If there’s any thing you should teach your horse, it is to move away from pressure. This skill can be useful both on the ground and in the saddle and shouldn’t be overlooked.
What does it mean to “move away from pressure”? Some people would say its just another way to teach a horse personal space boundaries, and while this is accurate, I prefer to take it further than just avoiding my horse stepping on me. Moving away from pressure, or yielding, can become a tool to use for a variety of things, including but not limited to:
Trailer loading
Vet evaluations
New environments
Crowded environments
Getting your horses attention
Focus
Suppleness
Relaxation
Strengthening
Beginning training for lateral movements under saddle
When a horse is moving away from pressure, it is literally just moving in the direction you are asking it to move. Yielding to pressure can go backwards, forwards, sideways, or a combination thereof.
What is pressure? Pressure can come from a variety of sources. It can be anything from a whip to your body. The pressure on the horse is created by energy of yourself or your training tool moving toward the horse in such a way that it moves away from that pressure. Generally speaking a whip can produce a much larger range of pressure and thusly can produce bigger reaction, so this is why many people prefer to use something like a dressage whip to teach moving away from pressure.
What are some common errors made when training a horse to move away from pressure? The largest mistake you can make when teaching this concept, is mistaking the reasoning behind WHY the horse is moving. This is why I also refer to it as “yielding to pressure”. The point of these exercises is not for your horse to fear your whip, your hand, or yourself. If your horse is moving away from you because of fear, you are not doing it right. If your horse fears you, it means that instead of communicating to your horse in a way it understands, you are demanding it move before making sure it understands the request. When teaching pressure to the horse you must use different degrees of pressure and ask for small steps at the beginning with frequent pauses for rewards and mental processing. Never ask a horse to learn a new concept out of a place of frustration. Doing so will only lead to conflicting cues and confusion which will only aggravate the situation more.
What does it mean to use “degrees of pressure”? Quite simply it means that you need to understand the difference between “asking” and “telling”. For example, a light touch with a dressage whip on the haunch is asking your horse to move forward. If your horse responds to that, reward and continue using that amount of pressure to ask. However, if your horse ignores you when you ask then you need to move into a larger “tell” pressure, such as a tap or if they are really lazy, something stronger. Once your horse has responded you go back down to an “ask” pressure. Another way to think of pressure is comparing it to volume. If touching the whip is a whisper, a tap might be a regular speaking voice and a something stronger when needed would be your shout. In thinking of degrees of pressure as volume, it is good to also remember that pressure has infinite levels. Just like there is a million different possibilities for how loud a sound is, so it is with pressure.
How can you make pressure come from your body? At the beginning of this post I talked about how pressure could come from an object you hold or even your actual body. So how does one apply pressure with ones body? If you watch well known, or extremely accomplished trainers you will notice that many can cause a horse to move away, seemingly by taking one step towards them, or quite simply standing doing nothing. This is not a mystical ability only known to those who are famous. It has everything to do with the energy that you exude from yourself. If you can emit calm collected energy you find it to transfer to your horse. In the opposite manner, if you are emanating a nervous or tense energy you will find that your training session will go more poorly. Pressure in the form of energy, which comes from your core(not referring to your muscles, but your inner self) is what influences the size of your circle when lunging, keeps that horse from moving toward you in cross ties, or even helps in stopping the headlong rush when a horse becomes frightened. When your body language and energy can exert pressure on your horse it can open up endless possibilities!
Exercises for Practicing Moving From Pressure
In the following video you will find my video containing three exercises on teaching your horse to yield to pressure. These exercises are:
Turn Away/Yielding the Shoulders
Turn on the Forehand/Yielding the Haunches
Side Pass/Leg Yield on the Ground/Yielding the Haunch and Shoulder
These exercises are the beginning of yielding and can be the beginning of a better and more in tune relationship between you and your horse! Have fun!
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