The Half Halt

In my early equine education, I remember being told to half halt my horses all the time and only vaguely knowing what it meant. Some trainers seemed to want me to pull back on the reins, some squeeze the horse down with my seat, and one even told me to bear down, as if to poop on the horse. These are all confusing and unhelpful descriptions of the half halt. The answers of what it is, what it’s for, and how you do it vary dramatically depending on who you ask. In this post, I will explain how I’ve come to understand the what, how, and why of the half halt, and respond to some definitions and descriptions I received on Facebook when opening the discussion to my equine community!

To answer the question of what a half halt is, I think we need to first understand what a good quality full halt entails.

A correct halt involves the horse stopping all 4 feet in a rectangle where all 4 cannon bones are vertical, like a table.

As the horse becomes more developed, the halt may have more “sit” in the haunches, bringing the hocks farther under the body as they bear more weight and fold down, but the front limbs absolutely remain vertical.

Why is this important? For a horse to be balanced, distributing their weight in healthy proportions across the body and within the hooves themselves, the front limbs need to be perpendicular to the ground.

Here, we can have some engagement of the thoracic sling, lifting the horse’s sternum up and back, thereby lifting the base of the neck and the withers up. The withers will appear to grow taller from between the shoulders, as the horses do not have a collar bone fixing their front limbs to their axial skeleton like we do.

This lower cervical and upper thoracic lift, made possible by vertical front legs and created by the thoracic sling, also enables the rest of the thoracic and lower back to also lift, or at the very least come into a neutral spine, where all of the vertebrae are lined up. This lift opens up the spinous processes of the back, and is further supported by the abdominal muscles.

The lift in the front allows the horse to seamlessly and progressively begin to bear more and more weight behind, even just at a halt!

So, let’s break that down.

A (good) Full Halt= 2 vertical front legs plus bilateral thoracic sling engagement

So, according to my horse math,

A Half Halt= 1 vertically grounded front leg plus unilateral thoracic sling engagement

(Note that as the horse becomes more developed both sides of the thoracic sling stay engaged as the horse moves, but for the half halt to work, it is especially one side of the sling (of the grounded leg) that works extra hard to lift the withers and create space for the hind leg to step more into the center of gravity.)

Preparing to ask Manchego to pause on the right front as he loads it

I put my emphasis on the single grounded leg and thoracic sling engagement on that side because the ground reaction forces that enable the horse with even a moderately developed thoracic sling to push the front leg straight into the ground (in the part of the stride when the hoof is flat on the ground), creating elevation through the withers.

This is our uphill feel. The stronger the horse gets in their postural muscles, the more lifted both sides of the thoracic sling can stay, even when one or both front limbs are airborne.

For the most part, I work with everyday horses learning to be better at a job that is not necessarily the discipline of dressage. Or I work with horses in rehabilitation, recalibrating and healing their bodies to get back to full function. Or geriatric horses, who enjoy their in-hand work as a means to maintain a comfortable balance of stability and mobility as they age. In all of these cases, the horses don’t necessarily need to get to the point of being able to do highly collected movements such as piaffe or levade. Therefore, the degree of bilateral thoracic elevation is not as high as horses that are training to high collection.

My main concern is function and health.

I want to provide accessible training to the everyday equestrian with the everyday horse so that that horse can be happy, comfortable, and sound doing whatever job they will do. And if we can get excellent elevation through one side of the thoracic sling at a time, we are already worlds away from all the horses running around out there with hollow backs and dropped sternums, slamming into their ground with their front tippy toes before the hind legs even hit the ground. As we develop each side of the thoracic sling, the whole front end becomes more elevated, enabling the hind end to step under better before ever training collection.

So let’s talk about how to develop the half halt.

Of course, we must start with developing a healthy full halt first. Every time you halt your horse, if you ask them to shift their sternum back and up, you will begin developing the thoracic sling in the easiest way possible– with 2 legs grounded and both sides of the sling engaging at the same time.

