Improving shoulder freedom

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One of the things I recognize I need to improve with RP is shoulder freedom at the trot. He doesn't have a lot of natural suspension and when we work on medium trot, he tends to get tight in the shoulders rather than opening up through them. I'm not aiming for an exaggerated front-leg flinging trot, but I would like to help him loosen up and reach up in the shoulder. Even when I have him really sitting, he tends to bring the front legs more up and down rather up and out.

So, curious to hear what exercises others have found helpful for their horses who don't have a lot of natural suspension to get more freedom through the shoulders.

The one thing I have done a decent amount of with him is pole work and while he enjoys it and I do think it has benefits, I'm not sure it's something that has helped or translated to this specific issue. Though I have not done raised poles very often--usually just on the ground or cavelletis at their lowest position (a few inches off the ground)

[khall]

Teach passage to improve cadence.

[Moutaineer]

Turn on the forehand into the trot. Really opens them up.

[Chisamba]

I find transitions within the trot in shoulder fore helpful, really focus on power in the inside hind leg so that the shoulder is not pulling the horse along but free to swing, but Khall is right, practice a passagy trot

[exvet]

I had a real challenge with this with the stinker pony when he was under saddle. What helped - trained spanish walk & piaffe in hand; lots and lots and lots of SI to leg yield to SI to med across a short diagonal; passage; work on the square going back and forth between turn on the haunches and turn on the forehand (focus on mobilizing both halves of the horse or pony as it were) and when there are signs of improved strength - reinback to piaffe to reinback to med trot.........always changing the subject if there was an inkling of getting off balance.

On Junior, he has a naturally freer shoulder and ability to sit but I do notice a huge difference in how I sit in the saddle and the amount he grows up through the wither - I have to constantly remind myself to lift my pubis to my belly button and weight my shoulder blades sliding them down to my back pockets in order to lift and carry myself..........While I'm training him that I refuse to keeping working so hard to drive/keep the forward, he's training me to carry my own front/top half and not block his ability to lift the thoracic sling

[Ponichiwa]

Passage always feels very far away if you're talking about 1st/2nd level horses. But fear not! There's hope.

Exercises that really helped me:
Shoulder fore before turning on a diagonal and asking for lengthening (or medium). After 3-5 steps of lengthening, transition into leg yield off of your former outside leg without changing tempo or ground cover. Bounce back to collected trot on short side. Repeat.

Shoulder in on quarterline or centerline. Leg yield 2-4 strides towards wall maintaining shoulder in angle. Shoulder in forward out of leg yield. Repeat. Variations: change stride length (collected to very collected to lengthening).

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Thanks everyone., lots of good stuff here . I actually think with RP that passage is not quite the right thing. He will lift his legs up and will give cadence, he just won't reach out with the shoulder

[khall]

I would teach him Spanish walk then.

I also have gone back to SI to short diagonal medium trot. Such a classic exercise

[Tanga]

This is what I did with both Quinn and Quilla. For Quinn, doing the scapula release massage helps a lot. I also worked on Spanish walk for both, starting on the ground to cue them so I can do it in the saddle and they understand the idea of using that shoulder more in whatever we are doing. If you want to add the reach out, add a lot of transitions from piaffy/col. trot to ext. trot. And as khall said, doing it from SI really helps everything.

[StraightForward]

Even though shoulder freedom isn't really an issue for T, I love some of the exercises here.

I have to constantly remind myself to lift my pubis to my belly button and weight my shoulder blades sliding them down to my back pockets in order to lift and carry myself..........

In one of Lauren Spreiser's Ride iQ lessons she says pretend you have a stinger in your ass and you're going to sting the saddle. Yeah, that's the kind of imagery that works for me

Wendy Murdoch did a great interview with Bettina Drummond in which someone asked her to define self carriage. Bettina started out talking about the rider being in self-carriage, which I loved (it's also a super interesting discussion; I've watched it twice even though it's almost three hours). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYrk9fq359M