There are really only two lateral movements in dressage and they are cornerstones of collection and upper level work: Shoulder-in and haunches-in. These are the foundation for half-pass and pirouettes, and build the ingredients for the athleticism needed to perform the range of paces from collected to extended and the flying changes at the canter.
Both, shoulder-in (SI) pictured at right and haunches-in or HI (also known as travers when the haunches are "IN" on the line or renvers when they are "OUT") are based on the same concept, bend. The first troubles with SI and travers are a sign that you do not have your horse bending correctly. Either your aids are not well executed, or the horse lacks understanding. Regardless, go back and address the issue with bend. This is where you have to be sure your horse is tracking straight, meaning his hind feet are stepping into the same line of his front feet. Very often a horse bends in the neck, but not through the whole body, or has the hips too far to the inside or the shoulder ‘falling’ out over the outside.
Both, shoulder-in (SI) pictured at right and haunches-in or HI (also known as travers when the haunches are "IN" on the line or renvers when they are "OUT") are based on the same concept, bend. The first troubles with SI and travers are a sign that you do not have your horse bending correctly. Either your aids are not well executed, or the horse lacks understanding. Regardless, go back and address the issue with bend. This is where you have to be sure your horse is tracking straight, meaning his hind feet are stepping into the same line of his front feet. Very often a horse bends in the neck, but not through the whole body, or has the hips too far to the inside or the shoulder ‘falling’ out over the outside.
The two images at right show the same horse:
Left is the horse bent and proceeding through a corner
Right is the horse bent and taking that bend down the longside in shoulder-in
** There is an obvious degree of improved collection in the shoulder-in image. Not only does the movement promote it, but the horse has progressed from 2nd level in the left hand picture to 3rd level in the right hand picture.
Lets take a moment to review the training scale before we proceed further:
Rhythm/tempo: Rhythm denotes the specific sequence and regularity of footfalls within a gait and the tempo is the speed at which those footfalls occur. The “prime directive” of dressage is not to disrupt the purity or regularity of the rhythm of the gaits. In other words, we don’t create artificial gaits in our horses, or make a gait overly spectacular at the expense of its purity. This would be a violation of the horse’s natural balance- and balance is what we are cultivating. Each horse has a tempo at which he is best able to maintain his balance.
Relaxation/Looseness: Some also call this suppleness. It is a state of “letting go” where the horse is able to both stretch himself longitudinally, and flex himself laterally without loss of the fundamental rhythm, tempo and balance. The horse should become increasingly freer of tension both physically and mentally in this stage of training.
Connection/Contact: Too often people think of contact as merely the tactile sense of reins, bit and the horse’s mouth in their hand. It is more than that. It is the entire contact of the rider with the horse developed by the rider’s ability to ‘connect’ the horse’s haunches with his forehand. Through this connection it is the horse that makes contact with the rider by lifting his back into the rider’s seat and reaching through his neck towards the rider’s receiving hand.
Impulsion/Schwung: Thrust! A connected horse that is moving in a steady tempo with regularity and relaxation will ably accept the driving aids of the rider and rather than rush forwards, he will begin to propel himself off the ground gaining ‘air time’ and thus “swing” time. Impulsion has impulse to it… a harmonic surge of energy that can further be “collected”
Straightness: First, that impulsion has to be channeled. Since the horse’s forehand is narrower than his hindquarter, when traveling along a wall, the forehand must be brought slightly to the inside in order for it to be centered over the pushing haunches. Without this straightness, the impulsion generated will “leak” towards one side (often the right shoulder) and preclude one from collecting the energy. Straightness is not “ruler straight” it is a horse whose body conforms to the line of travel… ruler straight when on a straight line, but bent to follow the curve of a circle, or corner.
Collection: The harnessing of all the horse’s propulsive power being expressed with balance, in regularity, with a loose top line allowing complete range and freedom of movement as well as ‘straight’ so that no amount is lost or tension created by the subsequent lack of balance therein.
