05/14/2026
When I was younger and training in dressage, I completely subscribed to the idea of “long and low.”
I did what I was taught, followed the instructions I was given, and never really questioned it because everybody around me was doing exactly the same thing. It was considered correct. If the horse stretched the neck down and forwards, that was seen as positive and was encouraged constantly throughout warm-ups, training sessions, and everyday schooling.
At the time, I never really stopped to think about where the idea had actually come from. I simply accepted it as part of correct training, and to be honest, I think a lot of us did.
It wasn’t until much later, after years of studying posture, movement, rehabilitation, biomechanics, nervous system function, and spending thousands of hours watching horses move, that I started questioning whether what we were calling “long and low” was actually the same thing as the original concept it was based on.
The other day, somebody asked me, “Why are people so obsessed with long and low?” and it genuinely made me stop and think, because the origin of long and low actually came from a very different place to where we seem to have ended up with it now.
Historically, within classical training systems, riders observed that when the horse began functioning correctly through the body, certain things naturally happened. As the thoracic sling stabilised and lifted the body up between the front legs, the base of the neck gained more freedom, the back could begin to lift and connect, and the hindquarters could engage more effectively. The horse could organise balance differently and start carrying itself with more ease.
As a consequence of that improved function, the frame would often extend. The neck would lengthen forwards and slightly downwards as part of a whole-body postural change. The lowered neck itself, however, was never really supposed to be the goal. It was simply the result of improved function occurring throughout the body.
Somewhere along the way, though, I think we started focusing more on recreating the visible picture than understanding what created the picture in the first place, and I think that misunderstanding has probably caused far more issues than people realise.
Now, in many situations, “long and low” simply means getting the horse’s neck lower, but lowering the neck alone does not guarantee that the horse is functioning well.
A lowered head does not automatically mean the back is lifting. It does not automatically mean relaxation, connection through the topline, or correct self-carriage. In many horses, the exact opposite is actually happening.
The horse drops down onto the forehand, the thoracic sling collapses, the base of the neck lowers, the back disconnects, and the horse simply learns to travel in a lower outline without the posture underneath it truly changing. The shape changes, but the function often doesn’t.
That was probably one of the biggest realisations for me personally.
The neck position itself was never really the important part. The important part was always the quality of movement, the organisation of the body, the balance, the lift, the connection, and the function occurring underneath it.
Over time, I think we gradually confused the outcome with the method. We became so focused on producing the outline that we stopped asking whether the horse was actually functioning better inside that outline.
For me, that changed everything about the way I look at training now, because these days I’m far less interested in whether the horse’s neck is low, and far more interested in why the neck is where it is in the first place.
Edit: the previous image has been replaced
