Last Saturday’s post talked about how important it is to have an open mind.
So I’m going to ask you to have an open mind about Turn on the Forehand and its distant cousin, the Pirouette Renversee, which also requires the horse to move its haunches around its forehand.
You’ve probably read that the Turn on the Forehand should only be taught to the beginner rider or used for the young horse, primarily to teach the leg aid or responsiveness to that leg aid for lateral work. You may even have heard someone point out that there’s a reason it’s called turn on the forehand — and that the last thing you want is your horse on the forehand, so the sooner you abandon the exercise, the better.
I say, “Yes but…”
One Grand Prix dressage horse I’ve ridden has an owner/trainer who told me, with a sly smile, that one of her secrets is Turn on the Forehand. She feels it is useful as a suppling exercise, and she has no doubts about her ability to balance her horse. Her horse is light and lovely and “hot” off the aids.
The nice thing is, even if you’ve never ridden or trained to Grand Prix and even if your horse is on the forehand, you can teach him to get off his forehand by moving his hindquarters around his forehand with the Pirouette Renversee, as part of this suppling exercise:
Trot a twenty meter circle on the right rein.
At a given point on the circle, bend your horse’s neck to the left (counterbend).
Put your right leg back and move the haunches around the forehand, which will remain on the line of the circle (this is the pirouette renversee part).
Trot off immediately on the left rein.
Do the same in the other direction.
There are no doubt people who disagree with this post, and who will think that it is heresy to introduce the pirouette, renversee or not, in this way before the horse is ready. And while it’s true that there’s a correct and incorrect way to perform the pirouette renversee, I think horses are capable of a lot more than we think they are, and you can always refine the movement later (as we do all movements).
I don’t think you have to wait until you’re schooling Second Level dressage to work on walk-canter and canter-walk transitions…or wait to introduce walk pirouettes. That’s one place where I think hunter riders have it all over dressage riders these days…and they learn to balance themselves in two-point on top of it! Did I mention the fact that this exercise is good for hunters, jumpers and dressage horses?
I think that waiting to work on things that come naturally to horses keeps both riders and horses from progressing in their abilities. Horses do everything from walk pirouettes to passage and piaffe in turnout. The problem isn’t that they can’t perform these movements. It’s that they can’t perform these movements with us on their backs.
So it’s never too soon to start practicing how to coordinate your aids and keep yourself stable in the saddle, while avoiding the possibility of fixating on “inside leg to outside rein” in the 20 meter circle equivalent of a perpetual motion machine (not that I think that’s what any of my readers are doing, but how often have you seen it?). Do more, try more, have high standards for yourself and your horse, and chances are you’ll become a better rider sooner and make schooling more interesting for your horse in the process.
Before you go grab your bridle, there are just a few more things that are important to mention. It’s best not to repeat the exercise at the same point on the circle. If you do it when you’re three-quarters of the way around the circle — or one and a quarter revolutions around the circle — you’ll naturally be repeating the exercise at different points along the circle.
Interestingly, in February’s Dressage Today, Anja Beran discusses the pirouette renversee in the always-fascinating-to-me series “My Toughest Training Challenge.” (Kudos to DT for the idea). Ms. Beran doesn’t go into detail, but the walk pirouette is generally performed at a collected walk (and the walk is the last of the gaits to be collected in order not to destroy its purity), the legs do not pivot but retain the true four-beats of the walk, the hind quarters (for pirouette) or front quarters (for pirouette renversee) remain in place (on the size of a dinner plate) during the movement.
Don’t let all of that scare you.
What should you have in place before attempting this exercise?
1. A good turn on the forehand which will confirm basic responsiveness to your leg. It’s best to school Turn on the Forehand initially from walk and allow it be larger than you will eventually want it to be…only then from halt.
2. The ability to flex your horse’s neck without pulling on the inside rein. This means you need to use your outside rein, also without pulling back, to move the shoulder. If you’ve never ridden any gaits counterbent, it can be easier to get the feeling at trot and canter, where you have more impulsion.
3. The ability to insist on forward and get it from your horse.
What I have presented is a training exercise; it’s not about test-riding, so I don’t think you need a collected walk to start practicing. (Plus, once you do it well, your horse will gain more of the suppleness he needs for collection).
The key to the success of this exercise is not how perfectly you perform the pirouette renversee. The key to the exercise is how smooth the entire sequence is, how forward the horse remains, and how quickly the horse responds to your aids. You want your horse to feel like a dancer — able to shift from one movement to the next without hesitation or loss of balance. Every step of the trot (remember, there’s trot before and after the pirouette renversee) should be the same and the horse should feel light in front. Repeat this exercise over the coming month, and there’s a really good chance that your horse will feel lighter.
If at any point you feel as if you’re a little mired in molasses, get out of the exercise, go forward and come back later when you’ve worked on getting your horse more responsive to your aids. But don’t wait too long…because asking your horse to pirouette around his forehand will make him light in his forehand. And that will make everything you do easier and more beautiful.
Try it and let me know how it works for you.
Reflections on Riding 
It’s funny how the western trainers don’t appear to have the same worries about teaching their young horses certain moves. It seems to me they almost turn their horses into pretzels to teach them flexibility at a young age. And as long as they don’t overdue the length of time they drill these excercises, I have to agree with their methods.
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What a great observation. Work on the lunge line, despite how difficult it is to do well, has replaced work in hand for so many people in other disciplines.
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I can’t quite visualize this move…
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Oh, oh, oh! Katie- what do you think of this? http://youtu.be/UzdANuAuxu0
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Hi Shannon — I’m sorry if there’s something I haven’t explained clearly enough for you to visualize it. Can you tell me where it stops making sense to you?
