Introduction
Our old teacher, Karl Mikolka, used to say that “between stopping and moving off, there is the entire training scale.” That was an aha-moment for me because I had never thought about it in these terms. But it made absolute sense as soon as I heard it.
The way the horse performs transitions to the halt and from the halt tells us a lot about his training. Many horses and riders struggle with these transitions. Half halts often don’t go through in down transitions, so the horse inverts or curls up. The halt isn’t square, the horse is crooked, to name just some of the most common problems.
In up transitions, the horse may delay his response, get crooked, invert, curl up, get strung out, run off, etc. All these problems are caused by a lack of balance, straightness, suppleness, attentiveness, and permeability. You could therefore say that transitions to and from the halt are excellent diagnostic tools because they show you exactly where the horse still has deficits in the basics. At the same time, transitions are valuable therapeutic tools because they can help you improve the horse’s balance, straightness, suppleness, attentiveness, and permeability.
Transitions into the Halt
One great diagnostic and therapeutic exercise is stopping into the four legs. This is a series of down transitions to the halt, first from the walk, later also from the trot. You can apply the same principle also to trot - walk transitions.
In order to ride a down transition into a particular leg, you apply your half halts when this particular leg is on the ground. E.g. if I want to stop into the outside front leg, I apply half halts with the outside rein when the outside front leg is on the ground. Simultaneously, I step lightly into the outside stirrup.
If I want to ride a down transition into the inside hind leg, I apply my half halts with one of the reins (could be the inside or the outside one) when the inside hind leg is on the ground. Simultaneously, I step lightly into the inside stirrup.
Following the tradition of the old Spanish Riding School in Vienna, we ride down transitions with three half halts that are applied in three consecutive strides. The first two half halts serve as preparatory aids. The third half halt is the execution aid. It’s like telling the horse: “prepare, prepare, now”. This gives the horse enough time to get ready and it prevents the rider from ambushing the horse with her aids.
This particular exercise consists in halt transitions into each of the four legs. I usually follow the sequence: outside front, outside hind, inside front, inside hind, although other sequences can be just as effective.
When you practice these transitions, you will notice that not all legs are equally receptive to your half halts. If a leg is not permeable for the half halts, the horse will typically drop his back and invert and brace against the bit. As you repeat the transitions, the horse’s permeability, balance, and straightness usually improve, the horse will stay round, and square halts start to develop as a byproduct.
Halt - Walk/Trot Transitions
Up transitions from the halt to the walk or trot can be tricky as well. There are many things that can go wrong. Some horses initiate the up transition with their front legs by dragging themselves into the walk or trot. Some horses swerve with their shoulders towards the stiffer side. Some horses dash off without allowing the rider to regulate the tempo or stride length. Some horses don’t respond to the driving aids and won’t go forward. Some go backwards instead of moving forward. All these issues usually lead to the horse dropping his back and inverting.
Since horses tend to memorize and perfect what they always do, practicing poor transitions can engrain the mechanics of the poor quality transitions into the horse as a confirmed habit so that he is actually convinced that this is the correct way of doing them because this is the way the rider has always done them. In order to retrain these bad old habits, we need to teach the horse that what he has been doing up to now is not correct, and we have to show him a different way.
In up transitions, I want the horse to fulfill 6 conditions. I want him to be:
In front of the leg,
On the seat,
Straight,
Uphill,
Round,
Light.
This means that when I touch him with my calf, his hind leg on the same side twitches and is ready to lift off immediately.
When he takes a step forward he needs to lift his back and allow me to regulate his tempo and stride length.
I also want him to stay precisely in his lane so that he stays functionally straight during the transition.
I want him to lift his withers so that he moves off in an uphill balance.
But, I also want him to be round (on the bit), and light in my hand.
When you pay attention to these 6 criteria, you will find that it’s relatively easy to meet 2 or 3 of them. But it’s not so easy to meet all 6. Your horse may respond well to your leg aids. But he may drop his back and rush off. He may be on the leg and on the seat, but he may swerve with his shoulders in the transition. He may stay round, but not in an uphill balance. He may lift his forehand, but without staying round. He may be round, but heavy, etc.
From the Leg to the Seat and from the Seat to the Hand
In order to disrupt an old habit and to form a new one I like to use a stop-and-go exercise: I halt on the long side next to the arena wall and ask the horse to lift his inside hind leg and place it more underneath me. The other three legs are allowed to move as well, but the front legs should move in a vertical direction, rather than in a horizontal direction so that the hind legs can catch up to the front legs and engage more. After a step or two I stop again and repeat. The horse advances in small increments, which is only possible if the grounded hind leg doesn’t push too much, but flexes enough to support the body mass while the other hind leg is stepping under. This can be done on a single track or in a shoulder-in position.
