This article first appeared in the April 2021 digital edition of Equestrian Life. To see what's in the current issue, click here.

Shane Rose and CP Qualified perform shoulder-in

© Roger Fitzhardinge

23 Shoulder-in exercises to improve your horse 

By Dr Kerry Mack

From helping a horse to relax, to improving balance and suppleness, making it straight or teaching it to understand the inside leg to outside rein, there are endless ways to use the shoulder-in to better train your horse.

Dressage is training for suppleness, balance and obedience. So, dressage training helps prepare any horse for a good and useful life. As Tom Roberts said, a well-trained horse has a good life.

One of the most useful exercises to improve balance and suppleness is the shoulder-in. Invented by François Robichon de La Guérinière, the importance of the shoulder-in has been highlighted by recent scientific studies that show that horses will become more relaxed when you bend their bodies by putting them into the shoulder-in. You can read a previous article about this here (‘A Relaxed Horse is a Happy Horse’, Equestrian Life July 2020). But now I would like to give you some examples of how you can use the shoulder-in in a range of different exercises to help the gymnastics of your horse, whatever your discipline...

Read the full article here in the April 2021 issue of Equestrian Life!