THE HAND - In the official system
What does official dressage teach us about the use of the hands? The sacred “low hands”.
The rider has to hold his hands low with closed fingers, keeping a steady, even, consistent contact (some even hunch themselves to this end) which has a very harsh action on the tongue (a hypersensitive organ).
Holding the reins: all fingers closed on the reins, the thumb closed lightly.
Position: hold the hand low and aligned with the elbow and the mouth.
Rein effects: the hand can release, resist or request, but the reins must only by used with the active support of the propulsive aids "the seat and legs. When riding a novice/unschooled horse (one in a natural attitude), a rider holding the reins with all of his fingers closed and fixed low hands will immediately cause the horse to resist. Held this way, the hand opposes the mouth with a fixed point and harsh contact. How much lightness can we have in the fingers with a a fist closed on the reins? This results in the horse desperately trying to come over the bit, setting up a confrontation from the beginning. The resisting hand/rein is used when the horse goes against or above the contact. To use this aid, the hands close strongly without changing their position, until the horse yields to the bit and becomes light in the hand. This aid must be combined with a supporting back and pushing legs.
It is easy to see why such use of the hand needs to be combined with support from the legs and seat: we have to compensate for the effect of a hand that opposes the forward movement. In addition, this opposition will contradict and dull the horse's obedience to the leg. "Release the brakes on a bike, and you won't have to peddle so hard...! Since this 'bike" is also a living, sensitive being, which above all needs to understand us, we can question the educational value of such contradictions. The harder the rider pushes the horse towards a resisting hand, the more a horse will fight. This starts a vicious circle which sometimes leads to the horse leaping forwards, rearing or refusing to go forward at all... But the manual has a solution: With this fault, the horse's head opens way in front of the vertical. The horse does not want to flex its poll and uses the under-neck muscles to resist the hand. Lungeing the horse with side reins can be very beneficial. The side reins must be quite short to start with.
Besides the fact that it is the contraction of the top muscles in the neck that is the cause of the above named resistance, the approach is: You don't want to lower your nose? Then I'll tie your mouth to the girth, and nice and short to start with! The horse is panic stricken and painfully trapped. When things go badly, the horse may put up a violent fight, sometimes to the point of being irreparably ruined (horses that rear up and fall backwards). When things go well, the horse will simply drop behind the bit, to avoid the crushing pressure on its tongue. The horse is forced, but the rider is satisfied - he will be able to ride it with his fists planted firmly on each side of the horse's withers, and the horse will abundantly flex its poll - by avoiding contact and probably over bending in the process.
The Active Hand manual goes on: For this aid, as for the others, the hand must remain low. It is recommended to start using the "active hand" by closing the fingers, but this is not necessary, as we already have closed fingers to hold the reins. In fact, with low hands and closed fingers, the rider can only really act by moving his hand/s backwards, or in other words by pulling. This is the rather unpleasant reality hidden behind the discrete expression "active rein": a hypocritical way of not saying "pull on the reins" whilst knowing full well that the rider can do nothing else (if following the rules). This leads to riders pulling left and right in a sawing motion to get the horse to yield, or on both reins to slow down, stop and rein-back, while still applying the propulsive aids. Whether resisting or active, the lower the hand, the more its effects are focused on the tongue.
To protect its tongue from the discomfort inflicted by the hand, the horse may possibly try to pull it back in its mouth, stick it out to the side, put it over the bit, etc.
Solution: Specially designed crank nosebands that can be shut tightly. Their sole purpose is to stifle the horse's protests and hide the perverse effects of a hand that is harsh on the mouth. These devices have become standardised and generalised because today's dressage has no other solution to the detrimental consequences of its stated principles. It is more satisfying for a rider to accuse a horse of having a bad mouth rather than challenging their own equestrian concepts, and even easier to change the bit, the noseband or the training aid rather than changing their hand...All that remains to escape the pain is for the horse to overbend and grind its teeth in protest (and to mask this, it is common to apply various products to the teeth just before tightening the noseband.)
We frequently see tight nosebands clamping the mouth shut – bits positioned so high in the mouth as to make any healthy ‘mouthing’ by the horse impossible. In fact it would appear that many modern trainers believe that the bit should be held completely static in the mouth, and that the mouth should be held tightly shut. The moment the rider releases his grip, the horse tries to relieve/prevent the pain by going above the hand.
In turn, the rider holds or pulls more and then has to apply leg (kick) in order to prevent the to prevent the horse from slowing down, which would be the result from the pulling on the bit. A vicious cycle starts. More holding and pulling to keep the head down and the nose in and more kicking to keep the horse going forward. The horse becomes desensitized to hand or leg or both and more and more force is needed. Stronger bits, spurs and whips are soon to follow.
This is a great pity, because dressage is suppose to be intelligent and harmonious. It is suppose to lead to more refined aids, lightness and a partnership. The official result - In the end, virtually all these horses end up over bent (unanimously considered by the great masters as a major fault). These horses end up heavy and tiring to ride.
The systematic use of low hands in the training of the horse is not supported by any sensible explanation. Dressage people defend the consistent use of low hands as part of their history and they base this knowledge on De La Guérinière. Unfortunately it seems that when they study his work, they only use the parts they find useful and discard the rest.
These are facts that we should consider.
The low, quiet hand should be the end result of the well trained, well balanced horse. It is not a starting point.
