'unlocking' the neck

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I have been reading several posts recently about riding behind the vertical and seen comments from people who mention that they should be able to place the horses head and neck wherever they want it. And its dawned on me that I cannot do this. Walking around the arena the other day I can flex him to all sorts of places to the left but to the right he is most definitely restricted. Its small wonder that I am making little progress with his work when he physically cannot 'let go' with his neck and place himself wherever I ask.

Recent physio has highlighted hot spots in his thoraco lumbar region but I have to admit to not being educated enough to know wether this can have such a restricting influence on the neck (I know it affects him stepping under and connecting his engine to the front end). I'm going to ask the physio back again to explain things to me further and see what she thinks. But in the mean time I am intrigued as to what exercises you would do, both under saddle and in hand, to improve the flexibility through the neck and body. I always think of him as very bendy, but on board he definietly struggles.

Sorry if this makes little sense, concussion brain keeps kicking in after last weeks fall!

Thanks!
 
interesting you should bring this up..I spent some time with a lady from NZ in the summer who practiced craniosacrial and zero balance therapy.

she made the point and coincidentally another girl from oz was also saying that we shoul aim to get them moving and supple through their ribcage before the neck if the neck at all.

ouchy hope it wasn't too bad a fall
 
Watching this thread with interest as mine very much locks up through his neck. We try and do lots of lateral work which seems to free up his back and soften the neck, we mainly attempt shoulder in, quarters in, leg yield and a more extreme version of leg yield on a circle, I do these in walk and as we finish each movement I then try and push him into trot and trot a small circle (10-15m) on a longer rein encouraging him to stretch. We also do the shoulder in, quarters in and leg yield in trot. I also trot a20m circle, flex him to the outside for part of the circle and them as I straighten him I push him with my inside leg and push the inside rein forwards to encourage him to step under and soften his neck down.
 
I do do carrot stretches with him and they seem to have made a huge difference to his back, and yet they don't seem to have had much effect on his neck mobility under saddle. I wondered if the pressure of a rider is causing some sort of kinetic chain problem that means he can't do the same as when stretching without one. I might try to get the Physio to watch him under saddle this time around.
 
Hey just thought I would chip in as I had so many problems flexing my horse although she goes I'm a lovely outline she isn't always very supple laterally after an informative post on here it made me question how I was doing it and rather than just asking the poll to flex I started using my upper leg to push into the same side of the saddle the I was asking to flex and wow what a difference all of a sudden she could really flex around....no idea if that will help anyone else but worth a go x
 
Your horse will find it difficult to be loose laterally in the neck under saddle if his back is not "up" and working correctly. A horse cannot be as loose in the neck if it is not also loose in the rest of the spine, all the way through the back.
I do a lot of carrot stretches but also backing up in hand, focusing on having the head down and the back up, tummy tucks to strengthen the abdominal muscles, and I also work on swinging just the head from side to side with my hands to loosen up the poll.
 
Something to play with alongside the physical checks, as this can be habitual as much as physical. Look up some of Philippe Karl's work on extending the neck and what he calls "action / reaction". In essence it's about teaching the horse to open its poll / gullet and reach forward into the rein, which you achieve by lifting the bit up into the corners of the horse's mouth, waiting for them to tension the rein and then following them forward with your hand light, and repeating and repeating until they're always reaching forwards into the rein. It looks a bit mental (I call it 'crazy hands'!) but is hugely effective at re-educating horses who have become habitual at overbending or ducking behind the bit or locking the neck. Horses which are stuck in the neck or tend to overbend will find at the very least their shoulders restricted, making all the usual suppling lateral work harder to achieve and less effective at the very suppling you're trying to achieve, whereas you can get pretty startling results at opening up the shoulder and unlocking the lateral work by re-educating them into properly extending the neck and opening the poll. You won't work like it all the time or forever, but done well it can unlock things pretty quickly. You can do it out hacking / wherever, doesn't need to be about schooling.
 
I've been tackling the same issue. I do quite a lot of flexion and playing around with where his neck is. I had one session / test about 2 months ago (our last outing before life started trying to erode my sanity!) where he was completely locked through his neck. Ironically he got his best % but it was just a horrible feeling, and I think it had been growing over the course of the previous few weeks (I'd made a few bad training decisions!).

I have one trainer who's very hot on getting him to relax under his jaw and lengthen his neck out forwards more in training and the other is more "test oriented" and seems to want to see me working him in a competitive frame more. Because I've started intentionally training in so many different ways to get the different sorts of work, I have much more control over his neck and back and his suppleness and softness through his neck has increased massively, in all sorts of work. I was looking forward to a competitive outing to see if the improvement I can feel and my trainers claim to be able to see will be reflected in his scores!
 
Agree Carrot stretches are a good start! You will then notice if/where there are tight spots without resistances. If your horse cannot bend fairly equally during carrot stretches then this is something to work on first.

