hi it's josie and today i'd like to talk to you about bend and flexion
they are very important to know about because they affect almost every exercise
you do undersaddle with your horse i teach my horses flexion and bend actually from the ground
and then i take it under saddle and everything's done in small steps so they understand it so
hopefully i can help you understand it too if you're confused it does seem to be complicated
but i promise you it's not so stay with me and by the end of this video hopefully you should
have an understanding of the difference between bend and flexion and how you use them if you like
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with bend so bend is used to describe the horse's longitudinal axis so if you were looking down on
him his longitudinal axis when it is evenly bent from the poll or you can use the tip of
the nose if that's going to help you a little bit more all the way through to the top of his tail
but he has three different sections there and they can all bend differently so the neck is obviously
very bendable he can bend that a lot well some can spider thank you then his rib cage so from the top
here of his sacrum up up to the front of his ribs there so that's a little bit bendable that's not
as bendable as his neck by any stretch and then his sacrum which is from the top here down to the
top of his tail those vertebrae are actually fused and the horse cannot bend them at all so then we
move to flexion now flexion does not involve the horse's back at all it literally involves the head
and where it attaches to his neck and that's called the poll so where the skull attaches to
the atlas joint which is the first vertebra in his neck it's very much like our wrist joint so you
can move your wrist in that way it's basically one of the only joints the ankle we can as well sorry
one of the only joints in our body my elbow can't because it can't go back there if
you want to try that it's a specialized joint there that allows the horse to move
like our wrist does now a horse that's stiff in the poll will also be very stiff under saddle
will lack suppleness so this is important there so flexion is only involving the horse's head
with with a straight neck and i teach them this from the ground good boy
so i will um i can't do it from in front because i don't do it that way
sorry do you want to just come up here spider actually i'll turn him face on stop
so flexion means that he turns his head only either to the inside it's just not listening
yep there that's flexion to the left and flexion to the right and flexion to the
left and flexion to the right now if you want to go back actually i'll try and do it again
when that joint is nice and supple the horse's nuchal ligament so it's a ligament that runs
from the poll all the way over the back of the horse to the tail that is nice and loose
and can flick the horse's crest over spider has quite a crest so hopefully you can see it
to the left to the right and can you see what his nature
is when i stretch him through there he actually wishes to stretch down
people often say and me included sometimes bend when they actually mean flexion but i
would like to just point out to you that you can have flexion so the horse can stand perfectly
straight through his body and he can flex but you can't have bend without flexion and why is that
because if you think about the definition of bend it is when the horse is evenly bent
along his longitudinal axis so if he had a straight head on a bent neck he's not bent because
he's got a tiny straight bit and then a curve so he needs to bend all the way so you can have
flexion without bend but you can't have bend without flexion so let's go through the aids
to get flexion your inside rein just asks the horse to tip
his head in not to bend his neck so the job of your outside rein is to keep the neck straight
in the beginning sometimes you sort of i know with my really green horses they need their neck bent a
bit and then all of a sudden they give in the poll and you feel it because they give they're not hard
against the bit but the aim is to keep your neck reasonably straight just move over here spider so
that you can get some flexion now he's already flexing left so i'm going to flex him right
so i don't use my outside rein unless he goes to bend his neck too far all i'm going to do
is squeeze my inside rein and ask him to give through the poll and the outside the inside rein
the outside rein will stop if he tries to over bend and if he went to move his right hind i'd
close my right leg or if he went to move his right front i'd close my right knee and vice
versa if he went to move the left side so i'll ask him to flex to the right so my hand goes squeeze
and if he doesn't flex then i sort of twist my little finger a little bit towards his wither and
that puts a bit more pressure on without pulling because you definitely don't want to pull as such
so flexing he's looking at the sheep flexing to the left his neck's bent and he's distracted
because there are sheep over there which the farmer put out the other day and my horses
are all beside themselves flexed left flexed right flexed left flexed right so in correct
flexion you should just see the corner of the horse's eye and that corner of his nostril
he's so flex right flex left flex right right left right left
right right that was very good indication to show you when the ligament gives but don't expect that
in the beginning if you're lucky you may get it but if you don't please don't think you're doing
anything wrong horses can be quite stiff through that joint and need a little bit of work flexion
and bend it's quite important part that you need to know really enjoying doing these i hope you're
enjoying watching them don't forget to subscribe to my channel and thank you so much for watching