How NOT to Pull on the Reins – Active vs. Passive Resistance

The “how can I stop pulling on my horse’s mouth in transitions?” question comes up very often when I am out and about teaching, so today’s post will form a little chat on exactly that 🙂

Let’s Start with a Muscle You Might Be Ignoring…

The latissimus dorsi (shown below in red), or “lats”, is a key player when it comes to using the reins—but not in the way you might think.

Before we come back to the muscle shown above, let’s look beyond the obvious answers. Yes, of course we want to stop pulling as it’s simply painful on the horse’s mouth, but there are other aspects too.

Why NOT to Pull?

If you use the reins to pull (act directly backwards on the reins with prolonged pulley pressure), you are very likely creating a dysfunctional posture in your horse. That’s because the horse will respond with defensive and strenuous use of their muscles in the neck, back and limbs.

Dysfunctional posture leads to dysfunctional movement—which in time can easily lead to a plethora of unexplained soundness issues.

Pulling reins will also never let the rider achieve real throughness in transitions. They act like an emergency handbrake on the horse’s hind legs, create tension in the neck muscles and generally produce a variety of micro-evasions that the horse employs in order to find some acceptable comfort.

The Long Answer

To be able to be independent of the reins—and apply their action without stress, tension or pulley action—the rider needs good basic balance throughout their seat.

In other words, they need to be in control of their own frame and not be dependent on how the horse moves to stay in balance.

It might seem obvious to say this, but it’s important to mention: seat balance is the pre-requisite to what you’ll read in the ‘short answer’ below.

If you struggle with some aspects of seat stability AND tend to pull on the reins in transitions, then the short answer might not be for you just yet...

The Short Answer

If your seat skills are decent and you can easily go from full seat to half seat (two-point/light seat) and back to full seat without altering the horse’s rhythm and without feeling out of balance, yet you still struggle with correct rein action—this one might be for you.

(However, even if your seat skills aren’t quite there yet, you can still experiment with this next bit during walk-to-halt transitions.)

How to Practice Passive Resistance

To ride a transition without pulling action on the reins, it’s important to develop feel for passive resistance. The difference lies in which muscles you use—and how you use them.

Cue: check out the photo of muscles shown in red… 😉

To test yourself, you’ll need someone on the ground holding the reins while you’re in the saddle:

• Ask your helper to gently pull on both reins as if trying to pull you forwards.

• A moment later, they release the pressure without warning you.

• If you were pulling back—you’re likely to lose your balance.

• Now, engage your lats, align into a neutral spine and create a “standing with knees bent” feeling through your thighs instead of a “sitting in a chair” feeling.

  
  

You should notice that when the reins are released, you stay unmoved and balanced—not because you were pulling back, but because you created a stable postural resistance.

What This Does for Your Riding

This kind of passive resistance lets you regulate the horse’s speed and weight distribution with your body and seat, rather than with backwards traction on the reins.

The reins simply transmit your intention to the horse. In fact, often no rein pressure is necessary—the horse feels the resistance in your seat and responds to that alone.

You can use this in:

• Half-halts

• Transitions within the gait

• Direct transitions

• 
  

…always with forward “thinking" hands (i.e. no backward traction, no tension in elbows, wrists or fingers).

Be Patient With Yourself

The key is to introduce this slowly and develop feel for resisting in the rhythm of the horse’s movement.

At the beginning you might find yourself:

• Tensing up too much

• Holding the resistance out of sync with the horse

• Clenching your buttocks

• Locking your arms or fingers

• Holding your breath…etc etc.

These are all “normal” mistakes to make, so do make them. Read your horse’s reactions and keep trying until you can isolate the right muscles—and until your timing and feel improves.

Please feel free to comment with any questions, thoughts or experiences if you do try (or have already tried) this exercise!

📌 A quick note:

If you're a visual learner, find someone to video this exercise with you—it can be eye-opening to see how your body reacts to rein pressure vs. postural resistance.

This is a lightly updated version of my original blog post I wrote in 2014.