Dressage musings...contact and hands

I always think of the contact being "soft like elastic" not "soft like cotton", and the feeling of the whole horse being elastic, from nose to tail - or tail to nose, if anyone's looking for an opportunity to be pedantic;).

It's such a difficult thing to teach but there's nothing better than seeing someone have the light bulb moment when you shriek "yessss, that's it!" at them. :D
 
I think the important point here is about being CLEAR with the contact. Horses do not understand degrees of correctness, it is black or white, right or wrong. I do actually think you have a valid point Weezy, when I was having dressage tution(under the illusion of being an eventer!) I was always taught to be clear, after years of 'defensive riding' on awful horses it was quite a different thing to actually learn to ride a horse truly forward and into a contact.
One analogy I like to use is think of sink filling with water, you create the energy and the plug stops it from running away!
*toddles off back to the land of hacking/hunting as all this dressage has given me a headache*
 
Fascinating thread! I was talking about this with my trainer this very morning. She was saying that it's ok to have a firmer contact in trot, but in canter and in walk (and in piaffe) you really should only have little more than the weight of the reins. Otherwise the horse won't be in true self-carriage. You should always have a consistent contact on the outside rein, while the inside rein has to be soft and giving at all times, otherwise the hindleg will be blocked.
 
Thanks for the contribution FB, really appreciated. Must admit I hadn't thought of having different degrees of contact in different gaits, that's something to ponder. *thinks*
I suppose that because the head and neck are reasonably still in trot, a more definite contact can be sought (and perhaps the back braced more?), whereas in walk and canter one needs to be lighter, to be able to 'row' with the shoulders/arms/elbows/hands as the horse's head and neck move...?
 
She did not elaborate on the reason. And I think the ideal is to have the same degree of lightness all around - I guess that what she was trying to say was that you can get away with a firmer contact in trot. I thought it could be because if the horse is not in true self carriage in canter, he will start 'nodding'? While in trot, as a 'still' pace as you say, this cannot happen?
 
its a very good point about the movement of the arms in walk and canter, once i point it out to people its a huge lightbulb and the contact can then be consistant, not giving/taking/giving/taking with the arch of the stride.
 
FrodoBeutlin said:
Fascinating thread! I was talking about this with my trainer this very morning. She was saying that it's ok to have a firmer contact in trot, but in canter and in walk (and in piaffe) you really should only have little more than the weight of the reins. Otherwise the horse won't be in true self-carriage. You should always have a consistent contact on the outside rein, while the inside rein has to be soft and giving at all times, otherwise the hindleg will be blocked.
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I am FAR from an expert, but my trainer tells me that Shadow is very good in the rein, he is just there in your hands, he's not light nor heavy just there (hard to explain), and as FB says he is firmer in the trot.

Its one of those topics that I think instructors over look. Certainly my previous trainer (who has competed internationally) never took the time to explain to me how he should feel in the rein, but my current trainer is very hot on how they feel in the rein! I think alot of this maybe down to his mare, who despite being a GP horse is terrible for tucking her nose in and dropping behind, he tells me you literally have nothing there in front :eek:
 
Im going to be really odd here - as I think that contact all stems from security in the seat.

I think seat is also a form as contact - you can "hold" a horse in suspension through your seat IMO. Hard to explain!
Everything is a form of contact - your leg, your seat and your hands. people forget about the first two, but you cant have "contact" without them.

Thats my opinion anyways - and feel free to call it twaddle!

My contact is inconsistent in my left hand - which I am working hard on and is millions times better just not fully "there" yet. I am also weaker on my left leg and I find it harder to keep it still and "supportive" with the horse. See the connection? I know I cant get my contact "there" without working on my left leg.

The problem I see is that to take the contact is to support the power from behind and to contain it - but if you create more power then it makes sense you need more contact in hand!
Not Strong as such, but in proportion to the amount of energy coming from behind and up.

In the top top dressage horses, the easier it is for the horse to work into the hand the softer it becomes, but because of all that explosive power a more supportive contact is needed than the average low level rider?

