The Link Between Straightness and Bend

There are some foundations of dressage that are given not much more than a fleeting thought in the lower levels, and then come back to bite riders in a huge way when they climb up the levels. Straightness is one of those and it’s vital that riders give it the attention it deserves.

Straightness is what allows you to ‘connect’ the whole horse, and ultimately allows you to ride the movements of dressage correctly and with expression.  

Without straightness, there is no collection, no half halt, and no impulsion. 

Straightness can be on a straight line, curved line, in fact on any line. It simply means the horse’s hind legs are tracking on the same line as the front legs.

Sounds easy, right? Afterall, why would a horse want to travel with the hindlegs not in line with the front legs?

In fact, that’s exactly how most horses DO want to travel! 

All horses have a natural bend to one side, so they kink a little to the left or right (more commonly the left). But this gives you as the rider a very clear indication as to what side your horse is stronger on. It's just like us as humans, we have a more dominant side that we just naturally choose to do things with. 

If you think about it, you probably already have some clues that your horse is naturally bent one way or the other. The bend is easier one way (although this can be a curse not a blessing, we’ll come to that later), the lateral work is easier one way, the neck sits to the inside one way more than the other. You might find the left to right flying change more differently than the right to left (remember I said most horses are bent left?).

Just like you have a favoured side, so does your horse, and straightness needs to be trained and adjusted by the rider.

What is straightness?

How do you know if your horse is straight? 

If you stand in the arena looking directly down the long side of the arena at a horse coming towards you (in any pace), ideally you should be able to see two legs. In other words, the hind legs are travelling straight behind the front legs. The horse's hindquarters, shoulders, neck and head should all be inline so you shouldn't see a shoulder poking out, a curve in the neck, the hindquarters sticking out or in, and the head should be in the middle of the chest.

From the saddle, the feel needs to be learned, which you can do with mirrors, someone watching on the ground, or even turn and take a glance behind you if you’re really stuck for any other immediate feedback. 

You’ll also come to realise that unless you’re proactively straightening the house, you’re probably not achieving straightness, especially on that extra ‘bendy’ side of your horse.

On the bendy side, you’ll probably notice your horse is falling out through the shoulder. You’ll notice the neck wants to come to the inside yet the shoulders drift to the outside, and sometimes your instinct will be to use that inside rein to correct the position, but in fact that will make matters worse.

To understand this fully, you need to understand the biomechanics of the horse. Where a horse’s neck goes, the shoulders go the opposite way. The more you pull to the inside, the more the shoulders bulge to the outside.

So how DO you make your horse straight? 

You always want to straighten the horse through the shoulders. That’s what we call shoulder control.

What is bend? 

Well I’ll tell you what bend is not. Bend is not created in the neck.

Bend is created through the horse's whole body, from the rib cage in the middle of the horse, and it’s subtle, more subtle than many riders think. We only want to bend appropriately to the curvature of the line we’re riding.

This might require some thought, but consider that we create a bend to have straightness on a curved line. Straightness relates to footfalls, and to have the footfalls on the line (“straightness”) we require a bend in the horse’s body.

Remember we still have to avoid creating crookedness by over bending the neck of the horse. We need to make sure that we don’t enhance the horse’s natural curvature, we need to correct it. 

To create bend in the horse, we create a ‘post’ with the inside leg on the girth, so you can encourage your horse to bend around it, massage little by little with the inside rein for the flexion, and your outside rein is there to guide the outside shoulder and stop it from falling out. Don’t feel that you bend through the neck, because this trickle throughout the rest of the horse's body. You want to bend through the rib cage and then work to refine the neck with the inside rein. 

Let's look at an example...

One of our program students asked a very question in one of our recent coaching workshops. She asked... 

“My horse is losing her shoulders to the outside when tracking left in the canter, and when I bring her shoulders inside she then puts me to the outside. I’m finding it difficult to keep my inside seat bone in the saddle and can only feel my outside seat bone connecting with the saddle.”

This is a very common issue that I work on with riders regularly. 

When there is too much bend in a horse it starts to shift the weight and balance to the outside which can lead to this particular issue of drawing the horse over with our weight aid accidentally. So firstly you want to ensure you have straightness according to the line you’re riding, and that you’re not being tricked by your horse into over bending in one direction (usually the left rein).

One way to counteract this is to think of really weighing down your inside stirrup. Another thing to do is to think of your seat bones being weighed down all the way through your heels and down into the sand. This is a good one because what it does is helps pull your centre of gravity down rather than just shifting your seat bones over to the inside. 

If that isn't working, try to lift your outside stirrup a little so that you relieve some of the weight to the outside and more goes to the inside. Ultimately we want to sit in the middle of the saddle, not be shifting weight here and there, this is only to make corrections in our seat.

I hope this has given you some food for thought when it comes to straightness and bend, how important they both are, how they are linked, and how they should be ridden and corrected.