What is baffling in watching some videos is the question why trainers are overbending their horses? I’ve seen this more in the western training but I don’t get it. To me, overbending is a beginner riding problem and not something I would want to train my horse to do while riding.
If you were riding and turning a horse, you would simply want to see the horses’ inside eye during the turn. That is enough bend for your average 20 or 15 m circle turn.
When you overbend you are causing several problems to occur:
1.) makes the horse go crooked – if looking from above the bend comes from the poll and not the length of the spine. It’s not surprising that horses rode this way become sore in the poll;
2.) puts the horse on the forehand – because this turn puts the horse out of balance, the weight is thrown onto the front. The majority of western horses I’ve seen are on the forehand as well as hunters;
3.) simply overkill – you are teaching the horse that he must have over-the-top requests before responding. I would rather teach the horse to respond to light and small requests for movement.
You will also see, when given the aid to turn, that these horses move away sideways – escaping in the outside shoulder and not using their spine or hindquarters to generate the pivot.
I deliberately put Z in a bad position during turning to take these photos:
In the above photo, too much force is given, too quickly on the side rein. This pulls the horses’ head to the side, but the horse is not providing a bend throughout the body for a proper turn.
As a rough guide, you want the nose over the chest. The red bars show how far we are from this ideal. The horse is clearly only turning it’s head – not it’s body.
You will often hear someone say, “the horse has popped his shoulder on the turn” or he is “escaping in the outside shoulder.” In the above photo, the darkened area shows how the shoulder is outside the bend because the turn is being made out of balance.
A bad turn also results in the horse being heavy on the forehand. In the above photo, Z is landing heavy on her inside front leg. If you were riding, you might feel your inside leg “falling to the ground” or have the feeling you were leaning into the turn.