What does this look like?

From the ground, you could be in any equipment or even have your horse at liberty and send energy towards their chest (aided by a whip or flag if needed), as if you were going to ask your horse to back up, but releasing before they actually move their feet back.

Notice the lift in the sternum and the base of the neck. The withers open, but back comes up, ad the pelvis comes into a more neutral position, even with this horse’s hind legs quite back behind him. He’s not collecting here, but he is elevating the front leg, which puts him in a position where I could begin to ask the hind legs to step under and bear more weight.

Standing from the front, you will see the horse’s pectoral muscles engage.

From the side, it may look like the horse’s front legs go from inclined forward to vertical. (A healthy well developed horse will rest with their front legs vertical, but this is unfortunately not a common sight to see!)

You’ll also see the withers emerge upward, and fan out from between the scapulas.

Another way to think about it is the distance between the top of the scapula and the top of the withers growing.

Does that mean your horse will literally grow taller?

Yes! My heart horse, Sage, was 9 years old and 17.3hh when I got him and 18hh after I restarted him classically. He did not train to a high level, as our journey together was primarily rehabilitation and connection focused.

Practicing shoulder fore, you can clearly see Sage’s withers emerge at least 3” above the top of his scapulas.

When training in-hand off of 2 reins, the aid comes from a lifting action (either with the reins attached to the cavesson’s lateral rings, or the bit). Under saddle, it is also a lifting action in the reins, coupled by a lightening of the seat, especially the pubic bone, to create space for the withers to lift up.

Note that lightening the front of the seat should not necessarily be an anterior pelvic tilt, and certainly does not involve digging in with your seat bones. Instead, it’s a moment of putting more weight into your internally rotated thighs, as if kneeling over the horse. You’re taking your weight off the back and onto the sides of the ribs to encourage the horse to lift their back underneath you. Take note that it’s also not putting more weight in the stirrups— this sends the weight right to the stirrup bars of your saddle.

To help make this thoracic sling lift automatic for your horse, it is helpful to create rituals for the horse to habitually learn the postural shift. I like to halt every few strides with a sternum rock. Or every quadrant of a circle. Or every corner of a square.

The turn on the forehand is the movement use to teach the horse to specifically engage one side (the inside) of the thoracic sling.

In the turn on the forehand, the inside front is the “balancing-around” leg, which your horse plants on the ground, lifts through the thoracic sling, creating space for the inside hind to cross over towards the outside front. The outside front leg reaches forward and around, as this movement will develop into shoulder in.

Shoulder in on a 20 meter circle, developed out of turn on the forehand on a square, the hexagon, then octagon etc… progressively asking for more frequent steps of engaging the inside of the thoracic sling to balance around the inside front, create space for the inside hind to step under, and allow the outside shoulder to swing freely forward and to the inside.

I like to teach it on a square. I halt on the corners, rock the sternum back, and ask for a 90 degree turn on the forehand. I step forward onto the new side, drawing that outside front leg around to me as the inside hind and ribcage swing out.

Once the horse is automatically engaging the thoracic sling when I halt, I can prepare for a halt without fully stopping the forward movement and see the thoracic sling engage while the horse is in motion. (The half-halt!)

I time this half halt with the loading of the inside front leg where I want to make my corner.

As the inside front touches the ground, I send energy back and up through the chest, simultaneously sending the inside hind across with my whip, and drawing the outside front onto the next side of the square with my energy and outside rein (if I’m working on 2 reins).

Under saddle, a lifting half halt on the inside rein asks Manchego to pause on his inside front, lifting through the inside thoracic sling, preparing for him to bring his inside hind under his sternum and draw the outside shoulder in. My inside leg guides the inside leg across in the next part of the stride.

You can also develop the half halt while walking in a straight line, habitually halting and rocking the sternum back. When the sternum rock becomes automatic, you can prepare for halt, timed with the loading of 1 front leg, asking the horse to leave it on the ground a moment longer in the vertical position before resuming the stride.