Im not sure Im making much sense - feel free to crit, as its only my amateur view on it all :)
 
Prince33Sp4rkle said:
definately IMHO.

the amount of power that must come though and in to the hand far exceeds what most people expect, no pulling down, or hanging, but definately there.

iv popped a few clients on Bruce to give them a feel for this and they've been stunned at how much they can feel in the contact though the harder movements, again not arm ache territory but definately forward in to both hands.

wishy washy contact is the enemy of true connection.
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The problem is a horse is so incredbly sensitive and you english lot train all that softness out so you have to pull on both reins just to get an effect, And then you keep pulling even when the horse gives so it gets deader and heavy on the forhand because there is no release so he dosent know when he is doing the right thing!!! I was taught the legs drive the horse onto the bit and he has to work from behind and you always give and take with the reins
I think alot of people need to go back to basics and train more with the horse in mind.. IMHO
 
im sorry, do i know you? have you ridden my horses?

please note that i said not pulling, not arm ache, but there in to both hands.

a lot of people think that *light=nothing* as in no weight in the hands at all, cant feel the mouth at all, which IMHO is not right.
 
perfect11s, I'm kind of with you on this one... if the rider does not soften to reward the horse when it gives at the jaw and poll, how does the horse know it is doing the correct thing? Secure can still be light and elastic, it doesn't have to be wishy-washy.
What about the give-and-retake-the-reins movement, isn't that to prove that the rider isn't using a strong contact in front to hold the horse in the outline? If the rider has a really strong contact in front, is the horse in true self-carriage?
only_me, I see what you mean, good points there, I agree that you can hold the horse with the seat and legs and shoulders.
 
i think the there are several instructors/trainers than say "elastic" contact. so soft as in not braced rather than soft as in washing lines...
My RI generally says you want a positive contact. the horse needs to know you are there, but it shouldn't be blocking the front end
 
I think a lot of riders can over do the softening in response to a correct moment from the horse. A Canadian friend of mine recently gave me some tips (she's riddem to PSG in Canada and trained a lot of young horses) and she emphasised the importance of not "over" softening, once the horse is there in the contact don't then give them the contact but hold them there, in essence hold their hand, if you soften you're effectively dropping them so keep the contact in support.

IMO a horse that's too soft in the hand is ducking behind the contact and not working into the rein.

I guess though the definition of contact and feel does vary between individuals. For me a horse that's soft is one that isn't setting its jaw/leaning but also one that is actually taking/working into the contact and not one that is "floaty" in the hand.
 
nothing to add but finding this really interesting. I struggle with my contact, one trainer has said I have too much, another has said I need more....
Have also noticed recently that my right hand, and right leg are a lot stronger/firmer than my left and horses tend to go better on the right rein for me so really working on my left leg and left hand ATM
 
Am really glad that this has got people talking and thinking.

I know, for sure, that my best pace to ride in is canter (funny that ;) ). I can hold a horse with my body and legs in a powerful way, and get more correctness, so interesting thinking about seat and body.

I do, however, not believe that contact just comes with good balance and an independent seat, nor from kicking a horse on from behind and over the back. As I said, it HAS to be about catching the power and harnessing it in front and it doesn't just magically happen from sitting well or ensuring rear end power, it is a complicated equation of many, many things, and varies from horse to horse.

perfect11s - not a very nice generalisation there! IMO a horse that is pulled into a position does not go in a way that I find pleasing. You can see it from the ground easily - however you do, sadly, see it an awful lot, especially in low level dressage/eventing and that makes me sad. Just because a horse has an arched neck and a placed head does not mean it is working correctly. The amount of horses I have seen well placed in dressage competitions that are 100% broken at the third vertebrae always reminds me why I would never, ever, contemplate competitive dressage!
 
