Walk & canter - do you follow with your elbows

[mydogs]

At the walk and canter, the horse seems to naturally move its head “up and down” (for a lack of better words) as it goes through the various beats of the gait.

I’ve heard conflicting instructions between “follow with your elbows” and “keep your elbows at your side”.
Which is accurate? And why?

My quick research, which consisted of watching some youtube & facebook videos of riders in slow motion, seems to show that the riders who kept their elbows at their side and didn’t follow with their elbows, would sometimes yank the horse in the mouth or the horse resorted to going behind the vertical during the pushing off phase (only the front leg is on the ground).
Whereas riders whose elbows followed allowed the horse to remain more on the vertical throughout the entire gait.

So I’m inclined to say that following with the elbows is better for the horse. I’ve been told that keeping your elbows at your side help keeps your core engaged, and yes, it does look more polished if your elbows aren’t moving. But, I’m wondering if maybe the horse’s experience/training may also play into whether or not you need to follow with your elbows.

I am also assuming that in this situation, when a rider is following with their elbows, they aren’t completing throwing their hands in front of their body, but keeping a consistent contact with the bit.

[Scribbler]

Yes, your hands follow the mouth at the walk and canter. But a lot depends on the length of the gait. Very collected and the head doesn’t really move much. I find at a collected canter the motion of my pelvis provides enough give to follow the mouth without actively pumping my elbows.

At a big marching walk absolutely the hands follow
the mouth. At a gallop the same but generally at that point I m on light contact until it’s time to slow down.

Another component is whether you take the movement in your hips or if you are pumping with your upper body. I find that if I follow the walk by swinging my hips with the horses barrel then my upper body doesn’t pump back and forth and my hands are more independent to follow the mouth. Same in canter.

In other words like everything it is all connected. If your hips and torso aren’t moving fluidly your hands and torso will look like they are pumping.

Your default position is to have bent elbows at your sides not Pinocchio stick arms because if your arms are straight there is no room to give and release the reins. But those bent elbows do swing forward from their resting place at your sides through the phases of the gait.

”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹

[dotneko]

In short, yes your elbows follow the motion. At collected gaits, less so. On the down beat of the canter your hands follow the head down - as the horse is more engaged, the excursion is less.

[MissCoco]

For some riders (like myself) the direction “follow with your hands” can lead to my hands pushing and pulling moreso than following, which is uncomfortable for the horse as well. This may only apply to those of us with poor propioception.
I think this would be what Scribbler describes above as pumping.

My instructor will often say “keep your elbows at your side”
When she says that she doesn’t mean for me to jam my elbows into my sides bent at a 90 degree angle, but that I should move them by my sides rather than holding them up and out like a chicken. More like the movement of the metal bars that connect the wheels of a train. That helps me actually follow the movement of the horse’s head, which is hard to do when I have my arms poking out to the sides.
Also because it helps my core be more engaged, it keeps my seat more independent, allowing my hands to follow better.
The other cues my instructor uses a lot (along with “elbows at your side”) are “soft elbows!” and “quiet hands” which also help me to genuinely allow my hands to follow, rather than me exaggerating the motion.

So I guess in my experience, those aren’t conflicting directions, so much as different cues that might work for different people, or at different times during a learner’s progression.

[Hawks_Nest]

My own instructor uses “elbows at your side” more to keep your elbows close to your body rather them holding them away from your torso. If your elbows hang at your sides then they can follow elastically rather than having to physically move them so much. If you are unconsciously holding your elbows away from your torso then you are tensing the fronts of your shoulders and will end up blocking the forward swing and have to consciously move your arms. I like to think of my elbows hanging and being elastic and then everything else just happens.

[Wanderosa]

My instructor has me follow with the arms as well. One thing that has helped me is to remind myself is that my shoulders and upper back supply the strength and my arms the suppleness. Depending on the gait, it also helps me to think of it as letting the horse’s motion move my arms rather than “I-must-follow-the-horse”. It’s also extremely helpful that my horse knows what he’s doing far better than I do and will initiate a pulling competition with me if I’m holding in one spot.

In my last lesson we worked on halts in preparation for a test. My trainer blew my mind by pointing out that if your half halts set up everything effectively, the last phase of the transition is to sit down and stop following the motion of the horse with your arms. I imagine that this is nothing new to most people. But I’d somehow missed this over my 35 year riding career and felt kind of silly!