A very quick review, but back to our discussion at hand… the shoulder-in and later haunches-in/travers.
If a problem exists with the SI, a task of straightness (the ability to put the FQ and HQ simultaneously on either the same line or two particular lines), then the problem may exist in any of the prior stages of the training scale. It is common in dressage training to feel that all the pre-requisites are in place only to find out they are not when attempting a more difficult movement. The movements are there precisely for this reason. They can help you to diagnose holes or weak places in the training. Forcing the movement to happen however is not likely to fix the problem in the training, only going back to find the missing element will do the trick.
Rhythm is critical because it allows you to time your aids more effectively. It acts like a metronome and hypnotizes the horse/rider into a 'zen' state. A lack of rhythm signifies tension. A horse could be rushing because it is nervous, has fallen onto the forehand, is simply being over ridden, or is in pain. Same can be true if the horse is dragging along to slowly.
A loose horse is soft and yielding longitudinally through his top line, and laterally through his body from poll to tail. A loose horse will softly chew the bit and flex his head laterally if you squeeze a rein, he will step his hind end away from your leg, and if you restrain a little with seat/rein, he slows without getting stiff in the neck/jaw/poll. If you close both legs, he steps bigger without rushing. You can combine these responses into a soft bend from poll to tail.
Weight to the inside seat bone, leg and stirrup encourage the horse to step into the new direction. Just like having a toddler on your shoulders who leans to one side making you compelled to step into that direction in order to maintain your collective balance, so does your horse step into the direction in which you step into your seat bone and stirrup. This is done without leaning by elongating your waist on that side so that your shoulders stay level with the ground.
Inside leg is responsible for maintaining the energy and forward thrust of the inside hind leg. Through its positioning at the girth and rhythmic pressure applied in time with the lifting of the corresponding hind leg, the horse molds is body around it by bringing that inside hind leg further under his center of mass… or “engaging” it.
The outside leg, guards the haunches from falling/swinging to the outside, and by increased pressure, shapes the horse more around the inside leg if the body needs to bend more because the arc of travel is steeper.
The inside rein is responsible for keeping the horse soft in the poll/jaw flexed to the inside.
The outside rein, regulates the bending action of the neck to be sure the body bends, and talks to the horse longitudinally when half-halts are needed to correct rushing or falling on the forehand.
To check that these are in order, I have this sequence of exercises to be ridden a 15m circle, making sure that it is truly round and that it does not touch any wall or rail of the arena. In other words, for this exercise, stay off of the rail. This is important so that you can be sure the rail/wall is not doing some of the work for you.
Exercise 1 (teach him to activate to your inside leg) = At the trot (rising or sitting), establish an even tempo. Ask for a slightly quicker tempo for 1/4 to 1/2 of the circle by energizing your inside leg as the inside hind comes off the ground... so if you are posting the trot that's when you go up. Do not keep the pressure on as you sit even if the horse did not respond. Simply repeat in the next step at slightly greater leg pressure. If you get the response you want, leave the horse alone and allow him to glide. If he manages a step or two, then repeat. If at the second beat of request, he still didn't respond, in the next beat, don't get firmer with the leg, but add a tap with your whip. Think of riding a skateboard- you give pushes to get the board up to speed, but then you leave it alone until you need a little push again. I think you get the idea.
Exercise 2 (teach him to flex and soften in his poll) = Allow the horse to come back into his normal tempo. Still trotting on the circle, have your fingers on the reins, but very softly on them. With your inside rein, close the 3 fingers more firmly on the rein one at a time slowly- hopefully this will get enough response from your horse, but if not, you can flex in your wrist by pushing the wrist towards the bit keeping your thumb on top. At any point the horse flexes in the poll (so that you see the top of his eyebrow and the top of his nostril and no more) go back to the soft quiet fingers holding the rein. Repeat a few times and see if your horse starts to maintain some flexion. To make sure your horse flexes only in the jaw/poll, you have to keep a consistent and steady feel on the outside rein. Be careful not to throw it away. When a horse bends correctly, you have the sensation that the horse fills up that rein- he comes to it, but should not push through it. If you throw that rein away, thinking your allowing him room to bend, he will bend in the lower part of his neck and pop his shoulder to the outside. The neck coming out of the shoulder should be straight, and any bend you see in it should be up just behind the poll. This so SOOOOO important for shoulder-in. If the neck is flexible at the point where it connects with the shoulder, the messages don’t get to the shoulder. Your reins eventually channel the energy of the shoulders into the track. Your outside rein then is critical and must be passive and supportive, hence the name supporting rein!