A little off topic here, well slightly... (I haven't read all of the post so apologies if most of this has been covered)

My trainer a few weeks ago told me the definition of 'on the bit' as a horse who is happy and confident to seek the contact and take it forward and down. She then went on to clarify that my horse was most definitely NOT on the bit, as he was so light in the hand and I was unable to take a stronger contact and he was so uptight. Taking this into mind, I used the inside rein/reward (Weezy the first time I heard of this it was in one of your posts years ago) so that my horse learned that having his head down was a comfortable place to be. (This is something I was taught by another trainer, and I think it really does work; a little rub on their neck/withers when they are doing well and they try so much harder)
I used draw reins initially to get him to put his head down, and once it was there I made a massive fuss of him, and working on this reward basis, and just doing simple things in the school, and two weeks later I have a horse with a 'head down button', as in I open my hands and scratch his withers with my inside hand and he immediately drops his head and reaches for the contact.

Another part of this was I had a lesson with William Miflin and he took off my horse's flash which enabled me to 'feel' the contact more - I was told that the bit is more effective without the flash, and as it turned out his mouth was stiller without it.

Developing my horse's confidence to take the bit (i'm getting to my point here!) means that now there is a contact, he is not light in my hands - in fact he is starting to get heavy. William told me that I should ride him simply untill he starts to feel heavier in the hand, and this is where I should start introducing transitions to start to get him to 'sit' and this is where he will lighten up infront and start to develop self carriage. Today I started to use half halts to get him to go more uphill - I was told to imagine my horse like some scales, and the reason he was too heavy in my hand was because he was downhill. But now I know that a true contact is not soft - it is not heavy either, I can just 'feel' it down the reins.

Another thing is if you hold the reins through your hands like you would hold a mug, thumbs closer to the bit, (Saw this in a Carl Hester demo) it makes you(Well it certainly does for me) have a much more elastic contact than holding the reins in the traditional way - my horse certainly prefers it - and it enabled me to really feel. I then try to mimic this with my hands in the normal way.

So yes, there really does have to be something there!
 
i find i have to get the contact with a firmer hand then go soft but make sure its not intermittant. when i say go soft i usually loosen my grip on the reins but still keep the contact and not let the reins go. it usually means she stays in a nice out line and is easyer to slow down. she has done medium dressage with very high scores so something must work
 
I'm in Germany at the moment and the trainers have focused on consistent contact with a "living" hand if you like. Its so common to see riders reins going slack at times (and if it's the outside one that's a big no no). As Tempi explained, inside leg to outside rein, the horse should be trained to bend round the inside leg and is rewarded by momentary giving of the inside rein. You can tell how much outside rein aids you need by where the horse's shoulder is, it can't really be explained on paper as the contact is dynamic and always responding to the situation.*

It's more about the overall feeling surely than thinking how hard do I pull the reins, which only leads to tenseness somewhere. Hands should always be relaxed and not gripping, elbows soft. Riding the back end first and foremost. Once the horse starts stepping through and relaxing the back it feels quite intuitive how much rein pressure you need don't you think? You then get the feeling you can place the horse's head anywhere you like or drop the inside rein, and nothing else will change.

I think amateur riders often have a problem with letting the reins slip too long at times and then losing the important outside contact, so the horse has nowhere to direct the power from the hind end and becomes too long and flat. Fiddling with the inside rein is definitely not the answer!
 
Once the horse starts stepping through and relaxing the back it feels quite intuitive how much rein pressure you need don't you think?
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Therein lies the problem IMO. This is not explained enough to riders. Also, everyone knows the old adage *inside leg to outside hand*, it is a mantra, but again, how many riders really DO understand the sentiment?

Also PULL...always got to have a bit no-no next to it. Pulling, IMO, means a continued backwards hand/shoulder/elbow and instructors MUST explain that contact has nothing to do with pulling, but about holding - again, herein lies another explanation problem!
 
Weezy said:
Therein lies the problem IMO. This is not explained enough to riders. Also, everyone knows the old adage *inside leg to outside hand*, it is a mantra, but again, how many riders really DO understand the sentiment?