This type of exercise is not suitable for green horses because their hindquarters are neither strong nor flexible enough to take short steps or to halt on the bit for more than a second or two.
It’s important to me that the horse lifts his left hind leg when I touch him with my left leg and that he lifts his right hind leg when I touch him with my right leg. Since he is only able to lift a hind leg that is not supporting the mass, he has to be able to shift the weight from one side to the other in order to make a hind leg available for moving. This is surprisingly difficult for many horses, as they tend to support themselves with the same side of their body at all times due to their natural crookedness. That’s why they tend to start all up transitions with the same hind leg, and they favor one canter lead over the other. In order to be truly straight and balanced, they need to learn to start the up transition with either hind leg, which requires them to shift the weight to the other side of the body.
When the horse lifts his hind leg I want him also to lift his back and withers to meet my seat. I may have to lighten my seat a little, in order to make room for his back. If the rider sits too heavily on their seat bones, it can block the horse’s back from lifting. We therefore often have to offer a small space by letting our pelvis swing up from our knees. These movements are so small that you can’t really see them, but they are big enough that the horse can feel them very clearly. They make the horse’s job much easier, whereas a heavy seat makes his job much harder than it needs to be. Lifting the back allows the horse to check in with my seat about what gait, what tempo, and what stride length I want to ride. Some horses drop their back in the up transition and rush right past the seat. If that happens, I stop the horse, gather the hind legs underneath me again, and start over.
After the leg aid has created the lift-off of the hind leg and the back has lifted into my seat, this wave that emanates from the hindquarters continues along the spine. The withers lift, the top line stretches, and the poll should move slightly forward and down, away from me so that the horse steps into the contact (but without leaning on the bit). If the energy impulse of the hind leg isn’t transmitted properly by the horse’s spine, e.g. because the back is tight, the poll will probably move up and back towards me, instead of forward and down. The rider’s hand has to allow this wave of energy to come through by lightening or relaxing a little, but without giving up the contact. If you release too much, you drop the horse, which leads to a loss of balance, the back tightens, and the horse inverts. If you don’t release at all, the horse will probably brace his under neck against the bit and invert, or lean onto the bit, even if the neck stays round. The idea is that the rider’s hand makes room for the hind leg to engage, just as the seat has to make room for the horse’s back to rise.
If the horse pushes his shoulders to one side in the up transition, you may have to maintain a firmer contact on that side, but release more clearly on the opposite side, so that the horse moves his forehand away from the side where the door is closed by the rein and into the open space on the other side.
Simple, but not easy
Like many things in riding, this sounds simple in theory, but it is not at all easy to put into practice at first. A horse and rider who can perform these transitions perfectly are actually fairly advanced in their training. However, working on improving the 6 criteria will help both of them to move up the levels.
The rider needs a well-balanced, well-coordinated seat. The horse needs to have good body awareness and good balance as well. That’s why it usually takes quite a few repetitions of this stop-and-go exercise before the horse is able to do a good up transition starting with the correct hind leg, checking in with the seat, and carrying himself up, round, and light. This is very “boring”, detail-oriented work, but it pays off because the horse will improve tremendously all the way around. If this chain of transmission from the leg to the seat and from the seat to the hand breaks down somewhere during the transition, I stop, prepare again, and start over. When a transition from the halt to the walk succeeds, I try to ride a transition from the walk to the trot by applying the same principles, with the intention of maintaining the same uphill, round, and light posture with a raised back and withers. If something goes wrong in the up transition, I interrupt the horse, return to the walk (or the halt), and start over.
Once the halt - walk and walk - trot transitions are smooth and easy, I add halt - trot - halt transitions, which is not very difficult any more at that point.
Don’t be surprised if the horse offers half steps or piaffe steps when these transitions reach a certain quality. The shorter and more uphill the first steps are, the more the horse will choose to diagonalise them because that’s more energy efficient than the walk.
As the horse improves, he will begin these up transitions by lifting his back and drawing one hind leg more underneath his body and carrying the rider forward-upward in a gait that is comfortable to sit with a pleasant, light, steady, and even contact.
After the transition
One thing that may be worth pointing out is that the rider’s job is not finished as soon as the transition is over. On the contrary, it is only just beginning. Many people stop riding once the horse is in the new gait because they were so focused on the transition that they never thought of what will happen once they are there. So the horse feels abandoned because the rider is not giving him any guidance. He gets crooked, falls apart, loses his balance, inverts, etc.
Once we have established the new gait, we need to let the horse know what tempo, stride length, and energy level we want, which line we want to ride, etc. The conversation continues. It never ends. Even if everything is going well and we remain passive, allowing the horse to continue on his own, there is no “radio silence”. The communication doesn’t end. We still listen to each other.
