Perhaps you remember the first time you sat on a horse or pony. The delightful horse scent, your hands in its manes, and that magical moment when you started moving. The feeling of being carried and being one with such a magnificent animal.

Unfortunately many of us lose that magical feeling over time. We become hyper-focused on the ‘image’ that horse and rider must present nowadays. The horse neatly “on the bit” and the rider always moving gracefully with the horse’s movements. We’re paying so much attention to what it should look like, that we forget to actually feel and enjoy that feeling of riding together.

In this blog, we want to shine some light on what some call throughness (or ‘through from behind’), decontraction or being on the bit. In Dutch we call it ‘nageven’ and in French it’s called ‘la remise de main’, which translates to ‘handing over’. 

What exactly is this, and how do you ride a horse correctly in order to achieve this?

What is throughness NOT?

Let’s start with what throughness is not. A horse that bends its neck to the pressure of the bit and thus becomes soft in the mouth is not moving with throughness. When a horse becomes soft on the bit because of the rider’s hand, it does so by creating a false bend in its second and third neck vertebrae. You can spot it by checking the highest point of the neck, it will be at the second and third vertebrae, not (as it should be) at the poll, just behind the horse’s ears.

A false bend at the second and third neck vertebrae has significant consequences for the horse. It prevents the horse from using its body in a functional manner. The horse will compensate the false bend by overextending the lower neck and the front part of the back, making these parts hollow and drop down. To compensate this, the loins will arch, and the pelvis usually tilts too much. As a result, the horse cannot lift its withers and use its back correctly to carry the rider’s weight. Real throughness can never be achieved through pressure (no matter how light) from the rider’s hand.

Then, what is throughness and how can you achieve it?

Throughness is not something you ask with a simple aid, like a trot or a halt. It arises when the horse lifts its withers, raising the front part of the back and the last part of the neck – an activated thoracic sling. This creates an upward arch from the withers forward. The nose remains in front of the vertical, the jaw is relaxed, and the horse takes the rider’s hand confidently.

A horse can only achieve this when it is vertically and horizontally balanced – biomechanically healthy training starts there! As a rider, when you feel the horse wanting to take your hand into the correct head and neck position, and movement starts feeling easy and bouncy, you know it’s right! You will feel a light contact, sometimes as light as the weight of your reins, that is equal on both sides and feels elastic and soft.

Healthy and sustainable horse training