If not the head

THEN WHAT?

TEXT: TEAM HQ

Our previous issue told you not to fixate on your young horse’s head position when training, so now what? Do we just leave our horses alone and hope for the best? Of course not! Riding is never quite so simple.

There are many schools of thought when it comes to young horse development, but here we break down the most important aspects to focus on first and how they can result in your youngster developing the right muscles in the right places. When this training is executed accurately and patiently, your young horse will naturally start to flex at the poll and carry themselves correctly with very little ask on your part.

Please note: Whilst it is perhaps more important to get this right when training young horses with developing skeletons, this article and training style should be implemented with any horse starting out on his schooling journey.

WHY IS THIS SIGNIFICANT?

The goal of training is to improve your horse’s biomechanics or way of moving. As discussed in our previous issue, young horses mature in a way that is natural for them, and their head and neck position is dependent on the tasks they need to perform. In an ideal world for young horses, these tasks include a lot of grazing and a lot of playing.

When we add a rider into this mix, we put a whole new series of demands on our youngsters. Firstly, we load their spine in a way that they are not used to, and then if we are not perfectly balanced, we can unbalance them. Then we like to put them onto circles, which are highly unnatural movements for the horse to perform.

Watch your young horse on the lunge (ideally free lungeing) to get an idea of his natural rhythm.

If we then, on top of all of this, try to dictate where they put their head, we are really asking too much of the young horse. By doing this:

• We can overface them mentally, causing sourness or fear.

• We can overface them physically, causing pain and evasive behaviours.

• We can create a lack of confidence in the horse and their work with humans.

We must never forget that just like any athlete, a horse’s musculoskeletal system has to have time to adapt to new demands; conditioning takes time!

SO, WHERE TO START?

The first and most important step in training a youngster is achieving relaxation. A horse that is mentally and physically relaxed is much more able to use their body correctly.

Getting a horse moving freely with a rider on his back is no small task in the first place, so letting your horse find where he is comfortable is a great starting point. If you try to correct head posture at this stage, you are likely to create bracing and evasion.

Once your youngster can move around in a relaxed fashion with you on his back, you can find ‘his rhythm’. If you watch your horse move in the paddock or free in the lunge, you will see that he has a natural rhythm. You need him to establish this again with you on his back. This rhythm can be manipulated at a much later stage in training, but in the beginning, it is just about finding where your youngster is happiest to work so that you can start to build his confidence, strength and skill level. Try not to interfere with his head and neck and just let him move in all three gaits.

Note: It is also essential to work on your gaits in a way that is sympathetic to your horse’s level of readiness. When working on relaxation and rhythm, it is important to attempt to perfect one gait before moving on to the next. Rushing into canter before they have mastered the trot or walk is an easy way to get the 'wrong answers' from your youngster. Karen Rohlf puts it brilliantly “A horse’s willingness to oblige doesn’t automatically give us the right to demand.” There is absolutely no shame in going back to the walk and trot if the canter is feeling unbalanced and chaotic.

Once you are pretty confident that you and your horse can find relaxation and can quickly arrive at a comfortable and consistent rhythm, you can consider moving onto the next steps.

Once you are confident that your horse is moving freely and rhythmically and enjoying his work with you, you can start to think about the head carriage. The important point to note here is that horses cannot hold any kind of new frame for a long time due to muscle fatigue. Ever done a squat hold on the wall for more than a minute? How do your thighs start to feel as you get tired? It isn’t pretty, and can get quite painful, especially if you are not as fit as you would like to be! When a horse has worked in a certain frame in increasing amounts over time, they will be able to maintain the posture much more easily as their strength and endurance have improved. In the early stages, however, it is extremely important to reward even the slightest try by releasing the pressure (i.e allowing them to stretch down or move their head and neck in a frame they find comfortable) when they start to drop their head and neck. As they figure out the right answers for your questions, they will hold the correct position for longer. Horses like to please, but they need to know they are on the right track! Start with tiny asks – to begin with, even a slight drop of the head should prompt a break and reward – don’t worry about the exact height of head carriage or the degree of flexion at the poll at this point. Over time you will be able to get more specific in what you are looking for, but start small and build confidence.

Training outside the arena can help to avoid your youngster becoming arena-sour.

A NOTE ON RHYTHM BEFORE CONTACT

Touching on rhythm again, an important benchmark of training is the improvement in rhythm and coordinated gaits. This should be the goal before contact is picked up. If contact is picked up before the horse has developed coordinated paces, the horse may seem in the correct frame, but if you look closely, he will often shorten up his stride and not step under with his back legs correctly, having previously had little issue with this before. You can also feel the change in rhythm from the saddle. This shows that the rhythm was not sufficiently established before asking for contact and that now brace has developed. If you reach this point, give with your hands and start the process again with relaxation and then rhythm being the focus. You can come back to working on the head carriage when your horse is more established in the basics.

SPICE IT UP

When it comes to training youngsters, a little bit of creativity is often involved. We do not want arenasour five-year-olds, so try and remember that your horse’s training does not have to be done solely in an arena on circles. If you are battling to pick up a canter lead on a circle, which is extremely difficult for a young horse, practice nice strong rhythmic cantering on a gentle hill in a straight line. Reward again by releasing the pressure and telling them how clever they are. This is much easier for your horse and should give them ample confidence. Modifying your work in this way is ultimately the best way to keep your youngster stimulated and happy. Provided you are reasonably balanced in the saddle, you might find that he stretches down naturally. This is a sign that he has found his rhythm and is moving in a relaxed fashion within it. Rewarding him when he drops his head in this way is a good way of starting to work on head carriage.

Give lots of praise for even the slightest try!

SUMMARY

Young horse training is not an exact science, and there are many different schools of thought about how things should be done. The bottom line is that we want happy and healthy athletes. The above method is one we have found to work and develop our youngsters gradually over time, but we are, of course, aware that there are other strategies. If you have a particular technique for training young horses, we’d love to hear from you. Please get in touch at info@hqmagazine.co.za