On January 7 I posted my view on the importance of educating a horse to follow the feel of the inside rein with its thoughts when teaching it to turn or circle.

Several comments from dressage riders brought up the subject of teaching a horse to execute turns and circles from the rider’s seat and legs and not from the reins.

A lot of people feel the ultimate in riding is the ability to direct a horse from the rider’s seat and legs. It’s what many strive to achieve and what many consider an expression of extreme unity between horse and rider.

In my opinion, riding a horse from a rider’s seat and legs CAN be beautiful, but it can also be ugly. It is not the ultimate, but just one step toward the ultimate.

I want to be clear that it is my view that as a horse advances, the use of a rider’s seat and legs becomes more significant. But a green or novice horse has no clue how to follow the feel of the seat and legs in changing their thought. For that reason, a horse should be taught to follow the feel of the reins in turns, circles, leg yield, and shoulder in from the reins BEFORE being taught to follow the feel of the seat and reins.

For those that doubt me, please ride a green horse without reins and tell me how well it listens to your seat and legs alone.

In early training, a rider’s legs are largely responsible for conveying the idea of energy to a horse. While the reins are largely responsible for directing that energy, As a horse progresses and the response to the reins is soft and precise, the reins can be used to teach a horse the meaning of following the rider’s seat and legs for direction as well as energy.

It’s your right to disagree with me, but again I urge you to ride a green horse without reins and tell me I am wrong.

I have yet to come across an explanation why using the reins to direct a horse in turns, circles, legs yield and shoulder in with a young horse is wrong. The most common rationale I hear is that Mr. Guru Classical Trainer says so or wrote a book telling students a horse should be started using a rider’s seat and legs for turns and circles.

But again, sit on a young horse without reins and use your seat and legs to direct their movement and then tell me I am confused and Mr. Dead Old Classical Trainer was right.

In my experience, it is an almost insurmountable task to establish softness and correctness in a horse using a rider’s seat and legs without FiRST achieving excellence in the response to the reins.

I’ve ridden many dressage-trained horses at clinics that are heavy, resistant, and miserable when the reins are applied. Due diligence was not done in the early stages to create a soft and precise response to the reins. Yet, the riders believe their horse is going well because they can motor them around the arena using their seat and legs even though the turns are crooked. Poor response from the reins is not made better just because of a horse’s obedience to the rider’s seat and legs.

I have experienced horses that are good to ride from my seat and legs. But in every case, they have also been trained to be excellent when using the reins first. Never have I ridden a horse that gave a 2nd rate response to the reins but a 1st rate response to my seat and legs. Never!

Yet, many riders believe the job of the reins is mainly for addressing posture, while the rider’s seat and legs are for directing. While this can/should be true at advanced stages of training, it is false in the earlier stages.

In my view, the number one reason is that the reins offer more clarity and can be used in the most subtle way when needed. In comparison, a rider’s seat and legs are less clear about directing a thought. In relation to the reins, the seat and legs are a very crude form of communication.

As an example, when training a horse to turn I can apply the inside rein with just a few grams (ideally the weight of the reins) of pressure, and the horse will feel it and give it importance. On the other hand, an adjustment of a rider’s weight or feel of the outside leg requires much more pressure than such a minuscule amount as 5g to 10g to evoke a change of thought. Such a tiny change is lost in the background noise of movement.

When I want a horse to turn, the inside rein encourages the horse to think in the direction of the turn. With any horse that knows to follow the feel of the reins, this causes a horse to direct its focus in the direction of the turn. In that way, the horse makes the decision itself to follow the turn. In comparison, there is very little innately natural to a horse that when a rider applies the outside leg, it should think to the inside of the turn and move the shoulder to the inside. A change in thought should precede a change in feet. This is equally true if you apply the inside leg to move the hip to the outside. In both cases, if the horse is not already following the feel of the inside rein, it is driving the feet rather than directing the thought. I am sure you appreciate from past posts on this page, this is fraught with problems when trying to achieve softness. Furthermore, the natural response of a horse when the rider applies a leg - even just one leg - is to go forward and not yield the hip or shoulder laterally. To teach a horse that legs and seat mean "think laterally" a horse should already know how to do that when the inside reins are applied. This tends to not be a problem with most horses after they have learned the basics of yielding to the reins.

Softness is an emotional response to pressure and softness is softness irrespective of whether it is in response to the reins or seat or legs. We should strive in all things to establish softness in our horses. There is only value in the work IF the horse is soft. The reins play a big part in creating softness in horses. No horse can be soft to a rider’s seat and legs IF they are not already soft on the reins. We should teach softness and correctness to the reins first so that we can create that same softness and correctness when riding primarily from our seat and legs.