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Course 102: Ground Mechanics

Course 102: Ground Mechanics

The third course of the Level 1 Foundational Horsemanship Certification. Ground mechanics are where softness is actually built: the five maneuvers that make a horse light, thinking, and safe before anyone climbs into a saddle. Lateral flexion, disengaging the hindquarters (your emergency brake), disengaging the forequarters, backing with feel, and desensitizing by approach and retreat, done so the horse gets braver rather than shut down.

The course finishes by putting it all together into a short pre-ride groundwork sequence you will run before every ride, and a troubleshooting method built on first principles: reduce the ask, feet first. If it does not work on the ground, you do not ask for it in the saddle. Certification at the end.

Soft is strong. Clarity is kindness.

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Responsible Zachary Leyden
Last Update 10/20/2026
Completion Time 5 hours 45 minutes
Members 10
Level 1

Course trailer ·

Course 102: Ground Mechanics, in one minute

The third course of the Level 1 Foundational Horsemanship Certification.

With Zachary Leyden. Look for the Watch with Zachary videos inside the course.

video file
  • The Foundation (empty)
    5Lessons · 22 min
    Section 1 of 6. Everything so far was about the horse. This is where you start changing it. Groundwork is not a warm up and not a chore, it is the first chapter of the ride, and if you cannot get a thought on the ground you will not get a body in the saddle.
  • Flexion (empty)
    6Lessons · 30 min
    Section 2 of 6. Softness is not a mood, it is a mechanical answer you can ask for and measure. Lateral flexion bends the neck and unlocks the ribs. Vertical flexion drops the poll and unlocks the jaw. Both are built the same way: ask, wait, release on the first try rather than the best one.
    • Watch with Zachary: The First Moment of Softness

      Learn to ask for lateral and vertical flexion from the ground without pulling, and why the release comes on the first try. Press play and feel the difference in your hands.

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    • Lateral Flexion on the Ground
      Bend the neck and the ribs unlock. The ask, the wait, and why the release has to come on the first try rather than the best try.
      Free account 10 xp
    • Vertical Flexion and the Soft Feel
      A full mug of coffee of weight, held dead steady, no pulsing, released the instant the poll drops. Five to eight repetitions is a session, and a straightening elbow means you are pulling.
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    • Watch: Lateral Flexion Leads to a Soft Backup
      How lateral flexion turns into a soft backup. The link between the two exercises, shown rather than described.
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    • Watch: Ricky Quinn - Softness on a Green Colt
      Ricky Quinn came up under Buck Brannaman. Here he shows flexion and yielding with feel, timing, and balance on a colt with sixty days of riding. This is where the flexion you just practiced is headed.
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    • Watch: Leslie Desmond, The Soft Feel From the Ground
      Leslie Desmond, who wrote True Horsemanship Through Feel with Bill Dorrance, narrates a demonstration by horseman Antonio Hidalgo as he asks a horse to lower its head from the lead rope. Watch how he does not correct the horse when its feet move or it gets the answer wrong; he keeps offering the same feel until the horse finds it with its feet still. This clip shows up and down (vertical) flexion; the side to side flexion in the lesson works on the same idea.
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  • Yielding the Quarters (empty)
    6Lessons · 21 min
    Section 3 of 6. The hindquarters are the engine and the forequarters are the steering. Learn to move each independently from the ground and you have both the emergency brake and the beginning of every maneuver that comes after Level 1.
    • Watch with Zachary: The Engine and the Steering Wheel

      You'll learn to move the hindquarters and the shoulders each on their own, and why the hip yield is your emergency brake. Press play and start earning the keys.

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    • Disengaging the Hindquarters
      The hind legs cross under, the power goes out of the horse, and you have an emergency brake that works from the ground and from the saddle. The most important single thing in this course.
      Free account 10 xp
    • Disengaging the Forequarters
      The shoulders are heavier and harder to move than the hindquarters, and moving them through thought rather than force is what separates a handler from a horseman.
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    • Watch: Hindquarters Control
      Hindquarter control demonstrated cleanly. Watch the crossover of the inside hind leg, which is the entire point.
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    • Watch: Buck Brannaman - Four Ways to Move the Hindquarters
      You have the basic yield from the last video. Buck now shows four escalating ways to free the hindquarters, the same untracking Tom Dorrance built everything on. Notice he never skips to the stronger ask.
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    • Watch: Buck Brannaman, The Half-Circle Exercise
      Buck Brannaman shows the half-circle exercise in this preview from The Eclectic Horseman, sending the horse past him so it steps its hindquarters over and then brings its front end across; listen for his rhythm of 'hind, front.' Watch his timing: he starts the bend just as the inside hind leg leaves the ground, and a horse that swings behind your back on the change means the ask came too late. The clip joins partway through, and he backs up his ask with the tail of the rope; at Level 1 you start with the lightest ask and only add more if the horse does not answer.
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  • Backing (empty)
    4Lessons · 20 min
    Section 4 of 6. A horse that backs softly is a horse that is listening. Three ways to ask, laddered from most obvious to most subtle, and a thirty second daily check that tells you what kind of day this is going to be.
    • Backing With Feel
      Teaching a horse to think backward before it steps backward. Three to five clean straight steps, released on the first shift of weight.
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    • Backing From the Halter, the Chest, and the Feel
      Halter, then chest, then feel. A ladder from the most obvious ask down to a wrist wiggle along the rope, and what a consistently crooked backup is actually telling you.
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    • Watch: Backing Up Softly
      A soft backup built in real time. Notice that the release comes earlier than you expect it to.
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    • Watch: Bryan Neubert - Fixing the Braced Backup
      When the backup you learned above gets sticky or braced, this is the diagnosis. Neubert shows where the brace lives and how to melt it rather than fight it, on horses of any age.
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  • Desensitizing (empty)
    6Lessons · 51 min
    Section 5 of 6. There is a right way and a wrong way to make a horse braver, and for about a week they look the same. Approach and retreat builds confidence. Flooding builds a horse that has given up. This section teaches you to tell them apart in fifteen seconds.
  • Putting It Together (empty)
    8Lessons · 1 hr 11 min
    Section 6 of 6. Ten steps, five to eight minutes, run before every ride for the rest of your life. The sequence that turns everything above into a single habit, plus the troubleshooting method for the days it does not go well.
    • Watch with Zachary: The Check Before Every Ride

