When did grammes leave the scene?

During my 18 years as a riding school student countless lessons has started with the command "take the reins" and I have picked them up. Then followed the instructions; take up a contact with the horse's mouth, have support on the outher rein, be light, give and take with the reins and so on.

As I recall, nobody talked about the way I should pick up the reins, what quality I should strive for, how I should give aids with the reins and what exactly the aid of the reins would mean to the horse.

For my own part, it resulted that I either held the reins too hard or didn’t hold them at all, I oscillated between full contact and no contact, the register in my hands were absent.

In my quest to get a better contact I switched out "take the reins" to "give the horse my hand" and felt that it helped me to become less rigid. And then I met Craig Stevens (Snohomish, WA), who said "Establish Touch" and it threw my equestrian world up side down - touch the horse's mouth!

To relate to rein aids as touch made it easier for me to explore a sliding scale, from the feather light touch to the robust and firm grip.

In a study by Cavallo magazine in 2004 they measured the contact between the horse and the hand. They used electronic sensors on the reins and registred the force on the rein at the transition from canter to halt. They studied riders riding Western style and traditional dressage style. The figures I remember are those concerning the dressage riders. A half halt showed values ranging from 8-10 kg in each rein and at the moment of halt the pressure level in the reins rose to 12.5 kg in average. Anyone who has ever been grabbed the arm by harsh strong hands knows the discomfort it creates.

The study by Cavallo gives me a clue to why riders today feel they have to build up their muscular strenght. Having the idea that you need to pull with 12,5 kg in each hand every time you'd like to bring your horse to an halt is daunting. Especially since halt is something you do more than once each time you ride.

But as refered to in the post from June 23 nowhere in older litterature is strenght a requirement in riding. Not strenght in connection with rein contact anyway.

So, when riding instructions and instructors go astray? When did the definition of contact became equal to kilogrammes and not gramme?

In the book "Fundamentals of Riding" Sir Charles Harris writes “…If you can ride at each gate with rein contacts between 20 and 100 grammes – you have a light hand…”

We ride an animal capable of sensing a fly landing on its skin with kilogrammes in our closed fists. I rode with gloves because of the blisters and wounds I'd get between my little finger and ring finger if I didn't wear them. But the horses I rode at that time had nothing to protect them from blisters and wounds in their mouths...