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Hello everyone! In today's video we are talking about how to get your horse relaxed and supple,
and there is a slight difference between the word relaxation and the word suppleness. So by
the end of this video hopefully you'll know the difference. If you already know the difference
let me know in the comments what you think the difference is between relaxation and suppleness.
So in today's video i'm going to give you three tips to help you get your horse relaxed and supple
the first thing that's really important to getting your horse relaxed getting your horse supple is
actually the walk and so if you get on your horse and your horse is like really tense
and nervous a good thing to do is just to spend some time in the walk and it's important though
that you when you're walking your horse that you do it in such a way that helps your horse to relax
so a couple of things that i pay attention to is one that i have my horse like a little bit
on the contact or around so that they're not just sticking their head up and looking around
everywhere because if you let your horse just like like put their head up and like look outside the
arena sometimes that will get them even more tense so usually what i do is i just take up
a light contact and i just use my rain a little bit on the inside like a little bit my fingers
to keep my horse looking to the inside of the arena so that i could see
his inside eyelash as i'm walking around here and then the second
thing that i focus on in the walk is the tempo of the walk so i don't want my horse
walking like a thousand miles an hour like where they're just really hyper and rushing in the walk
i want to have my horse like i feel like this is a good tempo for the walk so it's one two three
four one two three four one two three four i want to feel like a nice swing through my horse's body
and i want to make sure that my body is following that so that like my hips and my elbows are
following it so the walk is a gate that helps your horse to relax and also get supple when we talk
about the word relaxation we focus a lot on the word relaxation refers more to the mental state of
your horse whereas the word suppleness encompasses both the mental and physical state of your horse
so i'm gonna go ahead and pick up the trot now so once you've done you know some good time at
the walk and you feel like your horse is more or less relaxed the next thing that you're gonna do
is you're gonna pick up the trot and what you're gonna do in the trot to help with suppleness
it both mental and physical so when we talk about mental suppleness that's kind of more
the word relaxation when we talk about physical suppleness it's that the muscles in your horse
are elastic and loose and your horse is bendable so the second exercise is circles and serpentines
and the reason that circles help with suppleness is two-fold one is that a circle helps your horse
mentally to stay focused on the arena on the task at hand so as i'm riding the circle here
i'm keeping him just very slightly positioned to the inside and the bending age that i'm using
and the turning aids that i'm using are inner leg at the girth outer leg a little behind the girth
outside rain turns the shoulder and my inside rein is kind of like a little blinker that tells him
to look to the inside so putting him on a circle like this focusing on steady tempo steady contact
and really maintaining the tempo not letting him speed up and slow down and speed up and slow down
kind of this monotonous circle goes a long way to getting him to relax
and then once you've trotted for a while on one circle and you feel like that's pretty good you
can start doing some changes and direction and some serpentines so i'm going to go straight ahead
and then at c i'm going to start a three loop serpentine now serpentines again
are working on suppleness because i'm working on being able to change the bend in my horse's body
so now here i need to start bending him to the left so my left leg at the girth my right leg
behind the girth i'm wrapping him around my left leg now i'm changing my posting diagonal
i'm bending him to the right so i don't know if you could see that but when i changed the bend
from right to left he got a little bit bracy and we lost the suppleness so i'm going to do it again
so changing the bend moving him off my right leg into that left ring keeping my outside hand down
bending him around my right leg keeping his focus now bending him to the right
keeping him off my right leg bending him around that right leg keeping his focus good boy
and just really thinking about maintaining steady tempo steady contact move him off the left leg
bend him to the left you will feel a big difference in your horse from left to right
and i can feel with him when i do that change of bend there's a little bit of a hiccup there
so the other thing you can do if you feel like you want to challenge your horse a little bit more
is rather than doing a three loop serpentine you can do what we call a german serpentine
where you turn past the perpendicular so on a normal serpentine you go perpendicular to the
center line on a german serpentine see how i'm almost turning back up the center line
and then i'm going the other way so this is a good exercise if your horse is like really hot intense
and rushing that you're kind of um just keeping your horse busy like giving them a lot to do
really working on exaggerating the bend and you know kind of letting some of the energy out
because that's important is that if your horse has a lot of energy you've got to kind of let it out
let it go somewhere if you just tell your horse you know stop slow down don't go that's
not gonna work good boy so serpentines and circles are really good way to get your horse
supple and the reason that we use the word supple more in dressage is
actually historically the dressage training scale the second level of the training scale
was relaxation and they changed that word to suppleness your third suppleness exercise is
the stretch circle so this stretch circle demonstrates this mental and physical
relaxation that we want from our horse is aka suppleness in order for your horse to stretch
down they have to be relaxed physically and they also have to be relaxed mentally because when they
put their head down like this they're not as able to look around and see like the predators that
could be coming to get them so the stretch circle is pretty much the ultimate test of relaxation
this horse you can tell does it very well um it's important when you do your stretch circle like he
wants to rush a little so i'm thinking about like little half hour like whole neck down oh
good boy that's better that's better good boy
good boy so those are three exercises that you can do to get your horse supple again
like i was saying before the reason that suppleness is a better word to describe
what we want from our dressage horses is because it incorporates the mental and the physical aspect
of it so you can have a horse that's like super relaxed and they're just like basically asleep but
they could be really stiff and like unmovable and not able to like do a serpentine or do a
stretch circle so that's why the word suppleness incorporates this mental relaxation as where well
as the physical like pliability and movability of your horse and one of the tricky things about
suppleness is that like the mental and physical states are are connected so if your horse is
really tense and nervous that's going to make their whole body be really tense and tight and
vice versa if their body's tight it's going to make their brains tight so the two are connected
and when you have your horse supple and relaxed it is makes them nice to ride i mean basically it
comes down to that that's why suppleness is the second rung of the dressage training scale is
because when your horse isn't supple you're like afraid for your life and worried you're gonna fall
off and die so when you have a horse that's supple and relaxed it can be very nice to ride them
i hope this video helps you if you like my videos please subscribe
and share this video with a friend also check out in the description i have a free mini course
on confidence so if you're struggling with your confidence and your horse's confidence be sure
to check out that mini course thanks so much for watching and i hope you enjoy my videos
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