hi it's josie and today i'd like to talk to you about bend i'd like to talk to you about how you
can help your horse understand bend and if you're just beginning your riding career i'd like to talk
to you about how you can get a feel for it i was forever wondering if my horses were bent
so there's a little bit of theory let's get on with it then i'm going to show you a very very
simple exercise that you can do to teach your horse and yourself or yourself and your horse
whichever way you want to look at it for a horse to be bent correctly you need flexion and bend i
have done a video on that and i'll link that up here and in the description i'm going to go into
it here as well just because it fits this video so the horse is said to be bent when he's on a curved
line and his body follows that curved line without falling off either way with part of his body the
biggest issue with it is that the horse is more flexible and can bend the neck more easily than he
can bend this part of his body and this part his sacrum he can't actually bend at all because it is
fused good boy so the biggest problem i see people have and i had it too was that i bent my horses
too much in the neck and let him go straight so if this was my horse's body i would bend this bit
and this bit would just do what it wanted it wouldn't actually bend around like that so what
you need to do is you need to know your bending aids your bending aids are you're inside rein
for flexion and direction your outside rein helps control the amount of bend in the neck
and therefore it actually controls the shoulders or the wither of the horse depends which way you
want to look at it they're both the same things they're in the same area your inside leg gives
your horse something to bend around or to move away from your outside lower leg sits back there
to stop the outside part of the horse from staying straight so that he can bend around it and
this is how it made sense to me so if you as i said if you just pull the neck and don't do
anything else that goes like that if you put your inside leg on so let's just say this is the neck
body sacrum down here so if you put your inside leg on which will be my thumb and you don't do
anything with your outside leg your horse just does that he still stays in a big straight line
your outside leg comes slightly back behind your inside leg and when you bend him voila he bends
but you need your outside leg to catch him doesn't always have to be on in the beginning it might and
your horses will be able to bend more one way than the other that is natural like we're left
and right handed so if you've got the side that he's struggling to bend do not get cross with him
if you feel yourself getting cross go inside brush your teeth with your non-dominant hand
see how difficult that is and then realize that that's what he's trying to deal with he's trying
to do something when it doesn't come naturally to him that's a quick one isn't it let's get on with
this exercise i love this exercise so you've got to walk yourself on a nice 20 meter circle come on
rebels like i was sleeping in the sun that was so nice when you on your when you've worked out where
your 20 meter circle is now you need circle points to pick you need to know where you're going so
that you can um be accurate just either spiral in to the smallest circle your horse is comfortable
doing or if you can't spiral in just get into the center however you can and then i usually do a 10
meter circle so i've got my bend and flexion here i've got my outside rein just controlling
my shoulders my inside leg is on my horse and my outside leg is back in the guarding position
i i just use i'll tell you when i use it actually
now now now so i actually am sort of just touching him with he as he steps i didn't realize i was but
since i pointed that out to you i can see that i am i do things unconsciously now which i once
had to teach myself to do consciously that's just normal learning guys so when you've got
on your 10 meter circle what you're going to do is ask your horse to leg yield out
um to a horse length or two steps we're using so that but you want him to leg yield straight
as in he's not allowed to turn out and go like that that is not the aim of this exercise it
must be a sideways step so next time i come around to this point i'll i'll do it with
rebel so your inside leg goes on make sure your outside legs not jammed there and he can't go out
and i'll say now and now as i put my inside leg on and then he should as he leg yields through he'll
bend through his body as long as i don't throw the outside rein at him here we go are you ready
now now that was actually quite a lazy effort on rebels behalf because he hardly moves sideways at
all i might just give him a little wake up next time with my whip if he doesn't do it you might
need to do this so we'll do it again i want him to go out two horse lengths here we go
yes oy yes yes thank you now you saw me correct him because he was just
daydreaming there and pushing on my inside leg he didn't get off of it so
now i'm just going to come back in on the circle and we are going to do that again
you can see he's very different to spider
righty-o here we go ready one two that was a bit more active good boy
now i'm going to keep him on this circle that he's just leg yielded out too
and then as i'm going away from the camera in a minute i'm going to ask him on to to let you whoop
two more are you ready leg yield leg yield yeah thank you i had to use a bit of spur there i'm
quite happy if you go and watch that i wasn't mean with it i just said excuse me stop being
lazy so we're going to do it again here i'm just he's a bit sleepy so i'm going to ink yeah good so
i increase the repetition there to make it happen and here i'm going to do it again out out good boy
good boy i don't care that his head comes up when i do that that's not this exercise yes it
will be eventually but at the moment if he's not moving off my leg i have to correct that first
so here we go again are you listening mate good off off
good
so then when you've got that in walk you can do it in trot ready leg yield leg yield good boy
and how do you know when when you've got your um
flexion and your bend right when you give your inside rein you should not lose the bend
why not because i've got him on my outside rein and my inside leg good boy spiral in down here
do i get onto a smaller circle the horse may have to slow down as you do a smaller circle
otherwise he might lose his balance i'm going to leg yield towards the camera whoops good boy
let's see how he does it this way into a 10 meter circle and now leg yield leg yield good good boy
seems you've stayed all the way to the end i'll give you a little bonus tip
if you leg yield all the way out to the end of your 20 meter circle and ask for canter
you should get a very nice transition i hope that helps you with a little bit of bend and
understanding how to do it i'd love it if you'd give this video a thumbs up if
you like it let me know how you're finding the channel and thanks for watching guys