him a rest rather than put his head somewhere else. But, again because the horse’s head position influences his balance so much, moving his head to this or that new position tends to have a large and immediate effect on his balance. You can use it to teach train them to recognize a position and kind of self-carriage that will earn them a tactful, non-invasive ride from your hands.

To me, all this means that I ought to spend my time learning to ride my horse’s body and leave his head and neck alone to the greatest extent possible. What I think about a lot these days is trying to influence the base of his neck (getting him to reach up and out from his withers) and leaving his throat latch open and free. I’ll leave him to choose where he wants to put his head. What I don’t want to is ride him from the jaw and poll backward— where I pull, the horse curls behind the vertical and does nothing with the base of his neck. From a biomechanical perspective, this was a total and complete waste of time: A horse who has been habitually ridden this way can learn to put his chin quite close to his chest without raising is withers and back. And IMO, the curled-up, back-still-low horse is hard to fix. And he’s hard to fix because the person who rode him so curled up forced him to use some muscles (though not the right ones) in order to move himself around without falling over. Again, the horse’s job is to not lose his balance, so if you tie his chin to his chest and make him go, he will find a set of muscles to use that let’s him do that. If you change your mind about the muscles you’d like him to use, but still want to control his head, well, good luck with that: He has some powerful psychological- and physical conditioning to the contrary.

Let me know if I have been more confusing that helpful, or if I missed your point. I hope not!

[starsandsun]

Thank you MVP: “I think they really mean or should be after is getting the horse to use … the base of his neck ahead of the withers correctly.” IMO you want to see softness and flexibility - not holding - at the base of the neck. Once you can take that muscle out of ‘work’, you can feel throughness over the top line and the horse is using his body. Next time you watch people ride, look and see if notice a lack of suppleness and heavy muscling at the base of the neck. It’s kind of discrete until you are aware of it. I am not sure of all the techniques to successfully accomplish this; on my young horse we work in a shoulder fore to direct the shoulders in on the circle … this has the effect on him of releasing at the base of his neck so his whole body is lined up for correct work. I use a neck rein on the outside to get/keep that position, with the inside rein at the withers used through tiny half-halts to encourage bend.

[Pocket_Pony]

For a short while I was working with an awesome cowboy who had nothing to do with “dressage.” A lot of our lessons were about freedom of the neck. Since his style of riding is western then there would indeed be a loose rein, and he was all about getting good transitions on that loose rein and riding from the legs. It seemed so different and opposite of what I’d done in dressage lessons, and it produced a very relaxed horse. The lessons were about way more than that, though, they were about the mental connection and attention and focus and softness and it was great fun learning what he had to teach.

There was no constricting of the neck; he wanted the opposite. He did comment that he’d taken previous dressage horses in for training and they were so tight and tense through the body and including the neck. I know I’ve ridden some horses who were trained that way and they just didn’t know what to do if you put them on a loose rein. It was all about contact, contact, contact.

Thinking about an issue I’ve dealt with in the past with my horse . . . taking a “hop” for that first walk-trot step. In dressage lessons, I’ve been instructed to keep contact on the outside rein so the horse has to transition INTO the contact. With the cowboy it was the exact opposite by having a very loose rein and softening up into the trot and working on the abruptness of the transition (meaning, take away the abruptness of it) and letting the horse have his head and the loose rein and learning to balance on his own versus sort of offering up the balance for him. In dressage it seemed to be more of a “do it now and get it done right and then we’ll keep going” sort of approach; the cowboy’s way was “see if you can figure it out and we’ll repeat it as many times as necessary (in a relaxed manner, not a drilling manner - looking for the slightest change, not perfection) and when you get it right we’ll be done.”

I found it mentally harder to do the cowboy’s way, but more satisfying for me and my horse.

[mvp]

I didn’t bother to specify the “base of the neck” better (and I should have). I mean upper trapezius muscles (and more)— basically the triangle of muscle just ahead of the withers. The base of the neck doesn’t mean the underside of the neck where it comes out of the chest.