It’s a pause at the moment of optimal balance.

Notice how this half halt allows Manchego to bring his inside hock further under his body.

If we can progressively ask the horse to lift the withers and shift weight back to the hind quarters from the halt to the walk, it follows that we can practice the half halt in a similar way at the trot and canter too. It’s all about asking the horse to pause and lift the front end up.

The half halt is therefore a change of balance– the horse becomes lighter in the front end and grounds themself in the hind end, making it easier to do anything you might ask– the half halt could be in preparation for a transition, a turn, a lateral movement, or anything else you might imagine.

Let me review some different responses to my discussion prompt on what a half halt is:

“It’s getting ready. Western riders say ‘gather him up’, but what ever, to me it’s the horse tightening his core like a shortstop. Getting ready to go left, right, back fast or slow…”

I absolutely agree! When we begin to tone the thoracic sling and the horse learns how to support the lift in their back and the extra weight being offset to the hind legs, they learn to engage their core, which prepares them to do any number of things. It’s like putting the horse back in a martial arts stance.

“In the last few years of learning more about postural work and BTMM, I’ve started thinking of it as the weight shift up and back and yes, engaging the core and thoracic sling… a preparation for a transition.”

Here it is again! Great response. I love seeing my students find the language for the elusive and feel the realness of the art of horsemanship.

“I was told to bend my elbows and sit deep in my seat mostly. Also to exhale and engage my core.”

When we perform the lifting action on the reins in a half halt under saddle, we can lift just from our wrist, or if necessary bend the whole elbow to act on the corners of the horse’s mouth and take the bit off of the tongue, inviting them to lift up and shift weight back. The exhale is a wonderful addition– it provides a feeling of release and relaxation in the rebalancing. Engaging the core is the piece where we lighten our seat– we must use our postural muscles to remain upright and aligned while creating space for the horse to come up underneath us.

Utilizing a polo wrap around the sterum to connect the lifting action on the reins with elevation of the sternum in a clinic with Shelbie Fredenhagen

“I can remember my teacher when I was a kid, first learning to ride tell me (or rather yell at me) to squeeze my butt cheeks together!”

Yep! While this may seem like strange advice, we do have to engage our glutes a little to lighten our seat. However, I think out of context, this instruction is often misinterpreted and misapplied, distancing and stiffening the rider away from the horse’s back. Finding the right language to resonate with each student is such a hard task instructors face!

“Half halt is a rebalancing of the horse. Here is my two cents worth: to do to just rebalance (get hind end under horse or prepare for a change (gait, direction, etc.). There are soo many descriptions of HOW, and some are some nebulous!!!! One is: on a good inhale, at same time tightening back (which includes tightening back/core, maybe leg on. smile it tightens the body, and improves the attitude. Another way I heard it described, if your horse will respond, is all the above and take thigh off a tiny bit using glue medius. I tried it on my younger horse and he responds soo well.”

Great understanding of what a half-halt is. And oh my, do I agree about the nebulosity of describing how! The first description involving the inhale resonates with me, as I use the inhale as a preparation for a transition, in which I set my intention for the energy I am about to ask for, and then exhale to release for the execution. In this way, an intentional inhale in itself can make a very effective half halt.

The tightening of the back, core, and body is true in some ways, because to create space in one area (under the seat for the horse’s back) other areas must tighten and stabilize. This is, in effect, the concept of biotensegrity. However, in my experience teaching, when I say “tighten”, many students perceive “stiffen”, and a horse will not lift their back into a stiff human back. We must balance suppleness and stability to be a good load to carry for the horse.

The piece about possibly putting leg on I’m going to say is misleading advice– the leg means that the horse must either go forward (in the neutral position) or sideways (in the various other positions farther behind the girth). The half halt is not about going forward, although it can be used to prepare for forward. Sometimes leg is needed immediately after the half halt to add energy to the rebalancing, typically guiding the horse into greater suspension. The more we sit the horse back on weight bearing haunches, the greater they are able to bounce up instead of just pushing forward.

