If you attend one of my clinics, you’ll hear me talk a lot about keeping your horse soft in the face. While keeping your horse soft in the face is necessary in most disciplines, sometimes we forget about the other body parts that are connected to the horse’s face.

Your horse has five main body parts, and all five of those body parts have to be cohesive. Think about it like a piece of machinery. If one part is stuck, it usually impacts other parts of the equipment as well. The same is true with the anatomy of a horse. If your horse is not responsive to the pressure of your leg, it will get stiff in its head, neck, face, and ribcage.

If your horse tends to hang on your rein and drift down the arena when you’re loping a circle, this is a good indicator that its ribcage is stiff.

Stiffness causes a wide range of issues with a horse’s performance. In barrel racing, for example, a common issue I see at many of my clinics is when horses go by or dive into a barrel. When this happens, the horses’ hind quarters get strung out behind them and their backs become hollowed out. As a result, the only thing they can do to balance back out is to lunge forward.

One particular exercise that I do daily with any horse that I get on, whether it is starting a colt or riding a seasoned horse, is to soften them laterally and vertically before they ever take a step forward. When I step into the saddle, I immediately reach down on my rein and tip my horse’s nose to one side or the other. While its nose is tipped, I keep pressure against its ribcage and squeeze my horse forward so its front feet follow its nose. If I’m going to the right, I will still have some pressure with my right leg, but I will have more pressure with my left leg because that leg is what is keeping my forward motion. I’m going to keep my right leg against that horse because I want my horse to ride around my leg and to flex its ribcage around my leg. I want my horse to learn to balance on its hind inside leg, and my leg is going to become the pivot point. No matter the discipline, achieving that balance is one of the most fundamental motions a horse needs to be able to perform.