      You'll get the ten step groundwork check to run before every ride, and what to do when something comes back wrong. Press play before you saddle up next time.

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    • The Groundwork Sequence: Your Pre-Ride Check
      Ten steps in a fixed order, five to eight minutes, before every ride. All normal means ride. Several off means you do not, and you say so.
      Free account 10 xp
    • Troubleshooting: Reduce the Ask, Feet First
      Pain, understanding, or timing: rule out pain first, and when you cannot tell, assume pain. Three failed attempts means change something rather than repeat it louder.
      Free account 10 xp
    • Watch: A Full Groundwork Session
      A full groundwork session end to end. Watch it once for the sequence and again for the timing.
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    • Watch: Bryan Neubert - Preparing a Colt for the Saddle, Uncut
      Twenty-four minutes, no cuts. Every piece of this course, flexion, yielding, backing, desensitizing, flowing together as Neubert prepares a colt for its first saddle. This is your groundwork sequence performed at the highest level, and it is the bridge to Course 103.
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    • Watch: Ray Hunt - Trailer Loading
      Ray himself, applying the whole toolkit to a real job: loading a horse in a trailer. The cowboy way and Ray's way, side by side. When your groundwork is honest, the trailer is just another question.
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    • Watch: Warwick Schiller - Trailer Loading Below Threshold
      You watched Ray load a trailer in the video above. Now the same job a generation later, done entirely through relaxation and staying under the anxiety threshold. Two eras, one principle: the horse loads itself when it is ready.
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    • Watch: Buck Brannaman, The Circle Exercise
      Buck Brannaman sends a saddled horse around him on a circle in this short preview from the 7 Clinics series, which ends a little abruptly. Watch how he gets the horse used to the flag without trying to scare it, how he points the flag toward the shoulder to widen the circle when the horse cuts in, and how he changes direction by rolling the hindquarters over and then bringing the front end across. He says the circle on the ground should look like the circle you want under saddle, so notice the shape of the horse as well as the feet.
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  • The Certification (empty)
    1Lesson · 30 min
    The five maneuvers, tested. Ten questions, eighty percent to pass. Your safety in the saddle rests on this course, so the questions ask why as often as how.
    • Course 102 Certification
      Ten questions on the five maneuvers and the judgment around them. If the hindquarter yield question gives you pause, go back to section 3.
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  • Go Deeper (empty)
    6Lessons · 1 hr 40 min
    The encore. The people who built this method left footage behind. How to study it without copying the surface and missing the point, plus an afternoon at the fence with Tom Dorrance and a profile of Joe Wolter.
    • Studying the Masters on the Ground
      How to study old footage without copying the surface. What to look for in Dorrance, Hunt, and Brannaman, and what you will miss on a first viewing.
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    • Watch: Through the Corral Fence with Tom Dorrance
      Gustine, California, 1995: Tom Dorrance helping Martin Black, Terry Church, and Bryan Neubert work through problems, teasing and teaching from the fence. This is what studying under the source looked like.
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    • Watch: Meet Joe Wolter
      Joe Wolter worked for Ray Hunt and studied under both Dorrance brothers. A quiet profile on feel and adjusting to fit the horse, the mindset behind every maneuver you drilled in this course.
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    • Watch: Clinton Anderson - Control and Respect on the Ground
      The wider world: Clinton Anderson's Downunder method is the most drilled, most structured groundwork system in America. Watch it critically with your Leyden eyes: where is the release, how big is the ask, and what would softer look like? Disagreeing well is part of your education.
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    • Watch: Clinton Anderson - Desensitizing a Rescue Horse
      A full desensitizing session with a fearful rescue mare, from a more pressure-forward school than ours: plastic bags, a cracking stock whip, clippers, even a chainsaw with the chain off. Compare it to Buck's tarp work and Warwick's below-threshold approach: same goal, different dials, and decide for yourself what the mare would say. Watch it, do not copy it: at our barn this work happens with an instructor. It is episode 9 of a longer series, with ads for his products along the way.
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    • Watch: Pat Parelli - The Seven Games in Three Minutes
      The most widely taught groundwork system in the world, condensed by Pat himself. As you watch, map each game onto the maneuvers you learned in this course; the vocabulary differs, the mechanics rhyme.
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