In terms of BB, I’m not a big fan. I don’t understand what the tug-tug on the reins accomplishes, and I don’t care for the equitation. I know we see this position in old works of art, but if we don’t need to wear armor, I think there are more effective positions in the saddle.
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Okay- this is the part that I can’t visualize:
“At a given point on the circle, bend your horse’s neck to the left (counterbend).
Put your right leg back and move the haunches around the forehand, which will remain on the line of the circle (this is the pirouette renversee part).
Trot off immediately on the left rein.”
Is this a 180 or a figure-8 or neither? I got stuck at bending the horse to the left and then putting the right leg on- I can’t figure out what direction I’d be heading in.
I agree that BB rides with his leg way too long- it was the bending at the start of the video I was looking at. Should have been more specific.
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Hi Shannon – You’re not alone in finding the pirouette renversee counterintuitive. Largely because we introduce lateral work with the horse’s head bent away from the movement. Leg yield instead of half pass. TOF instead of pirouette renversee.
You can think of pirouette renversee as a TOF with counterflexion.
Let me try to describe the exercise in terms of what the horse is doing, and see if that makes it clearer.
You’re trotting on the right rein on a circle. Your horse is bent in the direction of movement. You can just see the orb of his right eye, and his hindquarters are following in the direction of his forefeet.
Without moving your legs, you change the flexion in your horse’s neck so he’s now looking outside the circle, rather than slightly towards the inside. You are still traveling at trot (either posting or sitting); you haven’t changed your gait yet. Your horse’s feet are still tracing the circle; only the flexion of the neck has changed.
At this point, you sit if you’ve been posting, put your right leg on behind the girth to move the hindquarters over, as you would if you were doing a turn on the forehand. You will naturally come down to walk for this part of the movement, but you don’t wait to come down to walk before putting your right leg on, as you’ll lose the momentum. It all should happen seemingly “at once.”
If we were to freeze-frame this moment, your horse still has four feet on the circle. HIs neck is bent to the left but he’s trotting to the right. Your right leg is behind the girth.
As you apply your leg, your horse will move his hindquarters away from the pressure — to the left. He will literally be “bent around your [left] leg,” as he would going around a corner of the ring to the left. His front feet will remain in the line of the circle, but his hindquarters will move around his front feet, as they do in a TOF. You are correct that the horse’s hindquarters will turn around the front quarters, as it would for a 180 degree turn (except this is slightly more than that since we’re on a circle).
When the horse is again aligned with all four feet on the circle, he will already have the correct flexion in his body to proceed in the new direction, on the left rein, and you apply the aids to go right into trot.
This is one of those exercises that, in my experience, asks more of the rider than the horse. Horses seem to enjoy it, as it’s both interesting and a good gymnastic.
A note of caution: You may feel as if you’re too hurried to do the exercise “all at once,” but it’s important not to break it down into pieces, as the purpose of the exercise will be lost. If you feel you’re not ready yet, work on transitions in and out of TOF at the walk and then at the halt, and work on changing the flexion fluidly at all three gaits.
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Cool, I get it now, thanks!
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Good explanation but be careful with your semantics. LOL. You say “go right into trot” when it would be better to say “go directly into trot” because the right and left aspects of these movements can be very confusing. You started on a circle in trot tracking right and then rode a reversed pirouette to the left which will place you on a circle tracking left. I know this is a detail in the use of words, but this has been the nemeses for many texts and verbal instructions. But Shannon got it so you made your point.
I love that you also refer to this movement as “turn on the forehand in counter flexion”! I see this as the simplest and most direct explanation for the reverse pirouette assuming one knows the difference between true flexion and counter flexion. And I agree to start this work at the walk
I also love your emphasis on smooth flowing movement from one position to the other. This is the hallmark of these exercises.
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Hi Shirley – So nice of you to take the time to read and comment. Right you are!
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No I made a mistake. LOL. The reverse pirouette has to be ridden in true flexion….or that is, true position. I’m having a little discussion with a highly competent rider who explains this movement by categorizing it into all movements that are ridden in true position such as traverse, renver and half pass regardless of the steepness of angle.
And she’s right. The TOTF is an elementary movement ridden in counter flexion while the reverse pirouette is ridden in true flexion. So, TOTF, leg yield and shoulder in are all in the category of movements that are ridden in counter flexion/bend. And reverse pirouette is in the travers, halfpass category of movements ridden in true flexion and are more difficult.
My position on this is that the short answer for explaining reverse pirouette is simply a TOTF in the opposite flexion it is ridden in its elementary version and she disagreed because she could only see it from her perspective which was based on rider position of hips and shoulders to obtain the movement making different demands on the rider. The trainer who taught me this was an expert in the old style classical school which is not so popular in the modern dressage community.
The old books were written for accomplished horseman to explain the theory of horse training and assumed they knew where and how to adjust their position. There were no amateurs back then so there was no market for “how to books”. As you know, students learned to ride from the trainer in person aboard a live horse.
Anyway, my discussion with my friend took me back to a time when I was so confused about this work that when I finally understood it, the simple answer came to me in a wave of relief that gave clarity to make it easier to grasp. That was years ago and I’m grateful for the opportunity to review the past. I believe that novice riders should study this work for its indispensable value in making corrections to achieve alignment in all movement. Cheers and thanks for reading if you got this far. LOL
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Wonderful. I’m glad I was able to describe it more effectively the second time.
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Yes, it’s “true flexion” – not a term I normally use. If you read the bold section, the counterbending comes when you introduce the movement – not during the movement. It’s just that the neck leads — which is what helps you supple your horse and work on your balance, which is what I was suggesting in this post as a useful exercise long before it’s normally introduced.
I can see how it all becomes confusing…but if you change the normal flexion, is it or is it not counterflexion?
Sorry for any confusion in this post, and thank you for contributing to the discussion!
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