How often do we hear slogans like: calm and forward or ride up into the heavens, or transitions should flow like one river flows into the other? These 'catch-phrases', while designed to paint the ideal picture, more often than not end up in a heap of ambiguity like passages of the Bible, spared of the intense effort needed to explore their real significance.

When conducting a clinic in a new place, I often make a point of asking riders to show me their interpretation of the most ideal contact. I stand in front of the horse and hold the reins close to the mouthpiece while the rider manipulates the reins from the saddle. The messages I receive are startling. More often than not, the 'interpretation' reveals itself as constant fumbling on the reins with short, jerky pressures, which at best only sends confusing signals leading to an insensitive dry mouth and a lock-up of the jaw muscles. The door to further interaction is effectively shut.

Most riders are unaware of the fact that they have tight wrists, either holding the reins with open fists or too tight a fist and almost all riders have no clue what a real good fist should feel like unless I show them. They suddenly realize how weak their hands are and how difficult it is to keep those hands under control at all times in all gaits.

Many riders manipulate the reins with tight or tense arm muscles and tight shoulders that send tension through the upper body over the back into the seat, effecting thighs, knees, lower legs and ankles, which in turn prevents any influence of the rider's weight. The horse feels all that tension and responds to it with tensions of his own, successfully locking up the neck, chest, shoulders, back, belly and hindquarters, preventing both rider's and horse's connection to the ground. A horse that is truly through opens his body to the rider's weight and permits the combined weight to flow through his relaxed body into the ground. Without that willingness to open up, no half halt will go through and no bending of the horse's joints can be achieved. One can already see the negative chain reaction beginning with a bad hand-seat leading to a tight, locked-up horse that refuses to respect the rider as well as the ground on which it moves.

Everything in riding can be compared to the flowing of one river into the other. When we say a horse should be on the bit, we should keep in mind the following: on the bit is not possible without being on the leg, which in turn is not possible without being in front of the whip. In front of the whip means the horse both understands and reacts to the difference between a light touch versus a pressure versus vibrations of the whip. The touch is to assure the horse that the whip is a friend, the pressure creates in a trained horse movement or more power while in motion, the vibrations of the whip transmit a stay alert signal to move forward with an inner energy and never to sink below a certain level of sensitivity that has been assigned to him by the rider. A vibrating whip should create an active horse. A horse can only be active when free of tension. As we learned in the above-mentioned scenario, the horse needs the assurance of a relaxed rider to achieve his own relaxation. And that begins in our set-up with good hands, etc. etc. etc.

All whip aids of course are backed up by leg pressure. But if the legs are stiff because they are attached to a stiff body, they are neither able to feel the horse's movements nor properly time their actions. With stiff wrists, tense lower arm muscles and tight shoulders, it is not possible to handle the whip with grace and only results in sending unclear messages to the horse. The whip will act on the horse’s body as the bit acted in our example in the horse's mouth: short, sharp and meaningless. It will only encourage tightening of the body against those fragmented aids that do not flow uninterruptedly through the relaxed body of the rider into the relaxed body of the horse and from there into the ground.

In addition to the discussed shortcomings, it should be understood that only the right equipment would support the training efforts. If the whip is too light, too long, too short or too stiff, it will interfere with all finer aids, making it paramount that only the best equipment should be used.

We can clearly see that it is of marginal value to focus on any one specific aspect of riding while at the same time ignoring or short-changing all others. It is not sufficient to practice only scales to be a virtuoso on a musical instrument; one must include arpeggios, octaves, trills, sight-reading etc. to achieve total mastery. That is the reason why the Old Masters said it takes several life times before perfection in riding can be expected. Do you feel better or worse now?

- KM