By Jec A. Ballou

It took me longer than it should to respect the necessity of lightness when giving my horse a cue from the saddle.

“If I can see your aids, you’re doing too much,” my mother barked at me, to which I usually replied by rolling my eyes. Granted, devotion to invisible, gentle aids ran deep in the company of classical dressage students and teachers we kept. My mother was not the only one pushing for more refinement. Still, though, I assumed it had to do with keeping a certain aesthetic ideal.

The further I got in studying equine movement and fitness, the more I discovered on a daily basis that lightness of both our aids AND the horse’s response was not just about artistry. Lightness is not the aesthetic pursuit of classical crusaders, but the evidence of everything working correctly beneath the surface.

As researchers have learned more about various muscle contractions, we have discovered that the neuro-motor systems in charge of the highly coordinated, fine-tuned maneuvers in dressage are the deep slower twitch fibers near the spine and joints. I refer to these as the postural muscles. They store a great deal of data related to coordination and proprioception. Leading the horse to access them requires tact and specificity.

Because horses are hard-wired to escalate psychological and physical tension to survive in the wild, big or strong aids cause them to react by engaging their large surface muscles for flight or to brace and protect themselves. When these engage with force, the switchboard sending signals to the postural muscles shuts off. In other words the neuro-motor and neuro-sensory responses that help horses move better go dormant. Instead of fine-tuned maneuvers, we get big surface muscles clamping and bracing.

You can see that this often creates a negative cycle: Braced horse leads to stronger aids, which further braces the horse and alters the neuro-sensory feedback. The good news is that lightness creates a cycle, too, if we pay attention. When we aim to turn down the volume on our aids, when we seek to gain clear responses to them, the nerves and muscles controlling graceful and coordinated movements remain turned on.

Riding then transcends sport and becomes artistry. It gives us evidence that the aesthetic is right but so is the physiology. Naturally, when you are learning new exercises, your cues to the horse might be clunky or overly strong. As you practice, though, keep asking yourself: Can I be gentler? When the answer becomes “yes” more and more frequently, you will have a more consistent conditioning effect on the right muscles. Likewise, they will stay engaged more readily, allowing you in turn to automatically choose lighter aids. This is the perfect cycle of science and aesthetics all working together!

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Photo: Shutterstock/Rolf Dannenberg