The smile tightening the body and improving the attitude is a nice touch in this description. I’m not sure about the description of taking the thigh off– when we take weight out of our thighs, we put more weight into the seat of our saddle, right where we are asking the horse’s back to come up. So for me, I typically think of putting more weight in the thigh for a half halt. But it is dynamic and momentary, so if we put more thigh “on” to initiate a half halt, the next beat may be taking the thigh “off” (but not off so much that it externally rotates within the hip socket), and at that point of the stride we can feel the horse’s lifted back boosting us up as we relax more into the saddle. I think people get confused because they focus so much one one particular moment in time instead of feeling how the change in balance of a half halt colors what follows. This is probably where your final description comes from, and in that way it’s not wrong at all.

“The worst way I’ve ever had it explained to me was just ‘pull on the outside rein’”

Hah! I’m sure many of us have gotten this misleading advice. Pulling on the rein usually means puling backwards, which is already a no-no– we don’t want to be acting backwards and compressing our horse’s tongue. This only leads to brace and tension in the body which will block the neck from relaxing, the back from lifting, and the hind legs from bending under the body and carrying more weight. However, I can see where this bad instruction comes from. The outside rein is used to balance the horse, especially in a lateral sense to keep the horse from falling through the outside shoulder. So, when we do a turn on the forehand like I described earlier in this post, we can half halt by lifting the outside rein to help guide the outside shoulder up and around instead of falling out and down. Can I see how this could be described as pulling on the outside rein? Yes. But the “pulling” is only a gentle lift of the outside corner of the mouth for a moment to guide the horse around the inside leg.

“Growing up I was taught to think of “lifting the saddle off of the horses back” with my seat and core and quite often scolded for using the reins when I wasn’t quite understanding. I interpret this now to a shift of weight for the horse to rebalance, but with timing as to not offend the horse greatly by throwing them off of balance.”

What a beautiful description! Lifting the saddle off of the horse’s back is an image that unifies the lightness being created for the horse to flex their back under your seat with the postural stability and core engagement involved in drawing the horse up to you. I totally agree that timing the half halt is essential to not offend the horse. We ought to time our aids at the moment where the horse can make use of them– if we are too late, we are asking for something the horse can no longer offer within that stride and we must try again the next.

“I was taught you close your fingers and create stillness in your body to rebalance the horse. Essentially you create a minor stopping point for energy with the hand but keep the seat light enough and still enough to keep energy in the hind end while allowing the energy ‘break’ at your hands (and again we are just closing our fingers not pulling or wiggling).”

Nice description! The closing of the fingers in a position where the rein is just acting on the corner’s of the horse’s mouth is a great initiation of a half halt. The stillness in the rider’s body makes them an easier load to carry and then lift up into better balance. The description of the energy breaking at the hand can be understood as the forward movement being transformed into lifting movement. Again, it can be so easily misconstrued, hence your repetition of just closing the fingers instead of pulling or wiggling the reins.

“I was taught to squeeze the reins... Not what it does.”

You’re not alone, sister! Hopefully this blog post enlightens you on what squeezing the reins might look like from a classical lens, and then what the half halt does for the horse-rider partnership in motion.

“You already have many GOOD appropriate answers so let me throw in some AWFUL instructions and explanations I was given in my youth and am so grateful I understand better (a work always in progress) now. Worst one was to push your heels down, lean back and squeeze and release with both reins. My poor horses at the time made sure I figured out this was NOT beneficial. In western I was told to squeeze my butt, pull up the reins, and bring my leg more forward. They didn’t explain what I was looking for in the horse or why or the mechanics and function of it. It is unfortunately all too common for instructors to either start teaching before they have a full understanding themselves or maybe sometimes they do but not at a level to articulate their knowledge. Or maybe they are waiting for some things to come together in a way they feel the rider will understand now and underestimate how beneficial this is to start understanding early on. We all make mistakes in our journey as students and teachers.

