by Ron Meredith The Training Tree: Suppleness President,
Meredith Manor International Equestrian Centre Suppleness is
another mythunderstood word in the horse industry. Suppleness
simply means the ability to bend without stiffness. We want the
horse to have loose, pliable joints: his hocks, his hips, his
knees, his shoulders, his poll and his jaw. There are other
joints that must be flexible, too, but generally when we talk
about a horse’s ability to bend, we’re talking about one or
another of those major joints. If a horse stiffens any of these
joints, that stiffness goes through his whole body. If the horse
braces in his poll or jaw, for example, nothing else is going to
be loose because he is locked against the rider’s hand and that
stiffness is going to affect all his other joints to some
degree. Stiffness or resistance in any joint causes a disruption
of the energy flow throughout the horse. Smooth transitions are
a sign of a supple horse and, vice versa, jerky, jumpy or
jarring transitions signal resist