Also PULL...always got to have a bit no-no next to it. Pulling, IMO, means a continued backwards hand/shoulder/elbow and instructors MUST explain that contact has nothing to do with pulling, but about holding - again, herein lies another explanation problem!
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Agreed.
On the second point, my trainer says "your hands belong to the horse" once they're holding the reins, and this image works for me - it means that AT MOST I hold, but if I can I allow forward, that I am always thinking forward with my hands.
Not easy to explain, again, though.
And also, some riders just glaze over if there is too much explanation. People learn in different ways... some like to feel it, some need to be shown it (not always easy though because if they don't have the feel yet, the horse might not stay consistent enough with them aboard for them to be able to feel it), I know now that I like long explanations (surprise surprise) and that mantras work for me. Not so everyone...

It is so difficult to teach feel, because how much weight you need in the rein varies with every horse, every level of training, even which pace (judging from above, not something I'd consciously realised before). Not sure I know what the answer is. Maybe those Fantastic Elastic reins might not be a bad idea after all...
 
Random comment to put in here, but this was a lightbulb moment for me recently. Chunky is a tank of a warmblood, who thoroughly enjoys tanking along, with his nose poking and firmly on his shoulders.....I recently trained with Andrew Day and his words keep ringing in my ears

"soft horses get giving hands....".

Meaning ask and then give. Dont be afraid to ask and use my hands, but If I dont reward him with the give, he wont ever be trained to do what i want. Simple, but has worked for me.
 
FinnMcCoul said:
.I recently trained with Andrew Day and his words keep ringing in my ears

"soft horses get giving hands....".
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Andrew is excellent at explaining things very clearly. I only had a couple of sessions with him years and years ago, but there are still sayings of his I remember vividly. He has the knack of being able to put things into a few memorable words, rather than bore the pupil with loads of waffle!
 
Really enjoying this thread! Lots of really useful insights and things to think about.

I found this article helpful - http://www.classicaldressage.co.uk/contact.html

Here's a quote from it:

"The contact in the hand should never be more than the energy coming from the horse’s hind legs: “The hand receives what the leg puts into it”. It should feel alive, never dead and dull, having the same qualities, as say, a small fish on the end of a fishing line or a kite on the end of a string."
 
this thread has been very interesting i went for a lesson this morning after watching the weg dressage and my big weekness is droping the outside contact on the left rein, so after seeing weg i realised I cant just drop her and must keep more of a contact (my poor instructor has told me and demoed this about a million times) and when i did she wasnt happy to start with as she has to work harder but the work felt fab we were doing half halts to get her to sit back and then move forwards and if she comes above the bit pushing her forward into the contact and leaving the hands alone! I also reward her with the inside hand.

So my homework is to watch more dressage lol
 
As I said you can't learn feel through theory alone. You need a very good trainer who is "with you" for every second of your lesson, telling you in detail what you're doing wrong, what you're doing right, what the horses back end is doing, where the poll is and where it should be, whether the horse is "through", whether you need more flexion, whether the shoulders are correctly placed, whether the back end follows the front...! After training like this for a while on many different horses you will soon grasp the concept of a correct contact and how it is related to the other scales of training, and shouldn't just be considered on it's own.

So my point is there is no easy answer to your question, you can't just think *"I need to feel x grams of pressure in each rein on every horse in every situation." *There's no hidden mystery to it, it's just good old damn hard work.

BTW I am no way suggesting I have learnt the perfect contact as I am always striving to learn and improve, but have found some trainers are excellent at helping to develop this elusive "feel."
 
This was the lightbulb moment I had with a v good trainer a few weeks ago. We worked on getting the horse off the leg so I could create sufficient power, then she showed me how short my reins should be, and got me to simply hold that (like a pair of side reins she said), and ask the horse to go forward into it. There was resistance, I held firm, then she gave in - lovely and light in the hand, nice expressive paces. A few weeks later, and now, where there used to be a bit of resistance to start with, I just shorten my reins and she powers up, light in my hand and obedient. I'd never have got there without a few arm ache moments, but I wasn't ever pulling back, or down, just holding and pushing, until she gave in.
 
On a slight tangent, but does those who ride with more feel and a more constant contact does so because they actually think about how they are riding rather than how the horse is going.
This is one of my bugbears actually, somebody who is trained to ride well will inevitably produce a better way of going from the horse, than somebody who is trained with the aim of working on one particular horse?
Not sure that is clear, but blame the G&T and Haribo combo!
 
