We have all heard the term “put the horse in front of your leg,” and while it may sounds simple, it is very difficult to achieve correctly. Unfortunately, it does not mean hopping off and shifting the saddle back, if only it were that easy. It means of course that the horse is engaged, underneath you, and that when you give an aid he steps forward, comes up from behind and into an elastic contact in front. You get the feeling that he steps up a hill, and “out the front door."
I try to think that when I ask a leg aid, the energy of the horse comes through him and out the top, as opposed to out behind or split down the middle. If a horse is behind your leg it almost feels as if you're sitting in a gap in the middle of him, with half out the back and half out the front, and when you give an aid there is no flow of energy, just you banging about in the middle.
If a horse is in front of your leg when you give a relaxed effective aid, you feel that he reacts immediately and actively from behind, pushing the energy forward and lengthening his neck into a steady contact. Quick behind and long in front, as opposed to long behind and short in front!
So how to tell if your horse is in front of your leg? And how then, if he is not, to get him there? When my trainer first came to see me on Batialo, I felt like I was flying around in a big trot, but he quickly pointed out to me that not only was I working too hard, kicking every step, but also when I gave the aid for more impulsion, Batialo was getting longer and flatter, as opposed to shorter and more energetic. This was of course because the energy was going everywhere, out the back, through the sides, into the shoulders, everywhere except UP!
To correct this we had to get Batialo back in front of the leg, so that when I gave the aid for more impulsion, the energy could go up and out the front door. So we began transitions, going on and coming back, within the gait, or from trot to walk, to make sure Batialo was moving off a light aid, and stretching forward into the contact, being careful not to let him flatten and lengthen but keep himself round and over the back.
My trainer knew that until I could get Batialo off a light aid, I could never begin to produce more impulsion, because a horse that is in front of the leg, and working on the aid, must “move himself forward by himself," so that when a rider makes an aid it is to ask for more and not merely to keep him moving.
“Dressage consists of finding a way to get the horse to employ himself to the maximum in the chosen exercise and then maintain the work without the help of the aids,” said Nuno Oliveira.
Sounds simple but the problem is that many riders think they have the horse in front of the leg, but when they go to ask for that next exercise, they realise that they don’t at all. If a rider is all the time using their body to keep the horse moving, when they go to ask for something else, their tools have been exhausted and the horse just understands the aid as “more of the same kicking and pulling." So we can’t expect him to know that when we use our left leg we want him to step off it, if our left leg is on him the whole time to keep him moving.
The walk is one of the most difficult gaits to tell if the horse is in front of the leg and often we see riders give an aid in the walk and watch as the horse quickens or shuffles his feet instead of lengthening his stride and swinging his back. The proof that a rider does not have the horse in front of the leg will be seen most obviously in the walk to canter transition and you will often see that a rider will give the aid to canter and the horse will either quicken the walk, trot, drop onto the shoulders, or avoid the aid and move off the outside leg.
If the horse moves off a light leg aid, jumps up into the canter, engages from behind and stretches into the contact, the balance of the canter is established from the very first step and the rider knows her horse is in front of the leg.
The rein back is also a very telling exercise and it should not be the rein but the leg that asked the horse to step back, and only if the horse is in front of the leg, can he move backwards off a leg aid. Sounds strange? The thing to remember is that even though you are going backwards, it is still a forward movement, and to test that you must be able to step up and forward out of the rein back at any time. A horse that reins back and then falls onto the shoulders stops, gets stuck going backwards etc, is not in front of the leg, because he is not 100% ready to step up and forward at the slightest aid.
“Don’t start a rein back without first having the feeling that that horse is “well in front of you," Nuno stated.
Oliveira used to say that only when you have the horse in correct lightness is he ready to rein back and as my trainer pointed out to me that the term in front of the leg is directly dependant on lightness and self-carriage -- and all are part of the same key feeling -- that the horse is engaged and the energy is moving through to the front, into the contact, off light and effective aids.
Then, if you have your horse in front of the leg, you need to keep him there. This means that you need to make sure that when you give an aid, the horse has a reaction, again dressage is about relativity and if you don’t get a reaction from a light aid, the most common rider error is to the then ask harder and harder and more and more and more, until the rider is a sweaty mess of frustration and the horse looks like he has gone on holiday. If you don’t get a reaction, ask, what did I want, and why didn’t I get it? Stop, ask the horse to move off a light leg aid, reward when he does, and then go again.
While dressage is about relativity, lucky for us it is not a race and going around and around will often not solve the problem. Take a moment, breathe, and start again.
My mum used to tell me that I should do dressage first with my mind and then with my body. She would say, now just think shoulder-in, and it will happen. I thought she was aiming a little above possible, but I found out, as usual, she was right, and that if you train yourself to just think what you want to do, eventually, you can master control of your own body, and how the horse responds to even the slightest movement from above.
While you can’t stop and put the saddle to the back, you can stop and put your mind back into “in front of my leg, and off a light aid mode!"
by Sarah Warne for Eurodressage - Photo © Astrid Appels
Read all of Sarah's Classical Training Articles here.