03/27/2025
Problem Horses Fixing the Foundation Step 3
Here’s the third and final step I’m going to share! 🙌🏼 Without any delay and a heavy dose of anticlimactic reveal…it’s BODY CONTROL!! I mean…could it be any more boring?? Sorry, I really do wish this stuff was more exciting sometimes.
Before we get into the why of it, let’s start with the, “what is it?” If you get into horsemanship clinics or the horse show scene you’ll hear a lot about it. Reason being is that it’s pretty much everything…it’s that important. But at an understanding level it’s pretty basic. We want to be able to move the different parts of the horses body in what ever direction we desire, independent of the other parts and at different speeds. Another way to say that is that we want to have shoulder control, hip control, as well as the ribs, neck and face. We want forwards, backwards, left and right. Once we have them working independently, we’ll also use them together.
For us this is an absolute huge foundational piece. Being able to move the different body parts is what makes up the “tools” to fix most of our issues with horses. For instance if your horse is dropping his shoulder in to the left, we want the ability to pick him up and move his shoulder back to the right. If that shoulder control doesn’t work off of our inside leg and/or off of lifting your inside rein, then we’ll struggle to fix the dropping in and we won’t be able to build good habits.
One thing I learned from my mentor, Mark Lyon, is that there are 3 measures of control: speed, direction, and posture. When we go to a horse show these are the 3 major things we are being judged on. In our program we tend to prioritize them as direction #1, speed #2 and posture as #3. Where it can get confusing is when we also want to throw in relaxation. Relaxation is a huge thing in horse training and showing if a person wants to do well. I’m just going to acknowledge it but we’re not going dwell on it in this post as I think it would overcomplicate things at this time.
I probably shouldn’t say this but often times I see horses messed up by going to a discipline trainer first. And by that I mean a trainer who is going to train the horse to a specific job. A good c**t starter has different priorities than a discipline trainer. Often times a discipline trainer puts posture as the first priority and jumps straight to working on drills in the under saddle work. When posture is put first, before speed and direction, a horse can experience a lot of confusion and frustration. Build a solid foundation of, “go where I say when I say”, as the initial lesson, tends to work out better for the horse. And it includes doing obstacles, riding out of the arena, riding next to scary things, picking up something from the fence, etc.
I feel like I could ramble on and on about this stuff so I’m going to conclude this series with this. Building a solid foundation with a horse is a major key to their long term success. They need to willingly move forward. They need to willingly give their hind end, even when scared, frustrated, or confused. They need to go over, around and through basic obstacles. Life is full of obstacles, they are an unavoidable reality. To have a solid foundation they also need a basic understanding of how to isolate and yield their different body parts. This includes softening of their ribs, hips, shoulders, poll, withers, and neck.
Building this foundation does take some time but remember…it’s the foundation! You want it rock solid and something you can count on when situations get difficult.
I hope this helps a few people. I can’t wait to look back on it in a few years and think to myself, “wow, I had no idea what I was talking about back then.” 😜
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