Engaging Your Horses Hindquarters
Here we are day #30 of our being a better rider challenge! It is almost done! Today we are going to talk about engaging your horses hindquarters. Have you ever thought about the hindquarters while you are riding? This isn’t just a useful tool for dressage riders, but it will help to improve all aspects of your riding.
And we are actually building on the exercise we did yesterday, with having our horses being more responsive. Your horse has to be moving forward in order to be able to capture the energy created from the hind end. We want it to feel like the horse is moving uphill. You can feel this! It will feel like you have captured his forward movement, and he will feel round beneath you.
Exercises To Engage Your Horses Hindquarters
After we have figured out the why of engaging the hindquarters, we need to figure out the how. And here are a couple of exercises to help you get there.
Riding Transitions
The first exercise is to simply ride through transitions of going from the trot to the walk. By doing this the horses has to balance himself going down to the walk, as well as when you ask him to trot he really has to push. This will help to get his hind leg more underneath him, The idea is to get the transition as smooth as possible but also keeping the horse active and working.
You want to continue this until your horse is very fluid. And when you have mastered the walk and the trot, move up to transition from canter to trot. It will not happen instantly. But with practice and repetition your horse will improve and really start to engage his hindquarters. When you are going from canter to trot it will be easy for your horse to fall onto his front end. So try to keep him light and as active as possible.
By doing all kinds of transitions, your horse will become more “engaged” and will be using his hind end underneath him. It will feel like he is more round underneath you.
Using Trot Poles
As your horse moves through the trot poles he will have to lift his legs over them and this will help him to engage his hindquarters. The distance of the poles will change as your horse loosens up, so you may have to adjust the distance of your poles.
Using trot poles is a simple exercise to really help you to feel when your horses legs are off the ground, and you can also feel the muscles really working.
Circling Leg Yield Spiral
The third exercise is using a circle and the leg yield to create like a spiral. Start on a large circle and using your outside leg you slowly spiral the horse into a smaller circle. When you are doing this, don’t make him move to quickly, the idea is to keep him upright and to make him work harder, using his hindquarters. This is a challenging exercise for your horse. As the circle gets smaller your horse will have to work harder. Take your time, and don’t do it to quickly. Once you get into a smaller circle, push him back out into a larger circle.
Once you have mastered this at the trot, try it at the canter. Don’t be surprised if your horse finds this more of a challenge at the canter. He will really have to work hard here. Don’t go to small with your circle too soon. You don’t want your canter to become sloppy or too fast because your horse will fall out of the engagement.
Again it will not happen instantly. It will take some practice. Be patient! As your horse improves, he will really begin to use his hindquarters and be more active from behind.
30 Days Done!
Can you believe it? We have reached the 30 day mark! We have done a lot of different exercises with our horses. Hopefully your horse has become a willing participant in helping you to be a better rider. If anything, we have worked very hard for the last 30 days to make this happen.
Only one day remains, so before that happens, be sure to do your plank exercise and write down your time. Then cross off day #30! You did it!
