This photograph shows a very handsome show cob, depicted in the showing ring. I have chosen it because it shows some interesting contrasts to the photograph from last month, and if you can lay your hands on this it would be interesting to compare the two.

We all know that once you are at a competition, things have a habit of going wrong, and I suspect that this horse is rather more onward bound than his rider wants him to be. Her hands are certainly involved in restraining him; her reins are rather long, and her hands have come back and down towards the front of the saddle. The photograph gives the impression that if we were to suddenly cut the reins, both horse and rider would get a very big surprise when the ‘prop’ at the other end of the rein was suddenly missing!

Riders often think that they are being kinder to the horse by having their reins on the long side, but in my experience, riders are much more likely to start pulling when the rein is too long. This is because they have to bring their hands back to take up the slack in the rein, and the boundary between this and pulling is virtually nonexistent. When the reins are shorter and the hand is more up and out in front of the rider, it is easier to do a passive resistance when the horse becomes strong, and to immediately give again. Later on I will describe how this gives the rider a viable alternative to pulling.

The horse is wearing a double bridle, and both snaffle and curb reins are taught. The cheek of the curb has been pulled back to show a ninety-degree angle with the horse’s lips, and this suggests that the curb chain is too long. When it is the correct length, it stops the cheek of the bit from rotating to more than a forty five degree angle. When the curb rein remains taught for a length of time the horse’s lower jaw becomes compressed between the bit (which lies on his bars and tongue), and the curb chain, (which lies in the groove behind his lower lip). In the extreme situation, his lower jaw can become numb, so it obviously pays to avoid this. However, it is a manifestation of Sod’s Law that snaffle reins tend to get longer and loopier whilst curb reins tend to get shorter and taughter. Riding in a double bridle requires great skill, and is best left to those whose body position is so stable that they will not fall into the trap of pulling on the reins – particularly the curb rein.

It is hard to pin-point the phase of the rise or sit at which this photograph was taken – in fact, I fear that the rider is more likely to be hovering above the saddle than making a defined rise and sit. Once your hand is involved in pulling back, it is difficult to persuade yourself to thrust your pelvis forward and make a defined rise. This thrust forward is in such contradiction to the pull back that it never happens. Ideally, the thrust is such that the thigh rotates over the knee, taking you to the balance point from which you would land on your feet on the riding arena if your horse were whisked out from under you by magic. (This balance point is depicted clearly in last month’s photograph, in which you can also see that both rider and horse would be virtually unaffected if we suddenly cut the reins.)

Even if our rider on the cob did thrust her pelvis forward, she could not reach that balance point, since her feet are further forward than they should be, and she could not get her pelvis over them. In fact, her body is rather ‘folded up’ as I discussed in last month’s article, and her feet and shoulders are forward whilst her hands and backside are back. It might well help her to think of bringing her body more into the position of limbo dancing, since this would encourage her to undo that fold by bringing her feet and shoulders back whilst bringing her pelvis more forward. However, I suspect that our efforts to realign her body would probably be in vain until we persuaded her to push her hand forward.

How, then, will she stop the horse from speeding off with her? The most important factor is that she gains control of the speed at which he moves his legs. Her body has to become like a metronome, which sets a one-two-one-two rhythm in the rise that never varies – despite the horse’s attempts to speed it up. We need to ask, ‘Who is dancing to who’s tune?’, and in this picture, the rider is dancing to the horse’s tune. She has colluded with the speeding up of his legs – to the point, perhaps, that she has completely given up the attempt to be a metronome, and is hovering above the saddle. There is only one tool left in her tool kit as she attempts to gain control: pulling on the reins. It shouldn’t be in there at all, but since we are all human it is every riders’ last resort (and some riders’ first resort!). The chances are, however, that the more she pulls, the more he pulls, and the more he pulls the more she pulls, until they would both get a very nasty shock if we could end this counter-balance by cutting the reins!

I have talked in previous articles about how to reorganise the rider’s alignment, and set up a correct mechanism for the rise, so I will now return to the concept of the passive resistance. This enables you to use the hand in a positive way. The following exercise assumes that you are sitting with a shoulder/hip/heel line, and with your seat bones pointing down. If you have also mastered bearing down (which I have described in previous articles) you will be able to do the exercise even better. Have someone stand in front of your horse’s head and hold the reins as if she were the horse. Let the reins be long enough that there is a loop of rein between this person’s hands and the bit, otherwise the horse will interfere with the exercise every time he moves his head. This means that you (as rider) will be holding the reins close to the buckle.

Be sure that the rein passes through your hand so that it covers the first bone in your fingers. Your reins should be narrow enough to lie in the space between your palm and the first joint of the fingers, and this can make so much difference that it is worth investing in narrower reins if yours are too wide. The rein is held between your thumb and your first finger, with your thumb pressing lightly on it. The middle joint of your thumb must be up, making the thumb into an inverted ‘V’ shape. The rein is not held by clasping your fingers tightly around it; instead your finger tips should rest lightly against your palm.

In an ideal contact, you can just feel the presence of your partner, and she can just feel you, so the rein is not a loop. Be sure that you have not tried to make a contact by drawing your hand backwards; the contact must happen by virtue of the length of the rein and where you put your hand on it. When a rider unknowingly keeps pulling her hand back to make a contact I often put my palms against the first bone in her fingers, and make her push her fists forward against my resistance. This creates the feeling I mean by the idea of holding the rein ‘as if you were pushing a baby buggy’. If you were to do this there would only be a consistent push forward, without any pulling back or fiddling.

Once you have set up an ideal contact, your partner then gradually increases that contact, and you respond only by pressing harder on the rein with your thumb. At the same time, think of your hands connecting to your elbows, your elbows connecting to your shoulders, and your shoulders connecting to your shoulder blades. Then think of your shoulder blades pulling down towards your waist band in a ‘V’ shape. When your hands connect to your back like this, it is very easy to make a passive resistance, which draws on the strength of your torso and not the strength of your arms. To prove to yourself that this is a different feeling to pulling, pull your hands back instead. The feeling in the hand, the rein and the body is very different for both partners.

The rider has two ways of saying ‘steady’ to the horse. The most important involves her body, and the way in which she maintains control of the tempo by refusing to let the horse reset her metronome. The second involves this passive resistance, which should ideally last for only one ‘down’ beat in rising trot. If it lasts for longer than three beats, you have been seduced into pulling. As the great masters have always said, one of the most important aspects of riding is the way that the rider must give on the rein after each time she has taken on it.....

I hope our rider in this photograph can get the help she needs to make this easier for her – and of course, she will have to master the art at home before it becomes easy in competition. Once she has these skills, I am sure that her horse will impress the judges even more than he does already.