In Front of the Leg

What does it mean for the horse to be in front of the leg? We often hear that a certain horse is “so behind the leg!” You can tell from the speaker’s tone of voice that this is a bad thing. Or a rider declares that the test was going great until the horse got behind her leg and it was just downhill from there. Clearly behind the leg is bad, so in front of the leg must be good. The instructor says, “He’s not in front of your leg. Get him in front of your leg.” This must mean that if the horse is in front of your leg it will be better than it is now.  What is the difference? How can you tell if the horse is in front of the leg?

One good definition of “in front of the leg” is that it means that the horse wants to get to the other end of the arena. A horse that is in front of the leg goes forward on its own. Your leg is a driving aid, but if the horse goes only because you keep applying the driving aid it is not in front of the leg. A horse that goes only because you keep applying the driving aid is always waiting for you to stop. This horse is behind the leg. If you must use your leg all the time to keep the horse going you can’t use it for anything else. There won’t be any bending, there won’t be any effective half halts, and there won’t be any “gears” within the gaits. All of which means that there won’t be any progress through the levels of the training scale.

How do we get the horse in front of the leg? Most young horses are more or less in front of the leg to start with. Horses naturally tend to want to go forward and will move away from pressure on their skin. So when you sit on a horse and touch its sides with your legs it most likely will move forward. You reward this response by removing or lightening the leg pressure. (You can inhibit or frustrate the desire to go forward by tensing your body or restricting the horse with the bit, so it is important to stay relaxed and elastic when applying the driving leg aid.) If the horse does not understand the driving leg aid, you can use the whip (presumably the horse will already understand the whip from longing and other work on the ground). If the horse still does not understand, you can have a person on the ground assist with a longe whip. (You know that gorgeous trot that the 3-year-olds do at the German auctions? The auction riders are truly amazing professionals, but not infrequently that horse is in the arena only because there were people outside the arena with longe whips.) I want to emphasize here that I’m not talking about beating the horse with either a dressage whip or a longe whip. If a young horse is not responding to a light touch from the dressage whip or from the sight or sound of a longe whip behind it you probably want to regroup and spend some time regaining the horse’s trust and attention on the ground. Once the horse does understand moving forward from the whip and from the leg, you use those driving aids to encourage the horse to maintain brisk gaits on its own. As each ride progresses, and as the training process progresses, the horse should be willing to maintain the forwardness—the quality of being in front of the leg—more easily and for longer periods on its own.

A horse with more training, with an understanding of the leg, may begin the ride feeling a little slow or behind the leg. To minimize this portion of the ride, make sure you give the horse ample time to walk (preferably on a loose rein) to loosen up. If the horse is young or has just come in from turnout, walk time on a loose rein might be as little as 5 or 10 minutes. With an older horse, especially in cold weather, more time may be appropriate. Even in the walk on a loose rein, though, the horse should understand that it must move forward. It should feel like it is carrying you forward all the time and has a sense of purpose and a desire to get somewhere.

When you start to pick up the reins the horse should continue to move forward enthusiastically at the walk, responding to your leg just as comfortably and eagerly as it did while walking on a loose rein. If the horse slows down it could be because you have taken your leg off, or because you have taken contact rather than allowing the horse to make the contact with the rein, or because the horse is responding to the rein more than to the leg (probably out of concern that you will take excessive contact). It is important at this point in the ride (as earlier if you need to encourage the horse to walk forward on the loose rein) that you reinforce the walk rhythm when using the leg as a driving aid by applying each leg in turn to ask the horse to move the corresponding hind leg off the ground more quickly. You should also be sure to ask for more forward for 3 or 4 steps in a row. One step more forward does not necessarily mean that the second step will catch up to the first, so you have to ask for the second step. Two steps do not necessarily mean that the forwardness should continue, so you have to ask for the third, and maybe a fourth. At that point you will have established a new brisker tempo and a new better energy level. This may establish the forward, in front of the leg, walk that you want or it may last for only a few steps before you have to repeat the process. Two three repetitions should have the horse in front of your leg at the walk. The horse may need to be reminded occasionally that the task at hand is self-propulsion at the walk, but the reminders should not need to be constant.

It is important to allow your hands and your hips to follow the horse’s motion in the walk. The horse lifts your seat bone when the corresponding hind leg is on the ground, and the horse’s head takes your hands forward and allows them to come back with each step. Because the horse’s hind legs move your seat your hips follow a bilateral, side to side motion. Because the horse’s neck and head move your hands, both hands move forward and back together (not alternately) to follow the motion. If you try to push the horse forward by pushing your seat forward you actually inhibit the hind legs. And if you don’t follow the motion of the head and neck with your hands you inhibit the motion of the horse’s back, which will cause stopping or a lateral walk.

