Thoroughbred Logic, Presented by Kentucky Performance Products: Want a Good Bend? Get Straight First
You have to create straight before you can fix any form of lean or crookedness…
Welcome to the next installment of Thoroughbred Logic. In this weekly series, Anthropologist and trainer Aubrey Graham, of Kivu Sport Horses, offers insight and training experience when it comes to working with Thoroughbreds (although much will apply to all breeds). This week ride along as Aubrey shares her logic on being straight before creating a solid bend.
In this past week, between clinics, new training horses, and my farm, I have been lucky enough to get to swing a leg over everything from my usual Thoroughbred suspects, to former steeple chasers, a seasoned hunt horse, an Icelandic Pony (perhaps the most fun I have had in ages) and a few drafty crosses among others. The variation in the rides has been super helpful from a teaching point of view.
Regardless of the breed or particularities of the horse, I kept coming back to one thing time and again (and in no way is this new news): A straight, forward-going horse is a capable, safe horse. From the foundation of forward and straight, they can create a bend, come over their back, stay in front of your leg (so ride up, half halt, turn, all the things). All of these horses, from the zippiest to the clunkiest have been able to gain agility and ridability from those two key pieces.
Needles Highway making it look easy. Photo by Lily Drew.
But creating ‘straight’ and adding in the ‘forward’ can be tricky. Horses — Thoroughbreds as well as others — have a habit of twisting themselves into pretzels (TBs just might be faster-footed pretzels) under saddle. It often only gets worse when their rider tries to take hold of that pretzel and reshape it into a forward-going bend without getting it straight first.
For instance, perhaps they drop their shoulder to the right, especially when coming around past the gate. The bend *might* look kind of correct, tracking left as that shoulder drops away from the center of the turn creating a false bend. Really the horse is leaning away from the turn and rider. The bend is just as incorrect as it is when you turn the horse the other way and with the right shoulder to the inside, they are now falling in on their turn. Same consistent problem, same not straight horse.
Ria Formosa makes it clear that she will make a pretty picture when she gets it right in the future, but for her first ride post track, I had to tactfully work to ride that right shoulder back under her. Photo by Lily Drew.
Conveniently, since it is a consistent problem, there is a consistent fix. If we think about horses as having myriad movable sections — really as many sections as they have joints (including neck and back) — we can imagine that they can create any form of forward facing “line.” Hip left, overall haunches in, first two ribs and shoulder right, nose left, pole right, TMJ locked — clearly not ideal, but pretty typical and not straight. I try to think about them in sections. I usually use a wooden snake metaphor, and discuss lining up all its pieces, but this apparently dates me. So here’s where pipe cleaners come in (I know, super modern…).
Take a straight pipe cleaner. Now push its “sections” so that it matches the horse described above, nose left, shoulder right, etc. The pipe cleaner now looks like a dented, bent line. OK fine. But try to take that pipe cleaner and move it back to a correct bend (shallow crescent on the left rein) by pushing each section back into the assumed shape of said bend. Haunches pushed back to the line, shoulder pushed back to the left, nose pushed back right, etc. Now the pipe cleaner should be “straighter on the bend,” but, clearly, there is a mess of dents everywhere where things didn’t quite go back together in a smooth arced line.
More of Ria showing her working towards straight, but not quite there yet. Photo by Lily Drew.
This disjointed bit of modern kindergarten pipe cleaner art is approximately what happens when we try to pull the proverbial nose back to the center, or move the shoulder over by taking the right hand and cocking the wrist and pressing almost into the wither (please avoid that). We might make them “look” straighter, but now the rider is a pretzel and the horse really isn’t straight at all.
So, back to the pipe cleaners (lots of metaphors, I know). The only way to really return a crooked piece of wire and bits of plastic to straight is to run it between two fingers and even everything out in a very straight line from bottom to top. Zip the fingers up from the bottom of the pipe cleaner and it erases all the dents and asymmetries.
Pipe cleaner metaphor at work. Design by author.
Back to horses: If the shoulder is dropped or if they are hanging on your inside rein, you cannot create a proper bend or go forward well without first coming through straight. Straight creates a form of neutral from which one can ask them to create a proper shape. Going back to our right-leaning horse, one must find a way to get them off that shoulder and stand tall from their hind legs.
So how does one fix it? Sure if the horse is compliant and the rider particularly skilled, you can ask them to move the shoulder left from your right leg and left rein and ride forward creating a lineup of all the joints behind their nose for a very straight horse. To do so, they might “plank” to the center or the rail — traveling rail straight on a shoulder fore. From there, one can then open the rein away from the neck (making room for the shoulder) and weight the outside rein a bit, add inside leg and lift the inside hand an inch, moving them into the new bend, and keeping them pushing from their outside hind. Thus, the pipe cleaner has been successfully devoided of dents and reshaped like a shallow crescent.
Neil riding off the rail with his shoulder moving in behind his nose to correct any lean. Photo by Lily Drew.
But for many horses and riders, riding back to straight like that is tough. Two other exercises have been very handy in helping riders (and myself) find straight and then be able to reshape the horse into a correct, forward going bend:
- Shallow Loops: In a dressage arena this would be a two-loop serpentine that leaves the rail just after a corner and bends through X or even just the quarter-line next to X. In the process of making the turn and changing the bend in the center of the serpentine, the horse will pass through straight. The shoulders will move back under the horse (even if they don’t create a full bend the opposite direction). From that straight, I encourage riders to “give up on the next turn” and ride the horse straight. So start the serpentine, bend until you find straight and then stop turning… wherever you are in the ring, just keep traveling straight. Stay straight until you’re ready to properly reshape the bend from the inside leg and out side rein. Wash and repeat.
- Turn to the rail: In this case, one needs enough space away from the arena rail to do a small circle against the direction of travel. When a horse drops the shoulder, you can create straight again by turning them over that shoulder and rolling back to the rail, carrying on in the opposite direction straight once all of their joints line up. From there, take the time and any space in the ring to come back around to tracking the initial direction without changing the bend. From that straight, eventually one can ask for the initial bend anew.
Sailor riding through shallow loops to work on straightness at the Ithaca Equestrian Center. Photo by Lily Drew.
Both of these exercises require the rider is able to identify when the horse moves their shoulders back to center and is straight underneath them from nose to tail. But from there, they can hold onto that straight and then, in combination with forward, shape them into a gentle bend and get them to push from their hind feet up and over their back.
So if all of that got convoluted — hang in there. Just know that one has to create straight first before one can fix any form of lean or crookedness. Take the wildly and literally out-of-line pipe cleaner and move it through straight before shaping the desired bend.
Ramen (Plamen) working quite hard to not drop the left shoulder. Photo by Lily Drew.
OK, yes yes, I need to update my metaphors to the 21st Century, but there you have it…
Go ride folks, and enjoy getting the shoulders straight behind the nose and seeing how good your horse feels when they can truly travel forward.
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