Inside leg to outside hand v crookedness

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myhorsefred

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Help please!

I understand the concept of inside leg to outside hand (inside leg creates the energy and outside hand contains) but how do you do this without creating a slight degree of crookedness?
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aargh! any thoughts?
 
Your outside leg sits just behind the girth in a hugging manner controlling his quarters and preventing your inside leg pushing his quarters out too far which can cause crookedness. Make sure you are not using too stronger inside leg - it should be a slight pressure so as not to create crookedness. If your horse does become crooked then try to bring his shoulders in line with his quarters rather than pushing his quarters back in line with his shoulders this way is better for lateral work later on in his schooling.
 
"Inside" and "outside" only apply when the horse is positioned/following a curved track. In the school the straight sides are often ridden in a slight shoulder fore exactly for this reason - so the hind leg can be slightly activated and the horse can be encouraged to stay soft in the outline and not form a hard contact with the hand. But even then, it's not about the sides of the school, it's about how the horse is positioned and what you're working on. (That's why people get confuse in counter canter - the inside and outside are reversed - but that actually happens many times during a schooling session.)

Bend is just technically organised crookedness.
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For one thing "straight" is actually a relative term - it means the horse uses both sides of his body equally and correctly. This means if he's trotting in a straight line, yes, he appears to be tracking absolutely straight but since horses are organic not machines even this usually means there are microscopic and momentary corrections taking place.

For another, the reason we ride bend and lateral movements is to gymnasticise the horse and build his body but working bits of him individually in specific ways. So, for instance, the position on a right circle works the right (inside) hind more. Reverse direction and - if the horse is even - you work the left one slightly more. Put it all together and you make both legs - and the horse - stronger.

The reason we don't want a horse to be crooked is because doing so stresses his body unevenly and provides scope for resistance resulting from weakness or lack of balance. It offers an "escape" from work, as it were. The "cure" is to position the horse as we want him to be, then constantly adapt that posture depending on the situation and what we want to accomplish. Some position helps diffuse resistance as a bent thing is softer than a straight thing. (Think of applying force to a straight board rather than one with a wow in it - the bent board will give, the straight one will resist then break.) Eventually the horse becomes so soft and strong there is no resistance and he can be ridden perfectly straight . . . for short periods of time anyway!

Which is all a complicated way of saying it's not so simple as "inside leg to outside rein" if only because how you define inside and outside is dependent on the position of the horse and the work you're doing, not just where you are relative to the fence.

One qualifier for school work is almost all horses "lean" on the rail somewhat and most riders don't pay enough attention to the outside of the horse when there's a handy wall there. Obviously the correction for this depends on exactly how the horse is crooked.
 
Thanks TarrSteps and Dressage Babe! I think i am not using my outside hand enough then, as Fred seems to fall out through his outside shoulder.
 
If he is falling out through his shoulder it does sound as though your outside hand is not quite as supporting as it ought to be! if it is something he does quite often just make sure you are not using too much inside hand as this will encourage him to fall out through his shoulder as its the only place for him to go if the inside rein is too tight or firm. A good exercise for you and your horse is to flex left then straight then right all the way around the arena but make sure you do actually do the 'straight bit' as well or you will just 'swing' him left to right which is incorrect! Another way is to stroke him up his neck mid way with the left rein still in your hand then a straight for a couple of paces then stroke his neck with the right hand, this prevents you from over using or pulling back on one particular rein and also is a good physio workout for suppling his neck too.
 
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