Once the horse is in front of your leg at the walk you can ask for trot. Assuming you have an attentive horse walking forward and in front of your leg, if you just let your knees come away from the saddle and close your lower leg the horse will trot. Depending on the horse, the trot could be very lackluster and lazy or could be exploding with energy. We never ever want to discourage energy. We do, however, want to encourage rideability, whatever the horse has offered. 

If the horse feels really forward, you do not need to worry about getting the horse in front of your leg. You do, however, want to pay attention to the tempo. If the horse feels like it really wants to carry you forward and really wants to get to the other end of the arena, the tempo may be perfect for that horse or it may be too quick. As a general rule, if the horse offers a slow tempo you ask for a quicker tempo, and if the horse offers a quick tempo you ask for a slower tempo. If the tempo seems perfect then you want to make sure it can be adjusted, that it can be made a little quicker or a little slower.

If the horse starts out slow or lazy in the trot, or is curling its neck and avoiding the contact, it is not in front of the leg. Every horse is entitled to warm-up time, so you can’t expect its best trot at the beginning of the ride. What you can expect is responsiveness. When you touch the horse’s side with your leg, you should get at least a little increase in energy. You want to remember that as a rule in the trot your inside leg is your driving leg; in the rising trot you put your leg on as you sit, which is when the inside leg is on the ground. If you want the horse to take longer, bigger strides you keep your leg on longer. If you want the horse to take quicker strides you take your leg off more quickly. And each time you want to ask the horse to go more forward you should ask for 3 consecutive strides. As in the walk, any result you get will last for a few strides before the horse tries to revert to the trot it originally offered, so you should plan to repeat the process a few times to get a good result. Once you have the trot you want, you can test it by asking for more forward. If the horse goes forward readily without bracing or hollowing, that’s good. Then you can ask the horse to lengthen the strides and then to shorten the strides a little bit without bracing or hollowing or decreasing the energy.

If the horse can’t go forward because it has trouble staying round in the trot, you can go back to the walk and ride leg yields and turns on the forehand to supple the pelvis and lumbar region. This will increase the mobility of the hind legs, which will enable the horse to accept the contact better and stay round.

Once the horse has started to feel responsive and purposeful in the trot you can go on to the canter. If the horse is in front of your leg at the trot, the transition to canter should be easy. If it is not, go back to the trot and make sure the horse is in front of your leg at the trot, then try the transition again. The trot should have as much energy as you expect from the canter before you ask for the transition. Remember that in the canter as a rule your outside leg is the driving leg. The outside hind leg is on the ground on beat one of the canter, and that is when you want to apply your leg to activate that leg. Beat one is when the horse’s poll is at the highest point, so if you have trouble feeling which leg is on the ground just watch the poll and apply your outside leg accordingly. As in the walk and trot, ask for more forward in the canter by applying the driving leg aid for 3 strides in a row, repeating as necessary until the horse willingly maintains the forwardness.

Transitions between trot and canter are good both for horses that are nervous and quick and for those that are lazy. On the 20m circle at the trot do the transition to the canter on the center line, and then back to trot, also on the center line. Repeat the exercise as many times as necessary to improve the horse’s attentiveness to the aids for the transition, varying the amount of time in each gait—sometimes half a circle, sometimes a full circle, sometimes a circle and a half. Remember in this exercise, as always when riding canter-trot transitions, that going from canter to trot or from trot to canter is just a change of rhythm, between a 2 beat gait and a 3 beat gait, and not a change of energy. You can ride a half halt to get the horse’s attention and help it with balance before asking for the transition, but not to slow the horse down. Similarly when going from canter to trot, the half halt can be a preparation for the transition by improving balance and attentiveness, but it should not decrease the energy of the canter, and it is not the aid for the trot. All you want the horse to do in the downward transition is to change from a 3 beat gait to a 2 beat gait, so you can ask simply by stepping into your outside stirrup.

After some canter-trot transitions the horse should be able lengthen and shorten the strides in the canter. Even a training level horse can do this a little bit. When you go back to the trot the horse should continue to move forward freely and willingly, responding promptly to any request from your leg for more energy. Then the horse is in front of your leg!

© Shan A Lawton

Published in The Contact, Fall 2017 Newsletter