At any time while doing exercise 2, if the horse loses his rhythm, re-establish with exercise 1.
For exercise 3 (check his hindquarters)= you have to remember #'s 1 and 2. Keep the tempo, and soften the horse's jaw/poll. Now you will add your outside leg. You don't need to add energy, so be sure the leg does not bump or change pressures. You simply change its position, about a hands width behind the girth and press the hair. No more, no less and not changing. It’s in neutral, but the hind end should step a little more around the inside leg – or if it was drifting outward in the previous exercises, you should feel it come back onto the line of travel with his forehand. You should feel that the hind end is definitely under the horse. If it does not, don't press harder, this tightens you up. Add your whip: not punitively, encouragingly… I like to do double or triple taps, a soft “touch, touch” when reinforcing something I’m asking or teaching vs. a quick pop for a disobedience or consequence to something my horse clearly already knows. Let the horse have a chance to try to respond before asking again, or getting firmer. Then stay neutral and allow the horse to go along this way himself. He may try to rush away when you tap for the outside leg response. Stretch tall, keep your rhythm and add a half-halt if needed.
What commonly happens is that as the outside leg, comes on and positions the horse truly in a bend, he either falls onto the inside rein and gets heavy, pushes or gets upset in his mouth, stalls out, or otherwise resist because he feels claustrophobic with that rein. He does not know how to reposition his body to accommodate those feels. But, you've already shown him how to soften there, and flex. This releases the outside muscles and makes room for his inside hind leg that is now very well under his body. So, if you feel that heaviness, or tension in the neck/mouth, do exercise two and flex. Over time, he will do this more and more on his own. Keeping your outside leg though so he doesn't negotiate with you "I'll give this if you give up that.." If your horse has gotten so stiff as to lose rhythm, re-establish it, first, then flex, and then when he has accomplished both while yielding to the outside leg, leave him alone, soften the aids, but keep their position so that he can self-carry for a few strides before rewarding.
Taking the time to develop correct bend is crucial. Lateral movements flow easily out of a correctly bent horse. The most significant development of engagement, thrust, and stretch of the top line are developed through riding correctly executed bending lines and figures. When you feel that you can sink weight into the inside stirrup, bring the outside leg back and your horse starts to turn and puts some lightness into that inside rein on his own, shoulder-in will be a piece of cake.
Rhythm/tempo: Rhythm denotes the specific sequence and regularity of footfalls within a gait and the tempo is the speed at which those footfalls occur. The “prime directive” of dressage is not to disrupt the purity or regularity of the rhythm of the gaits. In other words, we don’t create artificial gaits in our horses, or make a gait overly spectacular at the expense of its purity. This would be a violation of the horse’s natural balance- and balance is what we are cultivating. Each horse has a tempo at which he is best able to maintain his balance.
Relaxation/Looseness: Some also call this suppleness. It is a state of “letting go” where the horse is able to both stretch himself longitudinally, and flex himself laterally without loss of the fundamental rhythm, tempo and balance. The horse should become increasingly freer of tension both physically and mentally in this stage of training.
Connection/Contact: Too often people think of contact as merely the tactile sense of reins, bit and the horse’s mouth in their hand. It is more than that. It is the entire contact of the rider with the horse developed by the rider’s ability to ‘connect’ the horse’s haunches with his forehand. Through this connection it is the horse that makes contact with the rider by lifting his back into the rider’s seat and reaching through his neck towards the rider’s receiving hand.
