"Generally, it is assumed that it is possible to evaluate the weight
distribution of a horse from its way of going: the more the hind legs
overtrack the footprints of the forelegs at the walk and trot, the more
weight is carried on the shoulder; if the hind legs step precisely into the
tracks of the forelegs the horse moves in balance; and the more the tracks
of the hind legs lag behind the tracks of the forelegs, the more weight is
carried on the hindquarters. However, this rule can be used only for
correctly and well-built horses. If a horse's conformation deviates from the
normal, this rule is insufficient because we come up against such
significant exceptions that, in practice, we often observe the opposite, and
see horses that, although carrying a heavy load on their shoulders, do not
step with their hind legs into the tracks of their forelegs, while others
must be collected considerable to prevent them from overtracking."
I always thought that overtracking was a good thing and something to look
for when choosing a dressage prospect. I was told that the horse should at
least step with the hind foot into the print of the fore foot. The further
in front of the fore print that the hind foot steps the better the movement
of the horse. According to this (or at least my interpretation of this)
statement overtracking shows that the horse is on the forehand and not in
balance. Is this referring to trained horses or does it hold true for green
horses also? Do my ideas about overtracking have any validity or are they
just another piece of useless, incorrect information that needs to be
discarded?
ANSWER:
Things are not as black and white as they appear in this passage. If you
look at the trot as a continuum from piaffe to extended trot, the degree of
collection is obviously higher in the piaffe than in the extended trot. In
other words, with a correctly trained horse, the shorter the stride becomes,
the more weight is carried by the hind legs. That does not mean, however,
that the horse is automatically on the forehand in the extended trot.
One thing to keep in mind is that before dressage became a competitive
sport, the extended trot did not really play a role in the training of the
horse. My impression is that the Old Masters used a lengthening of the
stride to refresh the trot after they spent some time in the collected trot
or school trot, but I don't think they pushed the extension to the same
limits as it is done today. The same thing probably applies to the walk.
Overall, when you read the older literature, it seems that the entire
spectrum of the gaits was shifted one step towards collection, compared to
modern dressage, i.e. while the extended trot was more or less lacking, the
school trot had great relevance in the training, whereas nowadays nobody
even knows what a school trot is any more.
Another factor to remember is that modern sport horses have been bred
specifically to show flashy extensions, because that is what is required in
the competition tests. At a time when horses were bred and trained either
for the cavalry or for High School dressage, the extended trot had no
practical application. Flashy gaits were not necessary, because if the
cavalry needed to cover ground quickly they rode the carriere (an extended
two-beat gallop), and High School dressage was centered around the collected
gaits. Therefore, the big extended trot was probably never a selection
criterion for breeding horses before the 20th century.
In order to judge whether a horse is on the forehand or not, you have to
look at the entire horse, and especially at the flexion of the haunches, not
just at the length of stride. There always has to be a certain balance
between thrust and carriage (flexion) in the movement of the hind legs. When
the thrust becomes greater than the flexion, the horse pushes himself onto
the forehand. This is something you can see in certain warmbloods, where the
breeding goal of big gaits has upset that balance. These horses can
overstride by several hooves' breadths, but their croup is up in the air,
and the hind legs are lacking in flexion, because the horse is not strong
enough to sit down, carry the load, and thrust off again with his hind legs.
What you can often observe is that they step under very far, but then they
seem to get stuck, which causes a loss of rhythm, sometimes head tossing,
even a tense mini "levade". That is simply a sign that the horse has
overloaded his own hind legs. The hind leg is stuck between the ground and
his own torso, which then causes the evasive maneuvers of the front end.
These horses almost have to learn to move in a smaller gait than the one
they offer, i.e. the thrust has to be diminished temporarily, until the
carrying ability has caught up.
This perspective opens an interesting view on collection and extension. For
the horse to be in balance thrust and carriage always have to match each
other. If the thrust exceeds carriage, the horse runs on the forehand. If
the carriage exceeds the thrust, the horse starts to suck back. That's an
unusual way of looking at things nowadays, but in the older literature you
find a lot of references to horses overloading their hindquarters, when they
are not going forward enough. Of course, there is always the possibility of
thrust and carriage matching each other, but with both of them being too
small, which is something you can see very often as well.
The preceding paragraph entails certain logical conclusions.
- Thrust should never be increased at the expense of carriage (collection)
in extensions.
- Carriage (flexion of the haunches) should never be increased at the
expense of thrust in collection.
This means that if you increase the thrust for an extension, you also have
to increase the flexion of the haunches. Conversely, if you increase the
flexion of the haunches in collected gaits, you also have to increase the
thrust. If these two rules are respected, the extended gaits will never be
executed on the forehand, and the collected gaits will never lack impulsion.
The difference between collected and extended gaits lies more in the vector
of the thrust. In the extension, the energy of the thrust is projected in a
relatively more horizontal direction, whereas in collected gaits the energy
of the thrust is projected in a more vertical direction. Ideally, even in
the greatest extension, the thrust should still have a slightly upward
direction, not completely horizontal. It is only by comparison to the
piaffe, e.g. that the vector of the thrust is *relatively* more horizontal
in the extended trot.
Another conclusion that can be drawn from these observations is that the
energy level is *relatively* the lowest in the working gaits, whereas it has
to increase for both collected and extended gaits. The working gaits still
require more energy than most riders realize, but extensions and collected
gaits require even more. Creating this energy and channeling it into a
productive direction is not so easy to learn. Most riders are intimidated by
the energy, and since they don't know what to do with it, their first
instinct is to kill it. That's why good extensions and good collected gaits
are not seen very often.
- Thomas Ritter
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Last Update: January 13, 2007