(“The reins are your instrument panel”)
So like your great grandfather’s 16 2/3 RPM records, like the Alabama – Notre Dame BCS game, all horses are one sided. Some call these the stiff side and the hollow side. Others refer to a strong side and a weak side. The question at hand is what to do about it. Nearly 40 years ago, I remember Tom Poulin returning from Europe and recounting a lesson he had taken over there. “It’s so American,” the critique of his riding ran, “to always choose, head on, to contest the difficult side of the horse!” His revelation called to mind the famous Maginot Line. Back before World War II, the French had built a series of fortified gun emplacements to prevent the Germans from overrunning their border. The German response had been to swing around the right flank through the Low Countries and to circumvent the defenses altogether. Sneaky Germans!
When training horses, “sneaky” can translate as “effective.”
One of my mentor Major Lindgren’s favorite analogies went as follows: your horse is like an M.D. 80 – a jet plane with two engines in the rear. To fly correctly, the plane must generate equal thrust in each engine. Think of your horse’s hind legs as his two engines. They must learn to push equally.
In this image the reins are your instrument panel which, by the contact generated on each side, measures the thrust being produced. The so-called hollow or concave side on which the horse won’t take enough contact is the side of the weaker hind leg—the side which must be further activated and developed.
Major Lindgren would say that if a horse does not want to bend to the left, rather than attempting to force his strong side to yield, realize that it’s his contracted right side which is preventing him from being able to stretch to the left.
If in the short run, you don’t try to create the left bend through your own strength, but instead allow the horse to assume his natural bend (even if he is counter flexed), as he learns to activate the right hind, he will fill the right rein, de-contract on that side, and practically volunteer to bend to the left without resistance and confusion.