10/17/2024
What is Signal?
I have come to believe that a bit’s signal is one of the most misunderstood aspects of riding. There’s even a notion of “pre-signal” floating around out there. This is a topic that I’ve devoted some years to dissecting. Let’s get into it.
First, there’s no such thing as pre-signal. Please stop using that term. A signal either is being transmitted or isn’t being transmitted. This shouldn’t require further discussion. Good communication makes challenging topics simpler, not more complicated. I’m a big fan of, “if you can’t explain something to a 7-year-old, you don’t actually understand the thing.”
Secondly, everything that I’m about to explain applies to any type of bridle. It can be a traditional bosal, mechanical hackamore, halter, snaffle, spade bit, Baucher bit, Waterford, Kimberwick, Pelham, Weymouth, Argentine, D-ring, eggbutt, full-cheek, half cheek, Dr. Cook’s, and on and on and on. I was surprised a day or two ago on a post where I asked what you’re riding your horse with. Maybe half of you responded with some type of bitless rig. I’d assume I’m known as the bit guy, but in truth, a lot of what I teach applies just as much to all of the bitless stuff too. I hope that group following me is in recognition of this. Or maybe they’re just here for good horsemanship stuff? Anyway, if you are interested in our offerings for sale, understand that I’ll consistently be talking a whole bunch about how you use the tool, and not just about the tool. More "bit problems" are caused by improper usage than by mechanics, by a mile.
Simply put, signal is everything that happens once you start to pull on those reins. I teach this progression as what I call the Action Chain. The steps are:
1) Your body subconsciously responds to your decision to make some change. That could be turning left, preparing for a spin, or the path to the next jump you’re planning 3 strides before this jump. I use the example here of the cutting horses I used to ride. They’re so incredibly tuned into and looking for stops. It’s hard to describe unless you’ve ridden one. When we get new people on board, it’s common for them to be warming up and plan that they’ll stop up ahead when they get to that corner/gate/post/etc. The fun part is seeing the horse slam on the brakes as soon as that thought goes through their head. Their body prepares for the stop without them being aware. The horse feels that preparation and goes into the ground. They get pitched forward, kissing the horse between the ears. Their body subconsciously prepared for the stop they decided to ask for, and their horse felt it and cued from it. Folks, they’re so much more sensitive than we grasp. Pun intended...
2) Consciously cueing with your body is an essential part of good riding. This could be opening one thigh, asking for bend with an inside leg, tilting your pelvis, or even just looking toward 10 o’clock, making your torso and pelvis twist, cueing the horse. We could also say that using a verbal cue like “Whoa” fits in here. If you’re going to use the term “pre-signal” steps 1 & 2 are the only ones where I could possibly agree with its use because they don’t involve any signal through the bit whatsoever, yet.
3) Adjusting your hands on the reins in preparation for “the cue” is signal too. I’m a big proponent of riding with a loose and open hand. I can take up a lot of slack or adjust contact by simply tightening my hand and gripping the rein. My pinkies do most of my rein work in a snaffle for instance. If I approach my reins this way, I’m also more able to feel the rein and the true weight I am applying, because my hand is loose and feeling rather than tight and numb. I have a lot more feel in my fingertips to offer my horse than if I’m using my biceps and shoulders to pull on the reins. That’s just wrestling. I want no part of it. Horses don’t either if you watch them.
4) Reins moving on the neck as the slack is taken up to cue is part of the cue. Reins made of different materials and different weights make more difference than we tend to appreciate. One of the beautiful things about riding with a traditional hackamore is the mane hair mecate. Those little bristles of hair coming out of the twists are working on that horse’s neck too. They are a huge part of that device’s subtlety. Even the flimsiest and smoothest of reins will be felt on the neck though, as they go from slack toward taught. This allows us to see true neck reining as simply a very subtle cue made in a logical sequence progressing toward using the bit.
5) Rein loops on the rings of the bit cause subtle vibrations from the friction as they slide from a slack position toward taught. If you slow things down and really look at the corner of the horse’s mouth during the sliding of the rein loops, you’ll see unmistakable vibrations and movements in the soft tissue of the corner of the mouth. If we’re not talking about a bit, but some kind of bitless device, this aspect still exists but would be diminished. Also, the tissues or pressure points that those devices touch aren’t as sensitive as the mouth area. I’ve talked about that a lot in other articles and won’t rehash here.