Impulsion/Schwung: Thrust! A connected horse that is moving in a steady tempo with regularity and relaxation will ably accept the driving aids of the rider and rather than rush forwards, he will begin to propel himself off the ground gaining ‘air time’ and thus “swing” time. Impulsion has impulse to it… a harmonic surge of energy that can further be “collected”
Straightness: First, that impulsion has to be channeled. Since the horse’s forehand is narrower than his hindquarter, when traveling along a wall, the forehand must be brought slightly to the inside in order for it to be centered over the pushing haunches. Without this straightness, the impulsion generated will “leak” towards one side (often the right shoulder) and preclude one from collecting the energy. Straightness is not “ruler straight” it is a horse whose body conforms to the line of travel… ruler straight when on a straight line, but bent to follow the curve of a circle, or corner.
Collection: The harnessing of all the horse’s propulsive power being expressed with balance, in regularity, with a loose top line allowing complete range and freedom of movement as well as ‘straight’ so that no amount is lost or tension created by the subsequent lack of balance therein.
A very quick review, but back to our discussion at hand… the shoulder-in and later haunches-in/travers.
If a problem exists with the SI, a task of straightness (the ability to put the FQ and HQ simultaneously on either the same line or two particular lines), then the problem may exist in any of the prior stages of the training scale. It is common in dressage training to feel that all the pre-requisites are in place only to find out they are not when attempting a more difficult movement. The movements are there precisely for this reason. They can help you to diagnose holes or weak places in the training. Forcing the movement to happen however is not likely to fix the problem in the training, only going back to find the missing element will do the trick.
Rhythm is critical because it allows you to time your aids more effectively. It acts like a metronome and hypnotizes the horse/rider into a 'zen' state. A lack of rhythm signifies tension. A horse could be rushing because it is nervous, has fallen onto the forehand, is simply being over ridden, or is in pain. Same can be true if the horse is dragging along to slowly.
A loose horse is soft and yielding longitudinally through his top line, and laterally through his body from poll to tail. A loose horse will softly chew the bit and flex his head laterally if you squeeze a rein, he will step his hind end away from your leg, and if you restrain a little with seat/rein, he slows without getting stiff in the neck/jaw/poll. If you close both legs, he steps bigger without rushing. You can combine these responses into a soft bend from poll to tail.
Weight to the inside seat bone, leg and stirrup encourage the horse to step into the new direction. Just like having a toddler on your shoulders who leans to one side making you compelled to step into that direction in order to maintain your collective balance, so does your horse step into the direction in which you step into your seat bone and stirrup. This is done without leaning by elongating your waist on that side so that your shoulders stay level with the ground.
Inside leg is responsible for maintaining the energy and forward thrust of the inside hind leg. Through its positioning at the girth and rhythmic pressure applied in time with the lifting of the corresponding hind leg, the horse molds is body around it by bringing that inside hind leg further under his center of mass… or “engaging” it.
The outside leg, guards the haunches from falling/swinging to the outside, and by increased pressure, shapes the horse more around the inside leg if the body needs to bend more because the arc of travel is steeper.
The inside rein is responsible for keeping the horse soft in the poll/jaw flexed to the inside.
The outside rein, regulates the bending action of the neck to be sure the body bends, and talks to the horse longitudinally when half-halts are needed to correct rushing or falling on the forehand.
To check that these are in order, I have this sequence of exercises to be ridden a 15m circle, making sure that it is truly round and that it does not touch any wall or rail of the arena. In other words, for this exercise, stay off of the rail. This is important so that you can be sure the rail/wall is not doing some of the work for you.
