Instructors in dressage, events and hunter/jumpers are full of commands like ‘work on the bit’, ‘get some self carriage’ and ‘let’s have some more impulsion’. To the instructors, these directions might be plain, but to the frightened student, they may as well be Greek.

I write this to help you out with some of the terminology common to pony rearing, riding and coaching. I hope this will help you with all of the language your instructors throw around.

Self carriage: Self carriage makes reference to the goal of getting the pony to move with excellent balance and grace. He should do this without the rider’s continuous intervention, i.e, he should be able to sustain the proper carriage himself. You can test your pony out for this capacity by surrendering the reins: some horses are near helpless without their rider’s cues.

Resistance: Resistance occurs when a pony won’t heed his rider’s aids and fails to respond the right way.

Suppleness: Suppleness is attained when a pony is responding with no hesitation or resistance at all to his rider’s command to bend and then to give flexion.

On the bit: This is a term used when the pony energetically moves into his rider’s hands. The pony is responsive to bit contact, to the extent of seeking contact with his rider’s hands. He does not show evidence of resistance like raising his head above the bit or sucking back behind it.

Contact: This term refers to hand-based communication with the pony through the reins and the bit. The contact is live, active and consistent.

Flexion/roundness: Terms used for supple bending involving all parts of the horse’s body (mostly in connection with the poll, but often also to the neck, the back and the stifle and hocks. This is also referred to as riding a pony round.

Bending/bend: A bend occurs when a horse curves his body from his ears to his tail, by way of the spine. Bending brings about superior suppleness helping engage the horse’s hind legs laterally. You can conceive of this as curving with the arc of a fictional circle you are riding. The bend is in proportion if you can see your horse’s nose with one eye’s peripheral vision and his hindquarters with the other eye’s when taking a look at the illusionary circle’s centre.

Engagement : Engagement is alleged to happen when the hind is tracking well with further hock and stifle flexion, something that makes the horse ‘sit’ to a very great extent by bringing down his haunches. It’s easy to get the right engagement only when you are riding the pony properly on his bit and he’s moving on and trying for self carriage.

Lateral movements: Lateral movements refer to moves like the leg yield or the shoulder. To execute these moves, the horse needs to cross his legs while moving to either side and sightly forward.

Impulsion: Impulsion appertains to forward energy when the pony is moving well, with his hindquarter thrust working optimally to push him forward.

Suspension: Think about a gorgeous dressage passage, when the horse looks to be moving without touching the ground. Suspension generates enhanced energy as well as collection that appears to direct the horse upward instead of forward, though obviously the motion is typically forward. Since the legs are raised higher with every step, the pony appears to be using shorter steps that reach higher.

Collection: If you put in some engagement to a pony that is balanced with self carriage alongside impulsion so he’s still energetically progressing forward, as also suspension so that energy is received with forward motion, you end up with a frame that shows shorter strides and more height. The pony has lower haunches, with a shorter frame. You shouldn’t confuse this phenomenon with slowing, like so many novices do. The energy is still the same, however it is just directed upwards. You can relate if you can conjure up a psychological image of a pony in piaffe, the still trot.

Travelling through: When a pony is stepping completely under himself using his hind legs, energy traverses his back, causing it to go round due to a belly that is raised, then skim his neck’s top surface, rounding it off softly, and creates relaxed poll flexion on to the bit. This is the route the energy takes, and if it gets blocked anywhere, the pony can’t be travelling thru.

Don’t let all of this confuse you: begin with the basics, carry on to submission and relaxation and soon enough, the rest will follow kind of automatically.

Horses are Heather Toms passion and she enjoys sharing her extensive knowledge through her 100s of articles with other horse lovers, like all things about bull whip