In all cases it is our responsibility to our horses (and students for those who teach) to continue to learn and DO better as we learn better. Thank you for tackling such a difficult task in helping everyone understand at a higher level.”

I agree, what wonderful responses so far! Let’s tackle some of your bad advice.

Pushing your heels down IS bad advice, and unfortunately this is where most of us start as riders. As beginners, our instructors are mainly trying to keep us safely anchored in the saddle so we don’t fall off. As we advance, they’re trying to teach us how to lengthen our legs through the hamstrings. But when most students hear “heels down”, but push their feet forward and downward in the stirrups, pushing their seat up and out of the saddle, leaving them stiff and disconnected from the horse beneath.

Leaning back and squeezing and releasing on the reins is unfair advice on behalf of the horse. Presumably, an instructor using these terms is responding to a student who is curled forward in a frozen, sympathetic fetal position, making them emotionally, mentally, and physically unavailable to the horse. This to me isn’t necessarily the moment where the rider ought to ask the horse for anything– this is a moment to relax and rebalance their own body. Squeezing and releasing on the reins is advice given to try to keep the rider from just leaning into the horse’s mouth without release. We can all agree we don’t want to do that, but can’t we find a more artful and respectful way of rebalancing ourselves and our horses? I’d say so.

Your western instruction of squeezing the butt cheeks, lifting the reins, and putting the feet forward is also understandable, but easily misconstrued and misapplied advice. We already addressed the butt cheek engagement and rein lift previously in this article, but let’s talk about feet forward. Putting your feet forward changes your center of balance, misaligning you with the horse. It does not make sense to do this in a moment of rebalancing the horse, as in a half halt. However, western disciplines are rooted in a tradition of working horses in contexts where the half halt most likely prepares for a sharp turn or quick stop– in those cases, the feet would have to come forward to keep the rider stable, just as a cross country rider must push their feet forward when jumping or riding downhill. What the half halt prepares the horse to do may flavor the positional changes that follow, but when those positional changes are mistaken as the half halt itself, everyone gets confused!

“I teach my girls that it’s the concept of shifting your horses weight ‘up’ so they can rebalance with the hind! It’s NOT just to slow down the horse, in fact we use it quite often to have better upwards transitions! Another thing that I teach is that it isn’t just a simple ‘pull back’, it’s all about creating contact and shifting weight off of the forehand so that the following softening with the elbows allows the horse to actually balance and track under. You’ll hear me remind them a lot, it’s not the “take” of a half halt that slows/softens, it’s the following ‘give’.”

Nice description! Whenever we “take” or put pressure on the reins, the horse must counter that force somewhere in their body, and when we release, we give them the opportunity to finish balancing themselves. The giving of the reins is a test of self carriage, which is essential in a half halt as it is anywhere else– it’s not about holding the horse in a better balance, but rather cueing them to find better balance and creating space for them to enjoy it.

“Growing up, I was taught it was literally ‘about half the pressure of a full halt to slow them down’”

Oh boy… no, we certainly shouldn’t be using more pressure to get more slow– it’s about timing our aids with the movement of the horse and influencing balance so that the tempo or cadence we want is easier for the horse to achieve. If we pull on them or escalate pressure in any way, we’re forcing them to brace against us, which leaves them utterly out of balance when we suddenly stop. This is a crude description of a full half or a half halt. Can we understand why this was said? Sure, but it still isn’t going to yield compassionate, artful horsemanship!

“I was taught previously it was gathering the reins to ask the horse to pause or slow down. Now I believe it’s more of asking the horse to collect itself in preparation for a movement or as a reminder to maintain good posture.”

Beautifully put progression of understanding the half halt. I think this helps us bridge all the “bad advice” we may have been given to understand how the half halt can actually be helpful to the horse– to prepare them for what’s next or to help them maintain good balance. A simple reminder of the thoracic sling and the weight bearing capacity of the hind end.