Training Tip Tuesday: Teaching Bending

I have some newfound time on my hands as I am laid up for about 6 weeks with a broken first metatarsal and am in a cast. So that means that I am on "stall rest" and being told to lay low for the next number of weeks so hopefully things can heal without surgery. This means I will have time to use for my blogging and hopefully while I am not able to travel to teach right now, I can teach and provide content through words. 
So welcome to "Training Tip Tuesday" where I will discuss a training concept and some exercises to better improve. Today I will start with a very basic principle- Bending. The USDF glossary defines this as "the laterally curved position in which the horses body, as viewed from above, appears to form a uniform arc from poll to tail." This is easier said than done and bending correctly does require a horse to be pushing forward and through but also have flexibility through their body. Bending is also very helpful in teaching the horse proper contact. 
So obviously first and foremost when beginning to teach your horse to bend it is very important that the horse moves forward off the driving aids. You should feel the horse is able to maintain a "freely forward" idea without constant nagging of the leg, seat, or spur/whip aids. Without this the horse will become stuck when you begin to ask for any variety of bending. 
Next, I teach an exercise that I call "turning like a barrel horse." This is where I take a shorter inside rein- open it at my elbow so the inside shoulder has "space" and then sit over my inside stirrup. The horse should try to follow its nose and turn a fairly small circle(following your seat). Ideally you want to feel that the inside foreleg is open inward on this small circle instead of shoving underneath the horse's chest. Once you can do this then you switch to sitting over your outside seat bone, applying the inside calf against the ribcage at the girth, keeping the inside rein open, but now opening and apply a tiny bit of pressure to the outside rein to encourage the horse to step out. If the horse falls significantly with the shoulder take your outside elbow back and put you inside shoulder back. Almost thing of the idea of asking for a turn on the forehand to straighten the horse up. 
I play with that exercise until it feels fairly easy and that the horse is following my shift in my seat more so than needing pushing aids. 
The other really important exercise for developing bending is the turn on the fore. This is because it really establishes the inside leg to outside rein connection. Obviously, you must first teach a turn on the fore at a standstill- you flex the neck slightly toward the leg you are going to push with, you keep your outside elbow, and you push with the leg until the horse steps away from the lateral driving leg. If the horse steps multiple steps forward you need more outside rein, but you still want to keep the horse slightly flexed in the direction of the driving leg. Once you feel like you have a quiet and correct response to this aid then you can play with a walking turn on the fore- or kind of a leg yield on a circle. 
Once you have these two exercises you will find that you will have greater control over the shoulder, ribcage, and haunch which will allow you to make adjustments when asking for proper bending. Keep in mind bending is not what is solely happening in the neck, but really what is happening around the riders inside leg. This is a very important part to correctly developing the inside leg to outside rein connection which is pivotal in all dressage movements and training. 
Here is a video of some ridden examples of the above: Beginning of bending 
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