Otherwise, I agree that it can help to do a tad of shoulder fore to help a horse learn to lift up his ribcage between his shoulder blades. I don’t do steps and steps with that with a very, very green or weak horse. But I do use a step to two in order to make him feel “taller” on that shoulder, usually the outside. For some, I think that means getting a horse to take up that rein. What I’m feeling for is that “taller” feeling ahead of the saddle on that side, and, when I let him straighten back out, alignment between the front and back leg on that side. When I get all this, the rein fills up because the horse is pushing from the back leg, to the front leg and all the way up through his neck to the bit.

[CFFarm]

Hilda Gurney talks about riding with a “pushing the knuckles against a wall” feeling so that one is not impeding the neck and head. ( I keep this visual in mind quite often).

Conrad Schumacher. says the neck and head should naturally hang, supported by the top line, not compressed by the reins.

Walter Zettl: The horse’s neck maintains its proud posture, and remains straight at the withers [ – all these are hallmarks of correct flexion].

[jawa]

Would any of you be able to post a link to videos and/or photos that show a horse properly using his neck? I’'m enjoying reading the discussion.

[Manni01]

Interesting thread , I confess I was just thinking about it today. I was lunging my young horse and it is very interesting. In the beginning you can really see that she is still a little tense in her back and is not completely loose and this tenseness continues into the neck. Many people would probably think she looks amazing but somehow the movement does get stuck in her body. Its really a very easy fix, after a couple of rounds you can see that she loosens up, I just keep her moving forward (not too much but fluently) and then the movement goes through the whole body from behind over the back to the neck… And then you can see that she uses her neck properly.
So I would not look at the neck separately but only as a part of the body…
And I think there is a beautiful video of a GP test in this forum right now, I think Two Trick Pony posted it. There you can see the movement going fluently through the body, thats why the horse looks very elegant and there you can see that the neck is a part of the movement…
Of course this is very advanced but it gives you the picture… My 4 year old of course is not in GP shape but the movement looks the same way…

BTW this is a youtube video of the horse and rider I was referring to… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAiNsV5pPHo I think you can really see how the movement flows through the body into the neck…

oh and this is a video from my 4 year old from some time ago, there you can see that she does not use her neck properly… (which she couldn’t because she was just started on the lunge. The movement looks quite nice but its not going through the body yet…
https://www.facebook.com/ulrike.bschorer/videos/1473729019307889/

We have been working on it and she looks a lot better now… But sorry no video…

[anon55755751]

mvp, you articulated it all beautifully. What you said is exactly what I’m thinking about (though, carcass, I believe, refers to dead animals only…http://www.dictionary.com/browse/carcass). I think we in dressage tend to engage ourselves with minutiae and sometimes miss the forest for the trees. I don’t mean to project or overgeneralize to what others’ experiences are, but for me personally, it has been true and I don’t think I’m alone! It makes sense that other disciplines that might be more targeted to “big picture” goals and not committed to controlling every step would prioritize letting the horse use his own body differently.

jawa, an example I like to look at a lot is Michael Jung and Fischerrocana
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fncaosyUr-M
Precisely because she’s not naturally a world-class dressage talent, and she’s eventing fit, you can really see everything about how she uses her body and what her training is doing for her. To point to a very specific example of the use of the neck, she’s ever so slightly braced at the base of the neck at the first canter transition (~2:30), but does the nice flexible balancing with her neck immediately after that for a corner, and then lengthens across the diagonal with that nice stretch over the topline, reaching for the bit, and lifting through the withers to get that shoulder freedom.

To compare, here’s her cross country run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H7tebD75pM. The shape of the neck is totally different, until she starts to collect right before she jumps. Then you can see him follow her neck as it stretches down and out right before the take off and over the fence. The change in the length of her neck between galloping and jumping is incredible and he maintains the same contact the whole time.

