My Journey of Self Carriage

or

How I taught my horses Self Carriage without Gadgets.

What is Self Carriage? 

I'd heard the term for decades, taken thousands of hours of lessons, read hundreds of books, and had certainly heard the term many many times.

Somehow I missed in all those lessons that Self Carriage was part of the essential basic training for young horses. I thought it was something achieved at a "finished" level. I hadn't really understood that until horses have self carriage they can't perform athletically 

or even SAFELY!

 I had taken many a riding lesson over trot poles. And somehow I missed that the goal is to teach Self Carriage. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure the instructors using the trot poles in all those lessons didn't understand their purpose either!! 

So I delved into this subject and read every resource and watched every video I could find. It was then that I learned the purpose of cavalletti. side reins, and multiple common exercises was to teach Self Carriage.

Back to the question - what exactly is Self Carriage?

Self Carriage is your horse carrying themselves in balance. "Good form" if you will.

Just as a ballet dancer or gymnast is taught the ideal form to perform athletic moves,

 your horse also has an ideal form to perform athletically.  

This isn't something you can push and pull your horse into, they have to develop the mental and physical power to carry themselves in balance. After all it's called SELF carriage. If they aren't doing this on their own - it's NOT Self Carriage.

I discovered how important this was when I started to show one of my self raised and trained ponies. When things sped up, he would become very unbalanced and he would start leaning with his shoulder to the inside of the circle and turning his head to the outside.  

Here he is - THIS IS HOW HE WOULD CANTER!! 

Note the dropped shoulder (falling to the inside) and the head & neck bent to the outside.

(Under saddle it wasn't quite this dramatic - but it FELT LIKE IT!!)

(See how he's leaning to the right here with his head & neck tipped to the outside?)

This felt terrible and something had to change. I decided he wasn't BALANCED. At least not while being ridden. 

I tried various exercises while riding and the more I pushed his hips or ribs around, or moved his head and neck the worse the problem became. I then decided there was no way to correct this balance issue while riding him. 

?But then I was stumped? 

Just how do I teach him balance? And how can I teach balance from the ground? And how do I then translate that to balance with the weight of a rider? 

I was relating my difficulties to a friend when she told me my horse needed to learn 

Self Carriage!

And she was right!!

Then I learned the first important EQUATION of self carriage.

BALANCE = SELF CARRIAGE 

(Horses can't have self carriage without balance.)

So back to my question - How do I teach my horse to be balanced? And Self Carriage?

My friend  then suggested a Chambon.

This was well meaning advice, as she agreed that I wasn't going to teach him to be balanced from his back. It had to be taught from the ground first.

So I went home and put a chambon on my trusty steed. I tried it super loose, super tight and everything in between. My pony pulled and pulled and pulled and did everything except carry himself more efficiently. He leaned more, and contorted himself in every way possible that did NOT include being BALANCED!!

Then I decided to learn more about this elusive "Self Carriage". I read and studied and watched videos. I learned that Self Carriage was why the German trainers  lunge all their young horses in side reins. 

I learned about running reins, and trot poles and every imaginable gadget to teach your horse to drop their head, flex vertically at the pole and lift their back. As I watched my pony wrestle with every contraption with no improvement, I realized this had nothing to do with forcing him physically into a position. 

No contraption was going to make him "get it." 

Then I discovered the next BIG TRUTH of Self Carriage. A truth that I hadn't learned in all my readings or lessons.

Self Carriage is MENTAL.

The MIND must understand before the BODY can follow.

What I needed was for my horse to change his body position MENTALLY. 

Forcing him into a position he didn't understand wasn't repeatable, and was only building opposition.

I decided to try my new found knowledge with an extreme example.

I have a pony who would not put his head down when moving or being ridden. 

A traditionally trained English rider had tried side reins, running reins, a chambon, draw reins, a tie down, and every traditional piece of equipment that could be mustered up.

  The more gadgets that were tied to him - the more he forced his head and neck up in a very unbalanced (and unattractive!) position.

This way of moving was a habit and with any pressure to drop his head - he would fight and fight and fight against it.