[Wicky]

I think a lot of the confusion comes from not defining what you mean by moving the elbow. The elbow is a hinge joint. It only opens and closes, and rotates on the axis. SO if the movement is ONLY coming from the elbow, the arm is still and the hand either moves down toward the thigh or up toward the shoulder. If you are rotating the lower arm on the elbow, the hand either rotates up so the palm is facing up, or down into the piano hand position.

If you are talking about the elbow moving with respect to the torso, the movement originates in the shoulder. The shoulder blades slide sideways so the hand moves forward, but the movement at the elbow is minimal to non-existent, depending on the magnitude of the horse’s head’s up and down movement. That allows you to keep a straight line from the point of the elbow to the bit. Again, the motion is an open and close at the elbow, but it is minimal.

Sit in your chair and see if this makes sense - if you can sense what is moving to get what change in the arm.

[mydogs]

@Wicky

I think a lot of the confusion comes from not defining what you mean by moving the elbow. The elbow is a hinge joint. It only opens and closes, and rotates on the axis. SO if the movement is ONLY coming from the elbow, the arm is still and the hand either moves down toward the thigh or up toward the shoulder. If you are rotating the lower arm on the elbow, the hand either rotates up so the palm is facing up, or down into the piano hand position.

If you are talking about the elbow moving with respect to the torso, the movement originates in the shoulder. The shoulder blades slide sideways so the hand moves forward, but the movement at the elbow is minimal to non-existent, depending on the magnitude of the horse’s head’s up and down movement. That allows you to keep a straight line from the point of the elbow to the bit. Again, the motion is an open and close at the elbow, but it is minimal.

Sit in your chair and see if this makes sense - if you can sense what is moving to get what change in the arm.

Thank you! Just had a light bulb moment! I wasn’t thinking about separating the elbow from the shoulder, but now I get it!

[GraceLikeRain]

I think another piece is how much motion does your horse naturally have through their back and neck at the two gaits? If the horse I am on is gently moving through the neck and I’m riding at first level, there is much less motion than someone doing an extended canter on a FEI horse. I’m not riding Valegro. So far, the adage of keeping my elbows close has worked out well. There is softness in the elbows so they do gently follow the contact but from the ground that motion is very subtle. I’ve never ridden anything that needed my elbows to move forward and back by inches every step. On some horses I’ve found that if I exaggerated my elbows on these lower level horses I could create motion through the neck. That motion didn’t create a more authentic contact and swinging back but rather a head bob and less connection.

[alibi_18]

Both.

Your elbows should be at your side and following. That’s how you can achieve elastic contact.

Your elbow shouldn’t be stiff and neither should they be all over the place.

At the walk and canter, the horse seems to naturally move its head “up and down” (for a lack of better words) as it goes through the various beats of the gait.

When the head is going up and down, it’s usually a sign the horse is not strong enough yet and has not achieve the degree of self carriage needed for that movement. It is an obviously normal process when the horse is learning.

Your hands shouldn’t be following much in a up and down motion - It should be a forward-back motion to the bit.

[Silverbridge]

The very basics of equine biomechanics include an understanding that the head and neck of the horse move (oscillate) forward and back at the walk and canter. Thinking of the movement as “up and down” could be counterproductive to any attempt at following the motion.

It is or should be, rhythmically forward and back.

ETA : alibi was saying basically the same thing and I hadn’t seen her post when I started typing.

[Arlomine]

Short answer, yes. The arms follow the motion in walk and canter.

There are modifying components, however. A HUGE walk with tremendous use of the body, on a longer rein will produce a gigantic oscillation In The neck and back that must be absorbed by the ride for seamless contact. The same horse in a collected walk with have a far smaller movement in the neck to follow.

a green horse who is on the forehand when cantering will often have a larger movement to follow than when they are more organized.

the walk is followed with the elbows moving opposite of the rider’s seat (elbows move forward while the seat is back and vise-versa)
the canter following is different, the elbows come forward with the seat.

i suggest you get on YouTube and watch a variety of videos. Some of young European stallions, early in training, to see the degree of possible motion. Then Watch videos of Grand Prix horses.

[merrygoround]

The elbows do stay at your side in the sense, that as you follow the movement, your arm brushes your sides. The degree of give is dependant on the activity of the horse’s head, both walk and canter.

The same goes to a lesser degree for trot. Your elbows act as shock absorbers.