Collection Horse Training Backing Up

Video Transcript

"In our discussion about collection and how it impacts the horse, we like to think about backing up a horse. Putting him in reverse is actually a very collected, and often thought of as kind of a forward movement. Odd to think that backing a horse up would be considered that, but it truly does come off of the idea that it's a forward in to the bridle, and then backing up do to the direction and how the rider communicates that direction is backing up. So, what we like to do is start our horse, and always finish our horse, in their submissive to the bridle, soft and rounded forward, or what I call hooked in the bridle, position. We aught to wait until they feel light and soft in our hands, and then our hands ask for the first steps to give the horse the sense of direction. If that horse takes a step backward and begins to go in the direction we're asking, we then let our leg slowly wrap around, coming down towards and possibly all the way in to the heel. We always think about the pressure of the leg starts up in your seat bones and then kind of wraps downward to where the knee, the calf and the heel can all be part of that continuum of how much pressure do we need to apply. If I'm starting a young horse, I'm just going to ask him for a few steps, and then I'm going to release that pressure, giving him an instant reward to kind of solidify, help him understand that the start is the backing up, and then the leg creates the energy to continue it. But give him that instant reward so it stands in his mind that he did the right thing. Then I'll continue to add more pieces, getting all the way down and through in to my heel, as my horse becomes better trained, understanding and submissive, so I can get those quick backups that may be required in some of the work that we do as we compete and go to more advanced riding skills. So we're going to begin, the rider in her correct position, always looking for that light submission, very good. Now we're going to generate a couple of steps backward, now add a little bit of the energy that comes from the leg as we wrap around this horses side. If she goes all the way down to her heels, we're going to see this horse quicken his pace because it's the energy of our heel that asks him to back up more quickly. And we'll bring the horse forward. We always want a nice and straight back, he did a great job of that today. But what if the horse doesn't back up straight? We have two ways we can think about it. We can either put his hind quarters back in position. We know that our leg controls everything behind the girth. So if we bring this leg back a little bit to counteract which ever way those hind quarters are shifting, we may be able to bring his hind quarters back in position. But a skillful rider will also understand, based on the indirect and direct reign, how do we control his shoulders? What if we want to put the shoulders back in position with the hind quarter. Let's see if we can get him to start a crooked backing up, there we go. And then we'll see, let's first try to bring his hind quarter in with our left leg. Good. So in this case he did a very nice job of putting his hind quarter back in position. And now we'll bring the horse forward and we'll ask for another crooked back, and this time we'll see if our rider can put together those pieces of how do I put the shoulders back in order so that our straight back comes off of that same basic premise. So now she's going to try to bring the shoulders in order by shifting her hands, very good, and now we ask him to continue to back straight. This gives the new rider two pieces of information that they can use to try and create those straight backs. We know that typically we get our first horse and we start to put this together, it's not always as easy as it looks."