02/16/2026
Listen to the science my friends!
You don't need a tight noseband.
I received a comment from a client one day "oh we can't take off the flash or loosen the noseband, he will make horrible faces and gape his mouth"
I explained that the flash and tight noseband was a bandaid for the problem and essentially saying "I can see you're uncomfortable and it's ugly so let's hide it." But the thing is, she'd never been told that. Many of us haven't been.
I'm a big believer in "You don't know, what you don't know".
Strapping their mouth shut, is adding excessive pressure to their facial nerves and surrounding structures. It is also immobilizing the horses tongue and affecting the hyoid apparatus, which will affect your horses ability to use their hind end.
If you feel you need to because your horse is gaping its mouth, crossing its jaw, sticking its tongue out or over the bit.. take a pause and realize these are discomfort symptoms and we need to address the root cause of the problem so your horse can be comfortable. Once they are comfortable they will stop trying to evade the pressures.
Without the knowledge I don't expect people to change.
Kicker is, now that we have the knowledge, will equestrians listen to what their horses are telling us. Will they utilize the knowledge and improve their practices? I certainly hope so!
Strap Tighter, Move Shorter: Noseband Pressure and Stride Reduction
Noseband tightness has received increasing attention within equitation science, but there is still limited research examining how it affects horse behaviour or performance. This study aimed to measure peak pressure under the noseband in live horses at three different levels of tightness and to assess how noseband tightness influences limb and back movement. 🐴📊
Eight horses were tested, with noseband tightness set using the International Society for Equitation Science (ISES) taper gauge at three standardised settings: two fingers, one finger, and zero fingers. Peak pressure under the noseband was measured using pressure sensors, and motion capture technology was used to analyse limb and back kinematics. 🎥📏
Peak pressure increased as the noseband was tightened, with pressures at the one-finger and zero-finger settings showing increases of 54% and 338%, respectively, compared to the two-finger setting. As noseband tightness increased, stride length decreased, showing a significant negative relationship. On average, stride length decreased by 6.2% at the one-finger setting and by 11.1% at the zero-finger setting when compared to the two-finger setting. 📉
In conclusion, tightening the noseband increased peak pressure and had a negative effect on horses’ movement, particularly stride length.
The study had several limitations, including analysing movement only from the side, which captured forward–backward limb motion but not side-to-side or rotational movement, as well as unavoidable measurement error from skin movement and differences between horses in training level.
You can read this paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0737080625003120