A frequent question I get is about metal rein snaps connecting to the bit ring. I hate them. Vibrations matter and not all vibes are good vibes. There are some ways to take advantage of the convenience of a snap, but avoid the bad vibes. In any case, I’d do whatever to not have that metal on metal vibration happening. I can feel my spine tingling in annoyance just writing this. It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard…
6) After 5 steps, contact has now finally been made with the soft tissues. There’s a lot that I say about this step in my video and course, so I’ll be briefish here. If you ride with contact regularly, this is where things start. You’ll still have the body cues listed, but several rein and bit friction signals won’t be available to the horse.
Having good contact is a high-level skill. Riding with contact gives the horse less time to see you coming (for better or worse) and means there is less signal. It’s far more difficult to ride well with contact than people realize, and good, light contact is very rarely seen. Most of the “bit problems” that I deal with come from riders who have fried their horse and overwhelmed their senses by riding too loudly, for too long, with contact.
This very small slice of our communication via pulling on a rein is the sweet spot. One of the very best pieces of advice that I could give to anyone about improving their hands as a rider is to become obsessed with feeling and recognizing this point in your signal. This is also true with any type of bitless device.
Let me say here that this stage, for any bridle, is actually just prior to reins coming tight. I show this with close ups in both The Bit Video and The Bit Course, but you will easily be able to wiggle and move the soft tissues of the mouth with a slightly loose rein. I do this in clinics. I have you hold the rein in your hand. I hold the other end and wiggle it with slack in it and you’ll easily feel it. In other words, your rein moves the soft tissues of the mouth, and true contact is made, prior to the rein making an actual straight line from the rider’s hand to the ring of the bit. Riders whose rein is always straight/tight aren’t riding in contact, they’re riding in heavy contact.
7) You’re seven steps in before your bit’s mechanics come into play and soft tissues are now being compressed. If you are riding in a curb bit of any kind, including a spade bit, this is where the cheek and mouthpiece will begin to rotate. That simple distinction of the mouthpiece rotating with a curb, and not rotating with a snaffle will save you a ton of money on gimmicky crap if you really understand it. People think of the main difference of leverage bits being the multiplication of force. To have that belief is to have missed some huge parts of what leverage really means. Rotation of the mouthpiece is right up there in importance as a distinction between leverage and non-leverage bits. Lots of junk, “predatory designs for suckers” type snaffles are designed to solve problems that can only occur if the mouthpiece rotates, which is mechanically impossible with a snaffle.
This is also where one of the least understood parts of signal comes into play. Any bit that articulates, in any way, will have more signal than any solid bit. This is only obvious when we begin to think about signal in terms of time. If you’ve made contact with the soft tissues and pull back another inch or two with a solid bit, you’ll have gotten to the final step. For a bit that swivels/hinges/articulates, the movement of those parts also plays out in this stage. This means you’re going to pull farther back on the reins before the final step is reached. Having to move the reins farther means it takes more time to do so. Bits that articulate are slower, taking longer for the signal to play out, than bits that don’t articulate. If we think of signal in terms of time for things to play out, bits that articulate simply have more signal than solid bits.
Indeed, I find that far more horses are scared/braced/averse to things happening too quickly rather than to actual high levels of pressure being applied. If you want a secure horse that doesn’t evade the bit, brace up, or fear your hands, simply make sure that they always see you coming and have ample time to figure out the cue and respond. I’d hope that slowing your hands down being important, especially for more sensitive horses, is made obvious by breaking down just how many things are actually happening when you simply pull on those reins. Everything through this point, I call the “Signal Phase”.
8) As we hit the end of the line, all articulations and rotations of the bit cease, the soft tissues are fully compressed and hard bar contact is made. People worry way too much about bar contact. You’re well into problems by this point. Contact with the bars is the end of the line. You should be a lot more concerned with making sure the things that occur prior to bar contact go well enough that you rarely ever get to step 8. When buckaroos say their spade bit is a signal bit, what they mean is they don’t want to ever get to where the curb comes tight, bar pressure is made, and multiplication of force via leverage begins. If you’re getting here often, you’ve missed the good stuff and all opportunities for subtle communication. For sensitive horses, simply working in the compression of soft tissues range can be too much.