Exercise 1 (teach him to activate to your inside leg) = At the trot (rising or sitting), establish an even tempo. Ask for a slightly quicker tempo for 1/4 to 1/2 of the circle by energizing your inside leg as the inside hind comes off the ground... so if you are posting the trot that's when you go up. Do not keep the pressure on as you sit even if the horse did not respond. Simply repeat in the next step at slightly greater leg pressure. If you get the response you want, leave the horse alone and allow him to glide. If he manages a step or two, then repeat. If at the second beat of request, he still didn't respond, in the next beat, don't get firmer with the leg, but add a tap with your whip. Think of riding a skateboard- you give pushes to get the board up to speed, but then you leave it alone until you need a little push again. I think you get the idea.
Exercise 2 (teach him to flex and soften in his poll) = Allow the horse to come back into his normal tempo. Still trotting on the circle, have your fingers on the reins, but very softly on them. With your inside rein, close the 3 fingers more firmly on the rein one at a time slowly- hopefully this will get enough response from your horse, but if not, you can flex in your wrist by pushing the wrist towards the bit keeping your thumb on top. At any point the horse flexes in the poll (so that you see the top of his eyebrow and the top of his nostril and no more) go back to the soft quiet fingers holding the rein. Repeat a few times and see if your horse starts to maintain some flexion. To make sure your horse flexes only in the jaw/poll, you have to keep a consistent and steady feel on the outside rein. Be careful not to throw it away. When a horse bends correctly, you have the sensation that the horse fills up that rein- he comes to it, but should not push through it. If you throw that rein away, thinking your allowing him room to bend, he will bend in the lower part of his neck and pop his shoulder to the outside. The neck coming out of the shoulder should be straight, and any bend you see in it should be up just behind the poll. This so SOOOOO important for shoulder-in. If the neck is flexible at the point where it connects with the shoulder, the messages don’t get to the shoulder. Your reins eventually channel the energy of the shoulders into the track. Your outside rein then is critical and must be passive and supportive, hence the name supporting rein!
At any time while doing exercise 2, if the horse loses his rhythm, re-establish with exercise 1.
For exercise 3 (check his hindquarters)= you have to remember #'s 1 and 2. Keep the tempo, and soften the horse's jaw/poll. Now you will add your outside leg. You don't need to add energy, so be sure the leg does not bump or change pressures. You simply change its position, about a hands width behind the girth and press the hair. No more, no less and not changing. It’s in neutral, but the hind end should step a little more around the inside leg – or if it was drifting outward in the previous exercises, you should feel it come back onto the line of travel with his forehand. You should feel that the hind end is definitely under the horse. If it does not, don't press harder, this tightens you up. Add your whip: not punitively, encouragingly… I like to do double or triple taps, a soft “touch, touch” when reinforcing something I’m asking or teaching vs. a quick pop for a disobedience or consequence to something my horse clearly already knows. Let the horse have a chance to try to respond before asking again, or getting firmer. Then stay neutral and allow the horse to go along this way himself. He may try to rush away when you tap for the outside leg response. Stretch tall, keep your rhythm and add a half-halt if needed.
What commonly happens is that as the outside leg, comes on and positions the horse truly in a bend, he either falls onto the inside rein and gets heavy, pushes or gets upset in his mouth, stalls out, or otherwise resist because he feels claustrophobic with that rein. He does not know how to reposition his body to accommodate those feels. But, you've already shown him how to soften there, and flex. This releases the outside muscles and makes room for his inside hind leg that is now very well under his body. So, if you feel that heaviness, or tension in the neck/mouth, do exercise two and flex. Over time, he will do this more and more on his own. Keeping your outside leg though so he doesn't negotiate with you "I'll give this if you give up that.." If your horse has gotten so stiff as to lose rhythm, re-establish it, first, then flex, and then when he has accomplished both while yielding to the outside leg, leave him alone, soften the aids, but keep their position so that he can self-carry for a few strides before rewarding.
Taking the time to develop correct bend is crucial. Lateral movements flow easily out of a correctly bent horse. The most significant development of engagement, thrust, and stretch of the top line are developed through riding correctly executed bending lines and figures. When you feel that you can sink weight into the inside stirrup, bring the outside leg back and your horse starts to turn and puts some lightness into that inside rein on his own, shoulder-in will be a piece of cake.