My original question though, which maybe was buried, was whether dressage instructors teach this? Broadly, how to influence without interfering, and specifically that a connected topline, working back to front, and reaching for the contact will give the horse the freedom in the neck to maintain his own balance?

[mvp]

@ strangewings. I say “carcass” in the sense of the rib cage and loins section of a meat animal’s body you’d see hanging in a freezer-- basically, the trunk of the body with the muscular sling cut off and the hind legs cut off at the hip joints.

I do think well-educated dressage instructors think about the base of the neck. I mainly hear them telling people to “push the neck out” (and man, that can seem confusing since we seem to have to pull or hold the the reins only…but I have a different way to explain “pushing” with the reins). I also see them telling riders that the horse should “telescope out” from the base of the neck.

After that, I think a lot can go wrong. Some of that has to do with the extent to which people sacrifice something like behind the vertical posture at the top of the neck for getting the horse to use the base of his neck in a way that puts him uphill. (I’m not educated enough to know if this is a temporary compromise one must make with a young and/or weak horse or not, but I worry about it). And some of this is, I think, an equitation problem in the sense that the rider doesn’t know how to use his hand in a way that can get the horse to do something with the base of his neck that does not also necessarily involve over-flexing at the poll.

[MysticOakRanch]

Many trainers teach that the base of the withers must lift, and many will show the proper muscles on the neck when it is used properly. But I don’t think teaching FEEL is an easy thing to do.

[PossumHorse]

A quick thing my instructor has always told me to look for is a wrinkle in front of the withers. If you see a wrinkle there, your horse is inverted and does not have the back fully lifted.

[konarelaw]

I think those things are somewhat superficial indicators of proper use of the neck? But maybe it’s the best we have, since describing feel is so difficult? As an analogy, depending on conformation, the same degree of overtrack at the walk exhibited by two different horses

[Kolsch]

Let me throw this out as food for thought. I have a horse that has a conformational ewe neck and is build downhill. When I do body work on him, stretches, etc., it’s not the “pretty neck stretch” trigger that will get him to properly round, it’s a point in his pectorals.

[Mondo]

I teach from the biomechanics perspective. I do not, however, mention the horse’s neck much. There is a reason for that and it’s likely the same reason that you haven’t heard it much from instructors. Dressage riders, by and large, tend to be extremely analytical. They have a hard time with, “shut up and ride!” although that is often good advice. If we over analyze every little movement of the horse’s head, neck, our hands, legs, seat, etc., for every single movement, at some point the rider’s mind is overloaded and they will tend then to fixate on only one or two of those many things. If I say, “you need to allow freedom of his neck,” I guarantee that will ruin what you are doing with your hands on the reins. It’s not an effective way to teach. Teaching proper use of the reins is perhaps an indirect approach, but the end goal is the same and the rider is less frustrated. There may be the odd student whose personal way of learning allows the teacher to talk about the horse’s neck, but generally speaking, no.

Just MHO, YMMV.

[netg]

I’m not entirely sure I understand the discussion in question. What “freedom of the neck” means to the OP. I do NOT put my horse in a frame, and dressage riders the world over will tell you that’s a bad idea if you want to develop a horse. Is that what is meant here? My instructor is constantly trying to help me break my hands first instincts to allow my horse to reach forward into the contact, vs pulling back and shortening her neck. And her head goes where it is needed for her balance, sometimes higher or lower than I would place it if I were determining head location, depending on her needs and development at the time.
I apparently have an easier time giving forward with my hands in the canter than the trot, and think maybe that shows what you mean? The canter pic is a good one (I could give even more, but was trying to stop a dive onto the forehand right in that instant I believe, which also makes them bring their noses in some), vs the trot I am clearly pulling on her instead of giving forward with my hands. Correspondingly, she’s on the forehand where I pulled and uphill where I didn’t.

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