However I would say that your horse is probably a lot more supple during the carrot stretches than they appear to be ridden or in-hand. I believe this is more about resistances than suppleness though. If your horse can reach all of the way round to their hip to scratch or to grab a treat then suppleness is not the real issue but resistance is. It may be to do with weight in the saddle but I know that working with my own horse I get a less bendable horse when I ask for bend using a bridle (at halt in hand) than I do during carrot stretches to the same side.

What causes these resistances is not clear to me but it is something I am working on with my youngster - he is only 5 so hasn't got into very many bad habits but as always he is happier bending one way than the other.

I have been working in-hand at halt doing some bending exercises - firstly bending to 45 degrees and then increasing to 90 degress, it is important that the face is perpendicular to the ground, you may find that if you go too far too fast then you get a head tilt which is just another resistance. It is also important that the horse is happy to hold himself in that position and that the handler is not holding the horses head there - it is better to start and ask the horse to bend and hold the position for a second and then build up to a little longer and a little more bend over time. Once we had this at halt we have started working with a 45 degree bend in walk down the long side and then extending the neck forwards and down on a volte, sometimes with pronounced inside bend and sometimes without. We have just started the same in trot. The pronounced bend on a circle or volte gives a really good stretch, the bigger the angle of bend the bigger the stretch but it has to be completed without resistances from the horse, the head is not held in position by the rider but by the horse, otherwise the exercise will have the opposite effect and will make the horse more resistant. A way to check this is when bending the horse from the ground in halt, if you let go of the bridle the horse should gradually return to the front position, if the horse is resisting he will come back much quicker.

There is a lot more to it than that - if working in hand is something you are interested in then I would find an instructor who works their horses in-hand, it sounds and looks simple but there are a lot of things to think about and it is easy to get things wrong or at least not 100% right.

There are probably many other methods of helping with this situation so finding one that works for you is the key to success :)
 
Thanks for the replies. I think I need to make a more concerted effort to work on his suppleness...or resistance as wheels says. He is very supple with carrot stretches to each stifle and eagerly does those but stretches down to the outside of his fetlocks at the front seem less easy for him. He does belly tuck/back lifts well. I have started clicker training with a target on a stick with him which seems to be working really well as I can place the target where I want and get him to follow it with his nose into different ranges of movement. It is worth noting that (now I think about it) he shows the restriction whilst on the lunge and loose schooling as well. I feel positive that if I can work out the key to relaxing this then his work will come on leaps and bounds. He tries so very hard and it's not fair on him when he physically can't get the answer right.
 
philamena said:
Something to play with alongside the physical checks, as this can be habitual as much as physical. Look up some of Philippe Karl's work on extending the neck and what he calls "action / reaction". In essence it's about teaching the horse to open its poll / gullet and reach forward into the rein, which you achieve by lifting the bit up into the corners of the horse's mouth, waiting for them to tension the rein and then following them forward with your hand light, and repeating and repeating until they're always reaching forwards into the rein. It looks a bit mental (I call it 'crazy hands'!) but is hugely effective at re-educating horses who have become habitual at overbending or ducking behind the bit or locking the neck. Horses which are stuck in the neck or tend to overbend will find at the very least their shoulders restricted, making all the usual suppling lateral work harder to achieve and less effective at the very suppling you're trying to achieve, whereas you can get pretty startling results at opening up the shoulder and unlocking the lateral work by re-educating them into properly extending the neck and opening the poll. You won't work like it all the time or forever, but done well it can unlock things pretty quickly. You can do it out hacking / wherever, doesn't need to be about schooling.
Click to expand...

Sounds interesting. So you hold the bit up lightly and wait for the horse to take the tension or with a reasonable contact? Both sides at the same time?
 
That is perfectly normal Kat for them to show the same thing on the lunge, it is just their natural way of going. I am working through our issues on the lunge too. It is really helping having an overall approach.
 
Horsemad12 said:
Sounds interesting. So you hold the bit up lightly and wait for the horse to take the tension or with a reasonable contact? Both sides at the same time?
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You really need to read up in detail or get someone to show you, but essentially you hold the bit up quite constantly / firmly with your reins long, your hands high and wide but crucially your elbows close to your sides (you look like a mad puppeteer!), hold it firmly so it's constant and enough that they notice and want to do something about it (but still lighter than many trainers would have you hold the outside rein in more 'normal' flatwork) and when you feel the horse decide to reach forward and take the rein forward, even a tiny bit, you go very soft and follow them forward as big as you need to (hence the long reins) until they stop tensioning the rein, then you repeat by lifting the bit up again. The proper lifting of the bit works like magic to get the reaction from them, and then it's just very disciplined repetition that every time they stop reaching forward into the rein you redo the 'action-reaction' until they learn that you want them tensioning the rein the whole time. Both sides at the same time initially.

My trainer described it to me as being like a yo-yo, you follow the mouth wherever it goes, but you are also trying to yo-yo it out away from you, and the only way to do that is to stimulate that reaction from the horse. It is NOT the same as holding the rein and then when they want to stretch throwing the rein at them and letting them stretch, you need to keep a yo-yo level of delicate tension in all forward movement, and you make the feeling in the corners of the mouth stronger when the head is either too low or too high or too curled.