As I’d mentioned about contact being an advanced skill, most riders don’t recognize the spots where they’ve made initial contact with the tongue and the lips, nor do they recognized the feeling as they’re adding just slightly more pressure and compressing those soft tissues. When you’re regularly getting to bar pressure, you’re riding a horse whose clock is ticking before he’s going to either get really numb, putting you on “mute” to protect himself, or those evasions, head tosses, tongue withdrawals, rearing, and all the other vices start to show up.
Bar pressure is the step where we really do “feel” the horse in our hand. This final step is when what we tend to think of as leverage occurs. The 8th step is when the curb has come tight, as has the headstall. Chin and poll pressure are enacted, and then comes the multiplication of force on the bars, by the bit, depending on the cheek design.
This is also the step where in a simple snaffle you pull 5 lbs. and the horse luckily only feels 5 lbs. Let me say here that this step applies to bitless bridles of all types as well. The pressure points won’t be as sensitive as inside the mouth, but if you’re regularly hitting the end of the line with those devices and everything is tight, you’ve lost too. Riding well and with softness is largely about using signal and not getting to step 8.
The title of this article is “What is Signal?” I’d propose to you now that signal is a culmination of several things. Signal is a hugely underappreciated and misunderstood part of how bits work. Signal is a function of time/speed of action, which is completely missed by 99.9% of us. Slower bits give the horse more time to feel you coming and respond. They have more signal.
Signal is the zone where we can communicate with a horse through the reins that is so subtle most of us don’t perceive it with our hands. Seriously, try to feel those soft tissues when you pick up the reins. It’ll be a game changer and lead to a much happier horse.
Signal is all of the good stuff prior to the force stuff, no matter what type of bridle you have. Signal is also just “how much” is going on in a horse’s mouth. If bits A and B were identical curb bits, except bit B had a taller port, then bit B would have more signal. As they rotated, “more” would be happening in the mouth, to be more easily felt, with B than A. People fear tall ports. Let me tell you that if you develop the skills of your hands, tall ports offer some serious sensitivity in communication. We’re very wrong with our reactions to some of these “big scary” bits. They’re about subtlety, not force.
So, bits with taller ports have more signal than lower ports. Bits that rotate have more signal than bits that don’t because rotation adds more sensation to what’s happening inside the mouth, and also slows the bit down by adding more time before things come tight. Bits that rotate more also have more signal than bits that rotate less. Higher leverage bits have less signal in terms of less rotation than lower leverage bits. Higher leverage bits are also slower than lower leverage bits. That also means that the same bit with a tighter curb adjustment has less signal than that exact same bit with a looser curb adjustment. Adjusting curbs is a hugely under-utilized area where we can play with how a particular bit rides.
Bits that articulate take longer to “come tight” and get to bar pressure than bits that are solid. To compare again a bit that articulates to a solid bit, articulating bits have more signal. They are both slower and have more going on to be felt and communicated. That’s not to say articulating bits are always the better choice. It’s merely an illustration of how signal plays out differently between two examples.
There are two huge skills to work on from this article, if you’re sharp. Slow down your hands and really start to feel out and be aware of these separate steps as they play out. You’re going to find very quickly that your horse responds before you get very far down the list if you just slow down.
Lastly, if you begin to be aware of what your hands are feeling and you recognize making true initial contact with the soft tissues and then when you’re compressing those soft tissues prior to bar contact, your level of skill at riding is going to skyrocket.
If you’ve appreciated the level of breakdown, depth of understanding, organization of, or the fresh perspective offered here, you really should check out “The Bit Video”, or our newest offering and next evolution beyond “The Bit Video”, “The Bit Course 2.0: Understanding How and Why Bits Function”. We’ll be starting a new MasterClass version of “The Bit Course” soon and you can get on the waiting list now.
Just think of how many terms you’ve heard and used that you could understand more fully and how much you’d improve in your horsemanship with that understanding. I’m also including The Action Chain steps. PLEASE, print that out, laminate it, and hang it in the barn. Make the world aware of just how much signal they’re blowing past without realizing it.
