Why is bending important?
If your horse does not bend correctly, you can notice it from a few signs:
- He falls onto the inside shoulder
- He drifts out over the outside shoulder
- The hindquarters swing to the outside
- He leans into the turn instead of bending
- He steps less actively under with the hind legs, causing him to fall more on the forehand
- The contact becomes unsteady
- The tempo becomes rushed or irregular
- Lateral movements become more difficult to perform
These are all signs that the balance and bending are not yet optimal.
You can have flexion without bend, but you cannot have bend without flexion.
Flexion
Flexion is the lateral movement in the neck, just behind your horse’s ears.
You ask for flexion by gently turning your horse’s head slightly in the direction of the turn with your inside hand, so that you can just see the inside nostril. If you see more than that, your horse is often overbent.
Your inside hand stays soft and moves slightly away from the neck rather than pulling back toward you. Support this with your inside leg at the girth. At the same time, a supporting outside rein ensures that your horse does not bend too much and stays balanced.
Correct flexion is the foundation for good bend throughout the whole body.
Bend
With correct bend, your horse’s spine follows the line of the turn you are riding. If you were to look at your horse from above, you would see that his body follows the curved line of the turn.
On a circle, this means that the smaller the circle, the more bend is required from the horse. The horse must then adjust its body more to follow the curved line.
Longitudinal bend is the bending of your horse’s spine to the left or to the right. It is important to know that a horse cannot bend equally throughout the entire spine. Some parts are very mobile, while others have much more limited movement.
The different parts of the spine each play their own role in this:
- The 7 cervical vertebrae (yellow) have a lot of freedom of movement and can bend relatively easily to the left and right.
- The 18 thoracic vertebrae (purple) are connected to the ribs. Because of this, the bend here is more limited; too much bending would cause the ribs to press against each other.
- The 6 lumbar vertebrae (red) have large lateral projections, which also limits lateral (sideways) bending in this area.
- The sacrum (blue), which consists of 5 fused vertebrae, cannot bend.
- The 18 tail vertebrae (green) can move, but they do not contribute to the longitudinal bend of the body.
The most important aids
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