If you’ve been studying the programme to this point, already you will have ridden many circles, possibly hundreds or more, which will have started to pay big dividends for you in regard to impulsion and emotional fitness. But what does it truly mean to ride a circle?
Consider impulsion and flexion and how they relate to each other. If a horse gets scared or confused, he goes into flight from fear mode, his whole body engages and his hindquarter is powered up. He is engaged to flee as quickly as possible - forwards, fast, gone. You may have noticed this when playing with your horse on longer lines or at liberty. When he gets tense, he gets tight, his whole body locks up and he gets stiff. When you ride, you will feel him become rigid and his movement will become bouncy and jarring.
Try to recall a time when your horse got scared on line, or at liberty. He may have been trotting or cantering around you. What happened to his body and the way he ran? As he got more scared, did he get faster? Did his body start to lean over toward the inside of the circle? If you were on-line, you may have noticed the rope came off of the ground and got really tight almost like he was dragging you around. This is because, although he was running in a circle, his body had become braced and straight effectively putting his nose and butt outside of the circle. He was running in a series of short straight lines like a hexagon rather than a smooth, round circle.
It’s a bit like riding a bicycle, the only way to keep it upright easily, is to be moving. The faster you go, the easier it is to keep it from falling over. So if your horse is going around a circle with his body tight, the only way for him to stay upright is to go fast. The faster he goes the more he will lean; the more he leans the stiffer he will get, therefore losing flexion. If you lose impulsion, you lose flexion … the two are inextricably linked. So, to have flexion you must have impulsion.
Lets consider a horse running on a circle with impulsion. When a horse has impulsion, he is thinking and calm. He is thinking about where his feet are going and he softens and relaxes his body. His feet will come underneath him and his hindquarter will work softly in order to follow the shape of the circle. To follow the shape of the circle, he has to bend his body, therefore flexing. To have impulsion you must have flexion. We are talking lateral flexion in this instance.
If you watch a horse running impulsively you will notice him leaning over and running braced and over the forehand. Horses will often do this when they are disunited or on the outside lead of the circle. As they lose rhythm they become impulsive; it is hard for them to stay upright like this. If you can help them get their legs untangled, you will notice them calm down almost immediately. Their weight will go back to the hindquarter which has now softened and they will settle down.
Next time you are riding a circle, be very conscious of how many sections of your horse are on the actual circle. Is it just his mid-sections 3 and 4 with his nose and butt on the outside of the circle, or does he have his feet underneath him and all sections on the circle. If your horse is thinking that the middle of the circle is the best place to be, chances are he will look into the circle and soften. If he does not recognize it as a place of comfort, he will probably be thinking out of the circle and looking away.
The fastest, easiest and least stressful way to find impulsion is to look for softness and flexion in your horse. If you constantly just ride him forward and allow him to run on his front end, you will be working on impulsion for a very long time. If you put effort into truly softening his hindquarter and practising things like soft hindquarter yields, spirals, changes of direction with the emphasis on comfort when things are soft, you will save yourself a lot of skin off your butt and your horse from doing a lot of running around.
When you ride a circle, make sure your whole body and focus are riding a circle. If your horse gets stiff and a part of him comes off the circle, think of these phases to correct him; 1- eyes, 2 – belly button, 3 – leg, 4 – rein.
1. eyes: make sure you are focusing on the circle. Depending on how well your horse follows your focus, you may have to adjust where you look. Into the middle to make the circle smaller, out a little to make it bigger. Remember, focus is more than just your eyes.
2. belly button: Your body must also be travelling on the circle. So many times people think they are riding a circle, however their body is facing out of the circle, so they need to make many corrections with the reins.
3. leg: In this case it’s the inside leg. If you put a little pressure or weight on the inside leg, that should soften that side of the horse.
4. rein: Again, this is the inside rein. Lift it just enough to tip your horse’s nose to the inside of the circle and to support your leg. It should be soft and light, like sewing with cobwebs.
Doing this should put your horse back on the circle. Remember the release is important. Your horse must learn that it is his responsibility to have impulsion and flexion and stay on the circle. If you pick up on the rein you can hold him there, however you defeat the purpose and you’ll be holding him in position for ever . Get to where you can do 4 laps like this with your hand resting on his wither. Your contact riding will benefit enormously from it when you can do it.
Read More Road To Horsemanship articles.
- By Meredith Ransley, Quantum Savvy.