Straightness whilst riding on a circle??

[Mary Poppins]

Last week in my riding lesson we did 2 contrasting exercises. Firstly, we were leg yeilding on circles, and secondly we were riding straight lines with corners. We discussed the exercises and my instructor said that the key similarity between them was the concept of straightness. What I don't understand is how you can be straight whilst riding on a circle and leg yeilding? I just don't get it!

 

[alwaysfallingof]

Hopefully someone more eloquent (and less tired) than me will come along and give a better explanation, but I'll give it a shot...

There are sort of two different ways of thinking about straightness when you're riding. One is the literal sense, that the horse is in an absolutely straight line, stepping through equally with both hind legs, moving equally off both your legs, straight in the shoulders and equal in the rein with an absolutely straight line from poll-tail. The other is more of a 'feel' of straightness - that you have a horse that is responding lightly to both legs and both reins, that you can bend them softly and easily without 'jack-knifing' shoulders (when you have too much bend from poll-withers, lose the (outside) shoulder and then a straight horse from wither to tail i.e. not bending around your inside leg). This second sense is what people are referring to when they say "you can't have bend without straightness" or vice versa.

The biggest barrier to achieving this when people first start thinking more critically about their horse's straightness is often a lack of support of the outside aids.
Outside aiding is generally what is being taught when you do diamond shapes or squares, since the idea is that you keep your horses head and neck straight whilst using the top of your outside thigh to move the outside shoulder over. Once you can do this easily, riding 'straight' circles is then easy - you think of riding the outside shoulder around the circle, keep the outside rein there for support and sufficient inside that you keep the head and neck straight.

When talking about straightness with leg-yielding you are either talking about the need for sufficient outside rein that the horse crosses front and back legs rather than just drifting out through the shoulder, or that once the leg yield is established you should be able to achieve it with only an inch or so of poll flexion and not necessarily any inside bend.

Does that help? Sorry for the ramble...

 

[pointerlady]

Sounds like it to me. Very hard to get into practice though. But fasinating.:unsure:

 

[Rabo]

Might be easier to think of straightness as the hind feet replacing the imprint left by the fore feet when you are riding a circle. Obviously there maybe (should be) some overtrack in the walk (at least).

 

[bitsnpieces]

alwaysfallingoff has given a pretty good explaination, the idea of straightness is more of a reference to the horse's hips are following the same line as the shoulders...it's quite difficult to explain without pictures!!

 

[Joyscarer]

I just think of straightness like the horse being like a train. The engine at the front sets the path and the carriariages all follw behind on exactly the same lines.

Contrary to the term 'straightness' this actually requires a degree of bend from the horse.

 

[Skib]

Straightness on a circle in the simplest form, means that the whole length of the horse from nose to tail is on the arc of the circle.
However, if you picture it, and imagine railway tracks going in a circle, the outside track has to be longer - outside edge of the horse is travelling on a longer track, the inside of the horse on the shorter track, but more acutely angled.

If the horse is travelling straight along these tracks round the circle, its shoulders lie on one radius of the circle and its hind quarters on another radius.
But the two lines out from the centre are not parallel to each other, so the horse's shoulders are not parallel to its hips.

The great, enormous, unsettled question is how the rider should be sitting. Some people say that the riders hips should be in line with the horse's hips and the rider's shoulders paralell to the horse's shoulders. But since the shoulders and hips of the horse are not parallel to each other this involves a twist in the rider's body - sometimes referred to as the German twist.

For most of his life Charles Harris advocated that the rider too should sit on the radius of the circle. Not twisted at the waist. Not parallel to the horse, but on their own radius. This is what I was taught to do. To line up my shoulders and my hips with the centre of any circle, starting with the RI holding the lunge line. I find this useful; out hacking it taught me to canter quite fast round bends in the track and keep my balance. It keeps the rider straight and secure on a bending horse and corrects the tendency to put your outside shoulder forward, thus releasing the outside rein.

So I would say that straightness on a circle is best understood as straightness in relation to the centre of that circle.

This remains the situation even if you arre asked to ride a circle with counter bend.

Going just a little further, Mary Poppins, as one leg yields out from the centre, the shoulders of the horse, the shoulders of the rider and the hind quarters of the horse, all move outwards along their three radii from the centre of the circle.
And the next part of the exercise is usually to spiral inwards towards the centre again, inclreasing the bend (reducing the circumference of the circle, but still both of you remaining straight in relation to the centre of the circle.



Now when you go straight - the two railway lnes of the inside and the outside of the horse - travel exactly the same distance. The outside legs of the horse do not have to travel farther than the inside ones.

I dont know how your RI wants you to ride corners - but one way of riding them is to imagine an arc of a circle - and to imagine the centre point of that circle too and to keep "straight" on it.

 

[david1]

Skib wrote:"For most of his life Charles Harris advocated that the rider too should sit on the radius of the circle. Not twisted at the waist. Not parallel to the horse, but on their own radius. This is what I was taught to do. To line up my shoulders and my hips with the centre of any circle, starting with the RI holding the lunge line. I find this useful; out hacking it taught me to canter quite fast round bends in the track and keep my balance. It keeps the rider straight and secure on a bending horse and corrects the tendency to put your outside shoulder forward, thus releasing the outside rein".

My RI says I "lean in" when cantering in a circle, and thanks to your excellent observation I've figured out why. I twist slightly, because I read it somewhere :redface: I'll bet I don't lean in the next time because I will keep parallel to my own radius. Thank you Skib, this makes so much sense.