 I knew this wasn't a PHYSICAL problem because he EATS from the ground every day. He was certainly capable of putting his head down.

He would have to drop his head and lift his back entirely on his own- without gadgets - after all - they only made him worse.

So off to the round pen we went.

He had 6 years of muscle memory carrying himself like this.

Look at that large muscle on the bottom of his neck! He put lots of effort into sticking his head up in the air.

We went into the round pen to sort this out. He had to learn that he could put his head down AND trot at the same time.

The first session took an hour and a half.

The second day was 30 minutes - and the third day 2 minutes.

I took the next photos on the 3rd day.

6 years of poor form turned around in 2 hours over 3 days.

AND LOOK - NO GADGETS!

Training horses is actually pretty simple once you know what motivates them.

For this accomplishment I used a simple reward system. Lazer Tag is a bit on the lazy side, so he would rather not trot around the round pen for very long. 

He is trained to come to me with a gesture, so it's easy to call him back in off the rail. To begin I sent him around at a trot and as soon as he dropped his head position even the slightest I brought him back in and let him rest. To reinforce the "head down" concept I had him stand with his head down during his "rest period".

Once he figured out that when he put his head down he got to rest, he started offering it right away - so then I started asked for more and more until I could get full laps with his head down. 

Now we are working on transitions, cantering, trotting slowly and backing with his head down.

Once he got the idea it's been quick work to get more and more with good form, and he is starting to build muscles along his top line!

After I sorted out this simple problem with Lazer Tag,  I went back to my other pony to correct the "leaning in" problem. This pony has been challenging from day one. He loves to play games, and takes delight in outwitting me on a regular basis.

First I spent some time with him in the round pen. I made sure that he could trot and canter on his own without "leaning in" and putting his head to the outside. I used the same approach, so when he carried himself straight or bent to the inside of the circle I called him in and rewarded him with a rest. I also asked him to drop his head, though that wasn't a big problem for him.

*** If he had been a less complicated horse, I would have corrected this problem with simple "shoulder control" exercises. Horses follow their shoulders not their noses. A simple exercise to teach shoulder control is to spiral in and out on a circle while maintaining the same lateral flexion. Ask your horse to flex to the inside of the circle and then while walking forward lift the outside rein and ask the shoulders to step to the outside. First one step and then more and more. Once you can move the shoulders out while the neck is flexed in, you can start working on counterbend. Keep asking the shoulders to move further to the outside of the circle until you're circling the other direction. This is a simple exercise to get control of the shoulders and should correct the majority of shoulder "leaning" issues. 

When we went back to the saddle, I found that any pushing or pulling made the problem worse, so once again - the issue was MENTAL. He needed to put his body in a better position on his own, and I was not going to be able to force him to do it. Side reins had made this pony lean even more. He LOVES to play tug o war, and he may be a pony, but that is always a game you will lose with a horse.

So we started basic exercises to ride without reins. We worked on stopping and backing (no hands.) And just those exercises corrected 90% of the problem. It's really hard to do transitions without being straight, and with no reins to fight with it forced him to learn how to carry himself. Also going straight into the backup really gets them off their forehand. So we did 100s of transitions walk - halt- back, trot - halt - back. He developed a huge amount of balance with these exercises, and the interesting thing with this pony is we got no improvement until we did the transitions without reins. As soon as I tied the reins up - it was a breakthrough! All of a sudden he was totally responsible for his own body and he had to be balanced.

Then we worked on turning without reins, and I noticed that he would bend well to the right, but even bridleless when turning left he would keep the right-hand bend in his body. 

So then we worked on bending to the left (no reins - legs only and a stick to ask him to tip his nose left) and once he could turn in both directions and bend his body with no reins - I finally had a pony who stopped leaning and bending to the outside. For the first time we're cantering in balance! No leaning!

The answer was getting him to develop the movement on his own. Gadget free. Then we could work on lightness & shoulder control with the reins without it being a battle.

More photos of Lazer Thyme and our exercises - soon.

Send mail to lauras@hiwaay.net with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: December 27, 2009