Oh heck! Contact! I've spent hours trying to understand what's right and what's wrong.

Some days I think I've understood but most of the time I'm not sure I understand at all!

My instructor has been trying to educate me. She demonstrated the importance of a balanced seat on contact by asking me to take a lunge line in each hand and she did the same with the loose ends. Then she took up a contact with my hands and asked me to pull against her. When she held from her arms the feeling I got was very jolty and argumentative. When she held from soft arms but set herself up in a balanced position the contact was firm but actually quite pleasant.
So that taught me that actually having a contact doesn't have to be uncomfortable for the horse providing it originates from a balanced seat.
Also, she has taught me about following the horse's movement and rather than rowing with the arms from a static body I now try to think of my body swinging through my static arms.

However, I'm still learning how to use it and most recently how to reward without throwing the reins away. Now I have to think about "pushing the tea trolley"

I'm trying to look at the whole contact 'thing' from a balance/scientific point of view.
The horse's head and neck is a pretty serious bit of 'apparatus' in terms of balance. I guess that we have to be able to persuade the horse to allow us to manipulate it to change his balance and consequently his way of going? I suppose to do that we need to educate him to the aids and then incrementally build his muscle tone? So it would figure that feel of a contact would vary with the exercise we are riding beause of the horses differing strenths and weaknesses.

Hmmmmm. Thinking aloud there!

Hopefully it will fall into place for me within my lifetime!
 
My tb mare is very sensitive and i always thought the best approach for her was to go around with flippy floppy reins so she was comfortable *snort!*
Well i had a breakthrough a week ago due to reading some comments on another thread/ this thread and i took a more secure rein contact. she isn't a strong mare so i took enough so that she was there in my hands. she is usually very rushy so i took reins and used my legs and WOW! not only did she slow down and go onto the contact, I felt my own position changed from being leant forward and legs shooting forwards to being able to sit up straight with my legs underneath me :D
Rode her today and straight away she was there on the contact, i could collect and push her forwards and by the end she actually WANTED to stretch down long and low rather than me always trying to persuade her that it is good to stretch down. she seemed a lot happier with a more consistent contact and i could do a lot more subtle half halts without jerking her around :)
 
FrodoBeutlin said:
Fascinating thread! I was talking about this with my trainer this very morning. She was saying that it's ok to have a firmer contact in trot, but in canter and in walk (and in piaffe) you really should only have little more than the weight of the reins. Otherwise the horse won't be in true self-carriage. You should always have a consistent contact on the outside rein, while the inside rein has to be soft and giving at all times, otherwise the hindleg will be blocked.
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Phew, I'm so pleased you posted this FB - reading this thread I was starting to think that I must be a bit of a nutter or something (... well, I may be, but that's another story!...). I always thought the point of self carriage was that the horse would stay in "correct" carriage by his self. Hence the point in some dressage tests about giving and retaking the rein and all that. So, if the horse is relying on the rider to hold him into a contact, how is that self carriage?

Nowadays when I go to clinics/ have lessons, etc, I make a point of asking the instructor to take one end of the rein and I take the other (off the horse, by the way) and I ask the instructor to show me what they mean by "a contact" - how much weight on the rein, how much elasticity, etc. That way I know what they mean when they then ask me to do certain things. It seems to me that there is a huge range of differences here between different riders (and I do mean top level riders here - Grand Prix dressage/ 4* eventers, etc) - so I guess there's then no wonder that there are so many of us mere mortals that get confused!

I dunno, I'm coming around to thinking maybe it's horses for courses and some horses work better into a firmer contact and some are happy always working of nothing more than the weight of the rein? Maybe it also has to do a lot with the prior training of the horse too?

Personally, I prefer an ideal of working off just the weight of the reins, as to me that's the point of the "self" carriage ideal. However, there is of course a danger there that you can kid yourself that the horse is working properly when in fact they're just hiding away from the bit, I realise..... but then equally if you go for a firmer contact I guess there's a danger that you are to a greater or lesser extent in effect hauling your horse into an outline? Maybe, though, there is more than one road to Rome?
 
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