3 Tips To Help You Manage Your Horse's Resistance

You've carefully laid out a systematic, progressive schooling program for your horse. Yet every time you add new work, you run into a certain amount of resistance.

Don't panic. Understand that when you do raise the bar, it's inevitable that you're going to encounter resistance. It's a normal part of training. Don't be afraid of it. Just work through it in baby steps.

Have a checklist in your mind to help you decide if you should back off a little bit, or whether you should push through the resistance. There should be three things on your checklist.

1. Check out possible physical issues. You need to know that your horse is not in pain anywhere. Are his hocks are okay? Is his back is okay? Are his teeth okay? Do his saddle and bridle fit him correctly?

2. Check yourself. Make sure you're giving the aids correctly. You want to be sure that you aren't giving contradictory signals.

For example, let's say you're riding to the right (Your right leg is on the inside). You turn down the quarter in order to leg yield over to the left.

Your right leg is behind the girth asking the horse to move over. However, you have a very bad habit of pushing too hard with your right leg so your upper body leans to the right. Since your horse wants you to stay centered above him, he finds it hard to go sideways because your leg is saying, "go to the left", but your body weight is saying, "I won't let you go to the left."

Then you end up thinking, "Oh, my horse can't go sideways. He's not ready. He's resisting me."

But the reality is that you're giving conflicting signals.

3. The third thing that I do if my horse is really showing me, or telling me with his body language that he can't do something is that I find a way to take the difficulty out of the exercise. That is, I do the "essence" of the exercise, but I make it more simple.

Here are some ideas so you can be your own problem solver and figure out how to take the difficulty out of exercises but still get your point across. If you take this approach, the resistance becomes manageable or even nonexistent. Then little by little, you can increase the demands again.

For example, let's say you start to leg yield from the quarter line over to the long side, The first few steps are fine, but then your horse starts resisting. Maybe he slows down or he tosses his head.

Take the difficulty out of the leg yield by starting only 1-meter off the rail instead of from the quarter line.

Or let's say you're struggling when you start advanced lateral work such as shoulder-in, haunches-in, and half pass.

There are several things you can do. You can reduce the angle. Rather than asking for shoulder-in, do shoulder-fore (half the angle of a shoulder in). Or rather than asking for a 3-track haunches-in, ask for half that angle. With your half pass, rather than going from the corner letter to X, reduce the angle by going from the K or F all the way up to G.

Regarding shoulder-in and haunches-in, do fewer steps. That is, do three or four quality steps, and then straighten your horse. Let him take a breath. Then do three or four steps again. Or do the movements at a slower gait such as the walk.

How about counter canter? Introduce counter canter in baby steps. In the beginning, just canter one meter off the rail and then ride back to the last corner letter. The height of that loop would be across from the middle of the long side of the ring. If you ride counter canter like that, you know you're doing the same amount of strides in as you do out.

Gradually, increase the distance from the rail to two meters. When your horse can do that easily, gradually increase the distance so that you canter out to the quarter line.

Of course, you wouldn't expect your horse to do this all in one day. It might take weeks or even months depending on your horse's balance and strength.

Once you can make it to the quarter line, gradually increase the distance to the center line. Later, increase it so that you can go across the diagonal and do the whole short side in counter canter. Then come back across the diagonal so that you are in true canter again. Eventually you can do a three-loop serpentine staying on the same lead.

Everything is very gradual. And when you meet a point where your horse starts switching leads, breaking to the trot, scrambling, or losing his balance, just return to one of the easier exercises so that he can get his confidence back.

Those are just some examples of how you can take the difficulty out of an exercise so that you can reduce and even possibly eliminate resistance.

So plan ahead. Think about what you're working on and decide, "If my horse struggles, I'm going to do this in a slower gait. Or I'm going to do it for fewer strides. Or I'm just going to do it for one diagonal, and then I'm going to let him stretch long and low to relieve his muscles."

Just be very clever about taking the difficulty out of the exercise. Introduce new work in baby steps so that your horse always thinks he's a champion no matter what you're asking him to do.