20/07/2026
Long reining is one of those topics that always sparks discussion. It appears in a huge number of rehabilitation programmes, it’s commonly recommended for young horses, and many very good trainers use it successfully.
This is simply my perspective.
I’m not saying long reining should never be used. In the right hands, with excellent feel, timing and understanding, it can absolutely have its place. If you’re producing driving horses, it’s an essential skill. But when it comes to starting young horses or rehabilitating compromised bodies, it isn’t something I choose to use.
The reason isn’t because I think the exercise itself is inherently wrong. It’s because I think the margin for error is incredibly small, and when you’re working with a horse whose body is still developing or already struggling, those errors can have long-term consequences.
One of the biggest challenges is simply seeing what’s actually happening.
When you’re working several metres behind the horse with two long lines, your view isn’t the same as when you’re close to them. It becomes much harder to judge whether the horse is genuinely straight, whether the jaw is beginning to deviate, whether the neck is subtly twisting, or whether the ribcage is drifting away from the line of travel.
These are often tiny changes. You might not notice them in a single session. But bodies don’t work in single sessions. They work in patterns.
A small twist repeated hundreds or thousands of times eventually becomes the horse’s normal.
If we’re trying to build healthy movement, that’s a risk I’m simply not willing to take.
The second issue is the contact itself.
When you’re positioned behind the horse, the rein naturally creates the potential for backward pressure. That doesn’t automatically mean you’re pulling, but your whole position makes it much easier for pressure to travel backwards through the horse’s neck.
For me, that’s a problem.
Most of the rehabilitation horses I see already have some degree of compression through the neck. Many have learned to brace against the contact because the contact has become somewhere they defend themselves rather than somewhere they feel safe.
Young horses aren’t much different.
They’re still trying to work out where their balance is. If they discover they can lean into the reins to stabilise themselves, they’ll often do exactly that. They aren’t being naughty. They’re simply solving the balance problem with the information available to them.
Unfortunately, that solution can become a habit.
Instead of learning to organise their own posture, they begin organising themselves around the rein.
That isn’t the foundation I want to build.
When we’re riding, we have many other ways of communicating. We have our seat, our weight, our legs, our posture and our breathing. We can influence balance in lots of different ways without relying solely on the rein.
With long reining, those options become much more limited.
You’re asking the horse to interpret two lines, your voice and, if you’re using one, a whip.
That’s a much smaller communication toolbox.
Which brings me to another issue.
Body language is one of the most powerful ways we communicate with horses. They read the smallest changes in where we stand, how we move, the direction of our shoulders and even where our focus goes.
When you’re working from behind, much of that conversation disappears.
Instead, the communication naturally becomes more about driving the horse forwards.
But if the horse isn’t balanced enough to carry that forward energy correctly, pushing them forwards doesn’t solve the problem.
It often magnifies it.
If they’re falling onto the forehand, they’ll fall harder.
If they’re crooked, they’ll become more crooked.
If they’re loading one limb more than another, they’ll continue strengthening that asymmetry.
Forward only helps when the horse already has somewhere good to go.
Timing is another reason I’m cautious.
Good rehabilitation depends on incredibly accurate timing.
Sometimes you’re trying to influence a single step. A particular limb flight. A subtle shift in weight. A tiny change in how the neck organises itself.
From several metres behind the horse, every aid has further to travel.
The information has to move down the rein before it ever reaches the horse.
By the time it arrives, the moment you wanted may already have passed.
That tiny delay matters.
When you’re trying to rebuild movement patterns rather than simply exercise the horse, fractions of a second can make all the difference.
The final consideration is confidence.
Horses don’t see particularly well directly behind themselves.
Many tolerate it beautifully, but some don’t.
If something goes wrong, the lines can wrap around legs or trail behind them if you have to let go. For a confident, experienced horse that may not become an issue.
For a young horse who’s only just beginning to understand the world, or for a rehabilitation horse who’s already anxious in their body, it can become a very frightening experience very quickly.
For me, it’s simply not worth taking that risk.
So what do I do instead?
I start almost everything from a single line attached to the centre ring of the cavesson.
Why?
Because my priority isn’t control.
It’s space.
I want the horse to discover that the neck can reach forwards without meeting resistance. I want them to organise their own balance rather than balancing against me. I want the topline to lengthen, the base of the neck to lift naturally, and the body to begin finding its own alignment without feeling trapped between two reins.
Space creates options.
Compression removes them.
The more compression we create through the neck, the more compensation begins to appear elsewhere in the body. We see altered loading patterns, restricted movement, changes in muscle development and eventually changes in soundness.
That’s why I don’t like starting with backward pressure if I can avoid it.
Again, this is my opinion, based on the horses I work with every day and the principles that underpin everything I teach.
Other trainers will have different approaches, and many will produce good results.
But if the goal is to build a body that is comfortable, functional and capable of staying sound for as long as possible, I’ll always choose creating space before creating contact.
