Riding deep and riding overbent

Sarah

Member
Jan 13, 1999
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Taunton, Somerset, England
hello!

This is possibly a very silly question, but there you go!

What is the difference between riding deep and riding with your horse overbent, but stretching down? Does riding deep require the horse to be more engaged?

What would the benefit of riding deep be, all i have ever heard are the disbenefits?

bye!
 
diagram

one of the instructors who comes to our yard has put up a brilliant picture to explain the difference. I'll try and work out where its from, or maybe even get a copy.

Basically if you work "deep but overbent" you are using completely different muscles to "long and deep".

If you try it yourself, "long and deep" helps the horse step under more, develops the top line, etc

Whereas doing it 'curled up' can often prevent the horse stepping under, and does not develop the back muscles in the same way.

hmm - must remember to check where that diagram is from when I'm at the yard today.....
 
images vs words

thats the trouble with words - we could mean the same or we could mean something different:confused:

For me, long and low would be a more novice outline, with less engagement, less lifting of the back etc. But I needed some way to distinguish between 'good' deep and not so good deep.

I will try and grab this picture and either find a reference for it or scan it. I'm pretty sure its copied from a book. And it really shows the difference between the 'wrong' and 'right' deep.
 
pictures...

it was a bit different to my memory, so you have to think it through a bit but here goes...

First picture is "good"
 

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second picture

here you can see that the legs are trailing out behind, and the energy/weight 'direction' is all wrong.
 

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uphill and engaged

the first picture is uphill, engaged, back lifted. If the head down bit was a bit higher aqnd nose more vertical, that is my image of "deep and long".

Then with the second picture, if you rotate the overbent neck and head down, that is my image of deep and overbent. There is no way the horse can step under, engage the hind legs and lift the back.

But a lot of people think that because the neck is arched, its "good".

After all that effort I'm not really sure if the pictures help or not... but I tried !
 
Oh dear, here we go!

My understanding is that "long and low" (which Heather illustrates on Spanish in her book) is like the shadow image in cvb's first picture - all nice and stretched out, still engaging the quarters (important), not overbent. It's a warm-up/stretching exercise.

Working deep, on the other hand, is a bit like what you get when you take a whip and squash the ends tight in so that the middle is forced up - for a horse that means that the quarters are very much engaged and the head is very overbent, so that the topline is stretched around an exaggerated arch, often so tight that the actual result is that the head and neck will remain overbent but will have to lift to allow the exaggerated degree of engagement behind - a horse can only stretch so much!

I think too much working deep is what caused sacroiliac problems in Heather's lovely dressage horse Ringo before she acquired him. His dressage career (he reached GP level, I think?) was terminated because of it, but after rest and lots of TLC Heather managed to get him sound (more by good judgement than luck) and he proved himself a wonderful schoolmaster in the right hands.
 
The second picture is not deep at all this is just overbent and tucking the chin in and no stretching is involved at all.

Deep involves more stretching along the top of the back and the hind legs can be seen to come right under the horse. You should be able to feel the back rise as you ride and the horses action is loose and free. If it does not feel like this you are not rideing deep.



Long and low is different again.
 
Mmm - but the horse's back will lift and he should feel loose and free when working correctly but normally - we mustn't confuse the two. Deep is more exaggerated and isn't what we're aiming for (although a lot of dressage riders these days seem to think it looks impressive :p ).
 
Riding deep is not an goal to achieve, it is merely a training exersize, at the end of the day we are still looking for a correct outline for test riding.

Riding deep is to develope how the Germans would say"shwung"
 
Riding deep is also being rejected now by many of the German riders, as well as others. I believe Klimke was very much against it. It was originally (in modern times, though horses have been ridden this way before) a technique to keep Rembrandt submissive before a test I believe. Then copied as a training technique by other riders when Rembrandt was successful. It can be a dangerous technique and damaging in particular to the horse's sacro-iliac. A horse ridden deep is, in my opinion, neither loose nor free. Training should lighten the forehand and engage the hindquarters. Deep and round training doesn't encourage this, but rather encourages submission. Long and low is different altogether and is relaxing and stretching. When starting young horses, or older horses in correct training, they may need to stretch long and low at very regular intervals, every couple of minutes or so and when warming up or cooling down. I agree that the sketches aren't really representative. They demonstrate long and low and overbent, but not deep and round. A horse may occasionally and momentarily become overbent, or behind the vertical, particularly in early training, just as he may come above the bit, this is understandable when a horse is learning and no rider can claim to be perfect, but he will not become deep and round without deliberate riding techniques, or real rider error.

Heather is not an advocate of the deep and round training technique and nor am I, but rather entirely against it. I hope Heather doesn't mind my speaking for her on this, as she's away until Sunday. I'm sure she'll agree though, as we have discussed this on a number of occasions.

Hope this helps give the EE stance on these techniques!

Sue Carnell
sue@eclipse.co.uk
 
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http://www.horsemagazine.com/CLINIC/J/NEWSJEF/NewSjef.htm
http://www.kahlin.net/noir/dressyr/rollkur/nicole.htm
http://www.kahlin.net/noir/dressyr/rollkur/schrijer.htm
http://www.chilternrider.co.uk/Archives/A-classic.htm
http://www.cathymorelli.com/articles.htm

Here are a few websites with more about deep and round, for and against.

