Using Your Hands Before Your Legs is the Biggest Mistake When Putting Your Horse on the Bit

If you only use your hands when putting your horse on the bit, you're making one of the biggest mistakes you can make. By focusing on the head and "getting the head down", you'll just be creating an artificial "head-set".

Putting your horse on the bit has nothing to do with "head sets". Physically, it's a round silhouette that occurs when you ride your horse from behind, over his back, through his neck, and into your hands. (And at that point the energy can be recycled back to the hind legs) Mentally, a horse that is on the bit is "on the aids" and anything is possible within the next step.

When you're working on putting your horse on the bit, remember to always FIRST use your driving aids before you use your reins. You want to create a surge from behind as if you’re starting a lengthening.

Then just as you feel your horse begin to lengthen, close your outside hand in a fist to capture, contain, and recycle that power back to the hind legs. (You'll only need to use your inside hand if your horse bends his neck to the outside during the combination of the driving aids and rein of opposition (outside rein).

Always remember that using your hands BEFORE your driving aids (or instead of your driving aids—YIKES!) is the same as picking up the telephone before it rings. Why would you pick up the phone? No one is there!

By the same token why would you use your hands to put your horse on the bit before you've first driven him forward? You haven’t created any power to capture and recycle back to the hind legs!

A Happy Horse

Comment

You need to be a member of Barnmice Equestrian Social Community to add comments!

Join Barnmice Equestrian Social Community

Comment by Jane Savoie on July 22, 2009 at 8:06am: Hi Mary,
I totally see your point. "On the bit" can have a negative connotation because it conjures up pictures of forcing a horse into a frame.

This is how I like to think about it so I don't get bogged down in semantics.

Physically, it’s a round silhouette that occurs when you ride your horse from behind, over his back, through his neck, and into your hands. (And at that point the energy can be recycled back to the hind legs)

Mentally, a horse that is on the bit is “on the aids” and anything is possible within the next step.

So, a Training level horse or a hunter, for example, can be "on the aids" but not necessarily on the bit.

Horses at First level and above are both on the bit (physically) and on the aids (mentally).

Comment by Mary McGuire Smith on July 21, 2009 at 10:07pm: I never liked the term "on the bit", and have always referred to it as "putting the horse on the aids" from the first time I heard it described that way many, many years ago. I keep hoping that the second term would replace the first term in the mainstream of dressage, but "on the bit" keeps clinging to our equestrian vocabulary ad infinitum...I wonder what it would take to erase it from our collective minds??

Comment by Jane Savoie on July 20, 2009 at 7:22am: When you use your aids to connect your horse as I described above, you want into get into the habit of "layering" the aids like coats of paint. So add hind legs through your outside hand for about 3 seconds and then soften for a few strides. And then repeat the aids. Soften. And repeat.

The aids are only slightly firmer than the light pressure you have with your legs draped around your horse's sides and a light ( about 1/2 pound) contact with his mouth. So you can layer many of them one on top of the other. The first set of aids connects your horse. The subsequent aids remind him to stay there.

Comment by Beverly Buck on July 19, 2009 at 11:55pm: You need too scream that from the rooftops!!!

Comment by Marti Langley on July 18, 2009 at 1:17pm: Good question, Nora.

Comment by Nora Robinson on July 18, 2009 at 11:16am: great post Jane.....I will re-read this over and over until I get it into my thick head :) Once you are on the move though , and say the horse starts to get away from you (like mine can do re: head goes up in the air!) do you just stop and start over until both horse and rider start to become more natural at it?

Comment by Ann Crago on July 18, 2009 at 10:59am: ....Too true and easy to remember in my easy chair at home....but instinct to NOT use hands first takes
purposeful thought....Good habits and changing auto reflexes...( like fetal - crouch ) when trouble arises are difficult to reprogram , aren't they.....That's the fun and the challenge though...
Thanks for the reminder....I needed it.....