By Laura Reiman, MS, PMA-CPT

What Is Pilates?

Pilates is a mind-body conditioning method that trains the whole body for quality, efficient movement. This exercise modality emphasizes flexibility, strength, control, and balance through progressive and safe movement.

Pilates was created by a man named Joseph Pilates who went from being a sickly child with rickets, asthma, and rheumatic fever to a being a model for anatomy charts as well as a fitness pioneer. He was born in Germany in 1883 and spent his early years studying an array of Eastern and Western exercises and philosophies, borrowing ideas from gymnastics, bodybuilding, boxing, fencing, yoga, and other forms of movement to improve his own health and well-being.

During World War I, Pilates was interned in a camp on the Isle of Man where he was tasked with rehabilitating the sick and disabled within the camp. Continuing his exploration of acquiring a healthy body, Pilates helped his “patients” get better faster and strengthen both their body and their immune system. By the time he came to America in the early 1920s, he had devised his own movement method named “Contrology.” Contrology prioritized nourishing the body as a whole and was considered a lifestyle just as much as an exercise program. After his death in 1967, Contrology became known simply as Pilates.

While some people continue to practice Pilates just as it was created by the man himself, other practitioners have chosen a more contemporary approach, using the exercises and ideas Joseph Pilates extolled as a framework and building upon it using new research and knowledge about the body and what it needs today. It is this contemporary approach that lends itself so well to the equine body.

Read more: Pilates for Horses—It’s a Thing

By Jane Savoie

Connection means that you’ve connected your horse’s back end to his front end. Think of your horse’s back like it is a suspension bridge or a strung bow. If your horse’s neck is round, but he doesn’t touch the reins (there are loops and a lack of contact), he’s “behind the bit.” Some horses even look like they have what’s called a “broken neck.” This expression refers to the fact that the highest point of the neck is at the third vertebra rather than the horse’s poll.

Draw reins and other gadgets won’t help your horse understand how to come honestly on the bit—instead, he’ll often adopt this “behind the bit” position. Gadgets create a false frame so there’s no real connection. “Fiddling” with the bit or “sawing” on your horse’s mouth gives you the same false headset. Rather than going through them, he “sucks back” away from them, or breaks at the third vertebra.

When your horse consistently goes behind the bit, show him how to take a contact with your hands by teaching him to go “forward through his body.” Let me elaborate on the word “forward” first.

There are different aspects to being “forward.” Forward is a direction. For example, your horse can travel straight forward over the ground. He can also travel sideways and forward, like in a leg-yield. You also want your horse to “think forward.” This means he takes responsibility for his own energy, and he’s also reactive to your driving aids.

When your horse is either behind the vertical or behind the bit, he needs to go forward through his body. Think of his body as a parallelogram. If his profile is behind the vertical, his hind legs are out behind his body to the same degree. You need to shift the parallelogram in the opposite direction so the hind legs come under the body and the poll comes up.

To teach him to go forward through his body so you shift the parallelogram, do this exercise:

1. Go on a circle in posting trot.

2. Close your legs to ask for a few strides of a lengthening.

Read more: Fix the Horse That’s Behind the Bit