Maintaining the Horse's Length of Neck in Transitions (Current Freebie!)

I will never forget the first time that I attended the USET training sessions down in Ocala, Florida many years ago..... I was so excited to watch all of the top Event riders receive dressage instruction from Grand Prix dressage trainer Sandy Pflueger Phillips, who was the dressage coach for the Eventing Team at the time.

I was fully expecting to be wowed by watching hours of top horses and riders schooling upper level movements. But that was not the case! Instead, Sandy had every rider work on just one basic thing for their entire lesson....and it proved to be very difficult indeed!

What she had them do was to put the horse in a long, low, and round stretching frame like in the above picture, and to do transitions within the gaits while in that frame. The goal was to be able to do downward transitions without in any way shortening the horse's neck.

Why? Because when the horse shortens his neck his body is being jammed together with tension. And any tension in the back inhibits the ability of the hind legs to fully come underneath the horse's body. Which will of course make it impossible for the horse to be truly balanced over its hind legs.

When your horse responds properly to a well ridden half halt or downward transition, you should feel like his body comes together from back to front. His body should feel short behind the withers - because he is bringing himself together, and sitting well over his hocks. But he should feel long in front of the withers, with a telescoping neck. (To picture what a horse with a telescoping neck would look like, think of what your horse does when he arches and reaches his neck forward to see what's in his feed bucket.)

The only way to achieve this is to ride 100% from back to front in your transitions. Meaning that your hands do not act backwards even slightly, but simply receive the energy with your closed fingers. And that is not always easy! As I said, every one of the Olympic and World Championship riders struggled significantly with this exercise! One even hopped off of his horse in frustration, and said to Sandy, "You get on and do it!" She just quietly talked him into getting back on and giving it another go, as he had to learn to do it for himself! 

So when you work on this exercise, don't expect perfection. But aim to keep your horse's neck as long as possible while performing half halts and downward transitions. And you will find that in trying to achieve that, you will be more honestly riding from back to front.