Does your horse drag his legs while backing up? Rien van der Schaft gives advice!

backing up equestrian dressage horsebackriding tips

Does your horse drag his legs while backing up? Rien van der Schaft gives advice!

Isn’t your horse active while backing up? Doesn’t he lift his legs or does he make a little ditch?

During a live Q&A of Rien van der Schaft’s online training a member asked about this problem. Rien gave the following advice:

When a horse is réally active, he will never drag his legs while going backwards. He will always lift his legs.

Not all horses are the same and one horse will drag his legs sooner than the other, but your horse probably isn’t active enough.

To improve this, you can do the following exercise before backing up.

Before you’re backing up, you can do a few turns on the forehand.

So not a turn on the haunches, like we have during the tests. But a turn on the forehand.

If this advice solves your problem, is depending on your execution

And it’s even better if you ask for a bend to the opposite side while riding the turn on the forehand.

So make sure you have a little bending behind the jaw to the outside and let the forhand turn away for your inside leg. This way your horse is looking in the direction of where you’re turning.

Do this a few times on both sides.

Turning around your right leg, then walking a little bit, do a turn aroung your left leg and walk with your horse again.

If you vary with these exercises, your horse will become more active in walk and move more into the direction of the collection.

If you back up after this, it will definitely go better.

But remember: it doesn’t only depend on the exercise, but it depends even more on how you execute the exercise.

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