Principles of the Warm up
“That the horse should be ‘on the bit’ in all his work should need no detailed elaboration. All sorts of excuses are offered to explain a failure to comply with the requirements. The horse is said to be too young: he has only been out of his stable for ten minutes and has not yet agreed to come on the bit – and many others. Needless to say, all such explanations are valueless, the simple and unequivocal fact being that once the horse has begun his work, no excuses are valid and only poor horsemanship can explain the failure.”
– Anthony Crossley, ‘Advanced Dressage.’
Warming up work is not ‘sloppy work’ – it is just as demanding as any other work, the only difference is that we are gymnasticizing different muscles in a different way. Read Anthony Crossley again – it is much easier to make lots of little confrontations to your horse, than let it go around like a giraffe for fifteen minutes and then suddenly demand that he go like a dressage horse, that’s when you will get resistance.
Whenever a horse is grazing or drinking, his back is bent upwards like a bow. Then, when we sit up on his back the opposite will happen. His back will tend to sag in the middle. A hollow back, amongst other things is stressful and damaging to the vertebrae.
At the halt it is not too difficult for the horse – he has four legs to support him. Walking is no great problem, as he has two or three legs on the ground. However trotting and cantering are big problems because of the jumping and landing with the rider’s weight coming down with each stride. If the horse is not round, there will be big problems maintaining correct canter, and the longer the horse carries himself incorrectly, the more the strain and the more he is developing the wrong muscles.
The head must be lowered to enable the shoulders to be used correctly. This is like when we learn to swim. If we don’t have instruction, we carry our head up in a seemingly natural position and dog paddle along with a tight hollow back and short round hand strokes. It is similar with the horse – he has to be taught to lower his head, so that he can open up his shoulder to allow his back to lift and the hind legs then have room to come forward. He must become a back goer, not a leg goer – a swimmer not a dog paddler.
When this outline is established, the hind legs can be pushed more under, the front raised and positioned and then we can put the horse on the bit. We must take this into consideration when we warm up – every time we ride – not only for the daily work outs, but for competition also. Often it is advantageous to only do warming up or loosening. The athlete does not do 100 metre sprints every day, but he does do his daily gymnastics, and of course he doesn’t sprint 100 metres before his race.
Essentially what we are showing in this series of photographs are some useful suppling exercises for horses of different levels and with different problems, but we are not just loosening the horse up, we are also putting him in a mental frame where he is ready to work, we are telling him, this is work, not play in the paddock.
1 – Here we are starting off a working session with Samantha Hodges, and Fad at the walk. She’s dropping the reins, because he is nice and rounded already. Had he not been rounded, Sam would have had to take contact and round him up, because it’s no good allowing him to go with a hollow back. This is the sort of loose rein that we are looking for to start off a session, and we’re looking for something similar in trot and canter as well, we’re looking for that sort of loose rein, not a hollow back loose rein, flopping around with its nose stuck out.
2 – Here Sam is just taking up contact again and confirming that Fad is accepting the bit, and putting a bit of leg on and pushing him…
3 – and she is really stepping him through, now he’s lowered his neck as a result, and this is a really nice loosening up walk. We would walk him like that for probably only five minutes on both reins, because he is a relaxed type of horse, and he’s not straight out of the box. If he were a tense horse, we would have to spend more time, maybe ten minutes- don’t rush off in the trot, when the walk is not good.
4 – That walk was quite satisfactory, so Sam has moved off in trot. Again Sam’s confirmed that he’s nice and round. It’s particularly important going into the trot that he’s round, that he doesn’t start off and throw his head and muck about.
5 – Here we are on the other rein, we’ve got to work both ways.
6 & 7 – In a way I like the horse better here, but in this one Sam is really showing the loopy rein, showing the testing rein. He’s lower’ in 7 than in 6. He’s lower in 7 as a result of Sam giving him a half halt and then testing the rein, and that’s made him lower his neck, and he’s stepping through very nicely and using his shoulder. We give the horse as much top line as possible, down with the nose so it’s level with the elbow and then out with the hand. So that he goes down and doesn’t shorten his neck. To get him less behind the vertical, really push the hands and push the top of his neck out.
8 – We’ve established the roundness, and in this one we’ve gone to sitting trot, and Sam’s just sitting in here and making him carry her. Now that Fad’s got his back up, she can sit on him. In rising trot, Sam was forward and light on his back. I like the horse to carry the centre of gravity underneath – when the rhythm gets too fast, they get the centre of gravity out in front, and then they run with that – they lose the balance.
9 – Here we’ve moved on to bending and loosening at the trot. We’re going on a circle and using the inside leg to push him into the outside rein, to get him to accept the outside rein confirming again the acceptance of the outside rein, and engaging the inside hind leg. We do ten metre circles on both reins, serpentines and lots of changes of rein.
10 – Now we’ve moved on to a light seat canter, Sam’s off his back and just cantering him in that light seat. Like rising trot, just to make sure in the canter he’s moving forward and down and we’re not expecting him to carry her weight yet. Sam couldn’t do that if he was a horse who was going to run away, She’d probably have to sit, and that can also happen with the trot, if it’s a horse that wants to run away, it may be difficult to rise to the trot, because that tends to allow them to run off. You might have to sit, you can’t go forward seat on some horses because they just go.
11 – Now she’s taken the saddle and he’s coming through nicely with the hind leg, and using the shoulder, stretching his neck, and lengthening that top line.
12 – Now Sam’s able to give the reins because he’s balancing nicely. Sam’s testing to see he’s really carrying himself and not on the forehand now we can see that he’s not on the forehand in the previous frame. Sam’s not supporting him, because we mustn’t support them with the hands. We hold the rhythm back so we can really loosen both reins, or certainly the inside rein. I really like to see the horse start to push the outside rein and not just flopping along doing nothing because then he’s not using his hocks.
13 – Here Sam’s using a circle…
14 – And then on to shallow serpentines in counter canter to start putting him a bit together. Before we move on to the next stage, we’ve got to look for balance and self carriage, acceptance of the hand. Remember to keep the centre of gravity underneath, not out in front. The rider needs to be containing the rhythm and containing the steps, so the steps mustn’t be too long either, and the rhythm mustn’t be too fast. We’re trying to develop self carriage and balance.
Compare two sorts of runners – the sprinter and the jogger. The sprinter has his centre of gravity out in front of him; the jogger has his centre of gravity underneath him and that is how we want it with the horse. Out in front, and he falls on the forehand . Balance can only come when the centre of gravity is underneath.
Rhythm is the rider’s responsibility. If we leave it to the horse it may be too fast or too slow or quite irregular. The horse must learn to be adjusted by the half halts of the rider who must learn the correct rate of the rhythm. At the walk and trot try counting in a series of six steps of the outside front leg as it comes to the ground, to help you establish a steady rhythm. The length of the step should also be contained – also it should not be the horse’s choice – too long can be a resistance preventing balance. The rider must ask the horse to become committed to him.
We must train the horse that he always wants to go down, so that we put him up to the degree of collection that we want for an exercise. If he is always trying to go up by himself and he has to be held down then, he is not ready – he is still above the bit and therefore hollow backed.
This article first appeared in the July 1992 issue of THM.