How do I get my horse more responsive to the inside leg and bending better around it?

Hello. Two things come to mind.

1️⃣ Does your horse know what it is meant to do when you apply the inside leg? Has it learnt what that means?

2️⃣ What do you need to school, and what does your horse need to learn, for it to understand what the inside leg is asking? What does that movement actually consist of?

What you are after is a horse that goes correctly bent and flexed, which means he needs to understand flexion first. There is no bend without flexion.

He also needs to understand that your inside leg means move the ribcage away and rotate through the spine. The bend comes from activating the muscles on the inside, which produces a rotation in the spine so the ribs move away.

We often expect the horse to understand without having explained it in clear, small steps.

So my advice is to break down what you want into even smaller parts and make sure the horse understands each part on its own before you put the whole thing together. I do this however well schooled the horse is, because these are my signals and I want the horse to read them with ease.

Good luck 🙂