02/05/2024
Hollow side/stiff side…..
Honestly, I have never found it to be that simple!!! Well, maybe decades ago I did.
I know I have my own thoughts on this, so I hit up Google to see what most trainers think is more often the hollow side…. Everyone seems to agree that most often horses are hollow to the same side, but I’m finding they don’t all agree whether that is the left or the right!
If we are talking green horses and green riders, and gross generalizations then I would say the stiff side is usually to the right, and the hollow side is usually to the left. I find more horses are apt to fall on their right shoulder, causing them to swing the base of the neck to the left.
THAT SAID, once the horse and rider learn to fix this issue, two things happen…
1.) They both overcompensate and often lose the left shoulder to the outside while traveling to the right. (This might also be because most riders are right handed and tend to overuse the inside rein and forget they have an outside rein while traveling clockwise.)
2.)  As we become more advanced we start to notice that even though the horse was hollow in the base of his neck left, and stiff in the base of his neck to the right, quite frequently the absolute opposite is happening up at the horses poll joint!!  If the base of the neck is stiff to the right, I find the poll joint is more likely to be stiff left.
I also find that most riders tend to sit to the left, causing horses to bend through the rib cage to the left just fine, and they have one heck of a time to the right!! But again, once we fix this, there commonly tends to be an overcompensation.
I guess the point is, it’s not as easy as good banana or bad banana! Lol. Not when it comes to lateral bend.
The poll joint is probably the most important, second, the rib cage, and last is the base of the neck…. But for some reason, we tend to see the base of the neck first, and it takes us longer to learn the other two.
It’s easy to do some in hand work to loosen up your horse’s poll joint. (Hmmmm, and why don’t I have my students do this regularly before hopping on???)
To get bend in the rib cage you want to literally shift you’re outside seat bone a little closer to midline and let your inside hip, knee, and heel drop a little lower than the outside hip, knee, and heel. (When students are already crooked I have them really exaggerate this to the side that it’s more difficult on. Once they get really even and really good at it, it does not look like they are shifting at all, but they will have full control over the horse’s rib cage through their weight aids.) 
In my progression for teaching riders, I initially do not care if the horse overbends through the base of the neck-  honestly it’s just too much for students to learn how to focus on poll flexion, and rib cage bend, AND think they can ALSO utilize their outside rein in a sophisticated way to prevent too much lateral bending at the base of the neck.  If you teach this too early, it just causes them to unknowingly hang on the outside rein, and totally prevent the poll flexion and ribcage bend!!!!!
Ha, ha, ha, ha ha, owl, owl, owl, owl. I’m using dictation and I totally forgot about the brand new upper ear piercing I just got yesterday- I tried to swipe my hair behind my ear clumsily. Ouch that hurt!!!
Okay, anyways,  students have to learn simple math before they can learn trig or calculus. Balancing the ENTIRE horse on a circle is high-level work!!!!!! You have to learn it piece by piece, and if you talk to world class riders, you will find they are still learning, and getting more refined at lateral bend… among other things, of course, but suppling a horse laterally, and then setting them straight is a big BIG part of what they do, regardless of discipline, or the Horse’s level of training!! 
Dang this ear still hurts! But it’s starting to subside a little.