It's made a massive difference to my horse.
 
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Watching this with interest as mine is very blocked in the neck. I think it's mostly connected to his cancer or the treatment for it and the affect on the muscles on the left hand side of his jaw/poll/neck, but it's bending to the right (ie. with the bad side as the outside) that's the issue. It's the same with a bit or in a bitless bridle, so I have some comfort that it's not mouth pain causing the problem. The corresponding left hind is also weaker.

Carrot stretches help a bit but he's very flexible on the ground, it's only under saddle that the stiffness really shows.
 
This is where in-hand work really helped Dante. We worked on flexions through the neck, then the poll, then the hindleg, and also extending the neck, then extending the neck *whilst* backing up. All to the bit, my trainer was quite particular about the 'how' so it would probably be well worth finding someone who can teach that sort of thing. Carrot stretches don't seem to make much difference to him, but today he was seen by a very good physio who said there were absolutely no problems in his neck, which backs up what I'm feeling at least! :) We did then move on to doing more in-hand work 'on the move' but I felt that helped his back & particularly the hind leg more so, as well as his general understanding of the work, it was the flexions that made the difference to his neck & shoulders I think.
My other trainer has me really think about where I'm sitting & what I'm doing, it's amazing how moving what seems a fractional amount in my seat suddenly turns the horse from a plank to something that actually CAN bend, whereas previously endless amounts of everything else seemed to do absolutely nothing :o
 
Walrus said:
Watching this thread with interest as mine very much locks up through his neck. We try and do lots of lateral work which seems to free up his back and soften the neck, we mainly attempt shoulder in, quarters in, leg yield and a more extreme version of leg yield on a circle, I do these in walk and as we finish each movement I then try and push him into trot and trot a small circle (10-15m) on a longer rein encouraging him to stretch. We also do the shoulder in, quarters in and leg yield in trot. I also trot a20m circle, flex him to the outside for part of the circle and them as I straighten him I push him with my inside leg and push the inside rein forwards to encourage him to step under and soften his neck down.
Click to expand...

These are very much the exercises I do with Louis in the trot and canter, as he is very quick to curl up in front and just looking the part..I really have to be conscious about working him from my leg to hand, we spend a good 15/20mins in a longer lower frame asking him to bend, flex through his back/neck before we rest and ask him to come up in to a more advanced frame...we have to do it gradually otherwise he does a real showy awkward trot, head in the right place just not working through. It is coming quicker, but I still start this way in most sessions!

I do try carrot stretches, but they get a bit dangerous as he is prone to getting nippy and bolshy with too many treats...any ideas to avoid this?
 
Kati*89 said:
These are very much the exercises I do with Louis in the trot and canter, as he is very quick to curl up in front and just looking the part..I really have to be conscious about working him from my leg to hand, we spend a good 15/20mins in a longer lower frame asking him to bend, flex through his back/neck before we rest and ask him to come up in to a more advanced frame...we have to do it gradually otherwise he does a real showy awkward trot, head in the right place just not working through. It is coming quicker, but I still start this way in most sessions!

I do try carrot stretches, but they get a bit dangerous as he is prone to getting nippy and bolshy with too many treats...any ideas to avoid this?
Click to expand...

I do daily stretches with mine, he loves his carrots but knows they are a reward for doing the move required, he gets nothing if he doesn't stretch properly and tries to grab them and quickly learnt that once he has done his daily routine there are no more, he did try to mug me but soon stopped when he realised he got nothing until he earned it.
 
Kati*89 said:
These are very much the exercises I do with Louis in the trot and canter, as he is very quick to curl up in front and just looking the part..I really have to be conscious about working him from my leg to hand, we spend a good 15/20mins in a longer lower frame asking him to bend, flex through his back/neck before we rest and ask him to come up in to a more advanced frame...we have to do it gradually otherwise he does a real showy awkward trot, head in the right place just not working through. It is coming quicker, but I still start this way in most sessions!

I do try carrot stretches, but they get a bit dangerous as he is prone to getting nippy and bolshy with too many treats...any ideas to avoid this?
Click to expand...

I have the same issue - i woudl love to do carrot stretches with mine and have tried in the past but it's not worth it as he turns into a nippy bolshy idiot every time you go near him. I've tried only doing them in a specific place or at a set time in his routine to see if he then only associates them with stretches but it doesn't work. My YOs little girl gave him a carrot the other day which she ended up giving to me to feed him after his schooling session and that evening and the next day i had a nose in my face everytime i went near him! Even my OH commented how grabby he was!
 
For those with grabby horses, if you haven't already it's worth trying cutting the carrots into small matchsticks - like one carrot into 16 pieces. This is what i use for mine because of trying to kerp the sugar down but it's also turned out to br enough to get her wanting to do the stretch but not so much she gets excited about getting it.
 
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