If you type, dressage deep and round, into Google there are a number of other sites regarding deep and round, or what is also called 'rollkur'.

Sue Carnell
sue@eclipse.co.uk
 
Wow!

Thanks for all those really helpful replies!

Looking at the pictures on the websites that Sue posted, it looks to me like riding deep is like riding on a sort of engaged horse but with the chin glued to the chest, so is it sort of overbent, but with the back arched up?

bye!
 
Hi Sarah

If I remember rightly there is an excellent description of long and low, overbent and deep and round in Paul Belasik's "Dressage for the 21st Century".

I'm not a fan of round and deep but if you look at a horse being worked "correctly" in a deep and round and imagine the horse's poll coming up to be the highest point then the nose should be at or in front of the vertical. In an overbent horse the nose will remain behind the vertical.

An overbent horse tends to have a shortened neck as it is forcibly being pulled into the rider's idea of the correct outline. A horse going behind the bit drops the contact and brings its face back behind the vertical.

Maria
 
informed decisions....

whatever we all think of 'round and deep', it is out there and being taught. In my mind it is better to know the pros and cons and make an informed decision.

Being nowhere near Rembrandt level, the thought or image of round and deep can help me ride better during training, even if the result would not look like any of the pictures. (My mare likes to curl up like a little rubber ball so I need images to help me get her nose further away from her chest, but using all her body rather than just adjusting head set).

Like most things in riding, it can be done well, or badly. Done badly it does damage. And most of us are not sufficiently advanced to do it well.

The skill is in knowing when it is appropriate to use this exercise, and in how to do it well, and when NOT to use the exercise. Those of us less skilled should normally err on the side of NOT doing it.

p.s. apologies if the diagrams were a red herring. Thought I had seen the perfect pictures but of course when I went back to them they were not. At least we got more feedback afterwards !
 
Not all horses have the poll as the highest point when in balance and an outline. Some have the highest point a little bit further back because of their confirmation. These are usually heavy cobs and when ridden in balance are really impressive.

When you are riding one of these heavy cobs, the feeling of lightness when they do go like this is something that you will always remember.
 
cvb - I shouldn't worry, the 2nd picture is a great reminder of what happens when people saw at their horses' mouths and just *think* they're on the bit.

Tumbleweed - I think when you talk about heavy cobs you mean that if they're cresty it may *look* as though the highest point is further back, but if you actually looked at an x-ray picture you'd see that the poll was still the highest point and that anything above that point was just fatty crest?
 
I never could understand what low and deep meant, but I was taught that you had to develop a horse's muscles slowly, if you tried to rush this the muscles wouldn't develop properly.

Everytime I saw a horse that was supposed to be low and deep, they looked stiff, uncomfortable, artificial and had problems moving forward, and if a horse isn't going somewhere how will he get there. When they get into the arena, they don't seem to be light in front, and many seemed to be on the forehand.

There is nothing nicer to see than a horse carrying himself and his rider balanced, happy, and enjoying himself, and the level he has achieved doesn't really matter.
 
Great reply Sue- thanks!

Maria, the concept of riding 'deep' always brings the horse behind the vertical - Rembrandt at times had his head between his knees when Nicole was working him in. This is what Reiner Klimke wa so against. I had lengthy discussions with him on a couple of occasions. He was against the fact that working 'deep' causes the horse to step too far under with the hindlegs, and the back to 'peak' up too much, causing the front end to curl back, as Ros says. It can be seriously damaging to the sacral area, as it causes unnatural strain there.Stepping too far under does not encourage bending of the hind joints and taking the weight back.

Neither is it something that a horse does naturally, whereas lowering the hindquarters and 'collecting' will be seen as behaviour displayed by stallions showing off to a mare, for instance, or horses generally at play and prancing around. Ringo was a case in point. For those who don't know Ringo, he is the horse in my video, the big bay, who had only arrived here a month beforehand. He had been retired aged 10, at Prix St. George level dressage, with chronic sacro-iliac problems. The insurance company had paid out a fortune for him in loss of use.

I bought him two years later for a song, having been ridden up and down the Welsh hills by a friend for a year. He was sound, but couldn't be guaranteed to remain so if doing dressage again. I took a chance, and to be honest, didn't actually expect a problem. At 15, he is still sound as a pound, due to the fact that we retrained him from his 'deep' way of going, which he was still mainfesting in the video.


Training 'deep' develops forwards thrust, hence the big powerful extensions to be seen in modern day dressage, but but not true engagement, when the horse lowers his hindquarters and 'concertina's the hind limb joints, lightening the forehand in consequence, producing true collection. This is the reason that movements like the piaffe and canter pirouettes seen in the international dressage arenas, generally pale into insignificance compared with those to be seen being performed by Iberian horses in Portugal and Spain, where collection matters far more than thrust and extension.


The first illustration that cvb shows, is Reiner Klimke's ideal of long and low, rather than what is meant by 'deep', ( as Tumbleweed says, the second drawing is just a horse disengaged, overbent and hollow, rathre than deep) and this debate has raged long and hard in the upper echelons of dressage ever since Dr. Shulten Baumer made it into a fashion.

Hope this helps-

Heather
 
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