Hors'Essentials - Riding the Four Quadrants

Like most of my students, I spend the most part of my riding day schooling on the flat without assistance (the all important ‘eyes on the ground’). For people who school by themselves, the paddock can be a lonely place, and you can feel like your schooling is getting nowhere. I have devised a little troubleshooting technique that I like to call riding the 4 Quadrants.

I want you to visualise you sitting in the saddle, from directly in front, with an imaginary line going down the centre of your body, and another one going straight across your waist. Now keep in mind that when riding on the flat, we don’t speak too much of left or right, only inside and outside. So we have now divided your body into the 4 Quadrants of: inside leg, an inside rein, an outside rein and outside leg.

Now... we give each of those body parts a specific job!

Inside Leg:          Increasing the tempo and increasing the bend in the horse’s body

Inside Rein:        Increasing flexion (the lateral bend of the horse’s neck) ONLY

Outside Rein:     Slowing the tempo and maintaining roundness

Outside Leg:       Correcting issues with the horse’s quarters or body falling out, backing up inside leg

So, when you are trotting around by yourself, you just need to analyse what needs correcting and then use the corresponding part of your body to correct it (Oops, he’s flexed to the outside – need more inside rein... hmmm, now I haven’t got enough bend – inside leg). You will still need to make other fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants corrections but a couple of generalisations will be usually be true:

• Get the balance of inside leg (increasing the tempo) and outside rein (slowing the tempo) right and ca-ching! Horse goes round!! No further work necessary! Insufficient roundness is just a symptom of the greater problem – incorrect leg to hand balance.
• Any problems with the horse not being forward, use the outside leg in conjunction with the inside leg (ie, at the same time) to send a clearer ‘go forward’ message to the horse for a more basic ‘go forward’ response. Two legs equals go forward. Imagine that the horse is a tube of toothpaste, if you squeeze both sides, he should ooze straight out the front!!
• Note that the inside rein and hand has NOTHING to do with getting the horse round, its job is merely to gently increase and steadily maintain the flexion. Errors are created when the inside hand meddles in roundness.
• Inside hand is also generally inefficient in correcting the horse when he falls to the outside, despite it usually being the instinctive reaction of the rider. The inside rein can successfully change the direction of the horse’s head and neck, but without the outside leg to make the horses body follow that direction the outward slide, lug or drift will continue. Therefore outside leg is the more vital aid here.

The other thing that I like about Four Quadrant riding is that it prompts the rider to analyse as they are going, and therefore they become aware of real deal-breaker issues like straightness within the horses body, changes in flexion and therefore balance and tempo rather than roundness. So, I want you to try it out in your next lonely flatwork session, and see exactly how much you can correct and how empowered you feel with your new little skill set!

Happy Schooling!!