05/30/2026
Amen to this 🙏
One of the biggest problems with incorrect training is people mistake “working the face” for collection.
A horse with its nose tucked in is not necessarily collected. In fact, many horses that appear collected are actually moving completely on the forehand, hollow through the back, disconnected behind, and carrying themselves poorly. The headset fools people into thinking the horse is soft and balanced when mechanically the horse is doing the opposite.
True collection starts from behind.
The hind legs step underneath the horse, the back lifts, the horse carries more weight on the hindquarters, and the front end becomes lighter as a result. The face and poll reflect what the body is doing, not the other way around.
That is also why I believe a lot of people spend too much time flexing, softening, and working the neck before they ever teach the horse how to truly engage the hind end. All that early focus on the face often creates the illusion of collection long before the horse has developed the mechanics for real collection. In many cases it actually makes true collection harder to develop later because the horse learns to give the face without learning to round the back and engage from behind.
You cannot pull a horse into collection with your hands.
In reality, a lot of riders are simply teaching the horse to give its face while the body remains strung out and heavy. That is why you see horses with pretty headsets but poor stops, poor transitions, heavy shoulders, front-end soreness, and little true self-carriage. The rider is teaching a shortcut that creates an illusion of what is correct instead of developing the horse correctly.
