Face on the vertical? Yay or nay?

I know I have changed my tune over the years: I wish 'on the vertical' was abolished.

I used to aim for vertical, hell, I'm happy to admit I used to ride my horses behind the vertical (it was another time and another place in my life) but now I wish 'on the vertical' was abolished.

I wish it was abolished because it seems irrelevant to boosting performance and in fact I think is harming it, and therefore harming horses.

So what do I see now, that I didn't see before?

So mostly I stopped using side reins to lunge my horses, I now don't use ANY artificial framing aid when I do ground work. I got my horses really light and responsive to stop/go, faster/slower, shorter/longer and straightness/longitudinal flexion cues and BOOM they were 'round'. Round in this really open nice frame. A frame that NEVER included them being close to the vertical.

An example of this open, round frame during ground work (2023).

This experiment extended to my riding. See I wasn't using my reins to 'maintain the frame' anymore (in the same way I wasn't using reins to maintain a frame on the ground). I understood that once a horse gave me a correct response I should release the cue, which meant I had to give away all form of 'contact' after the correct response. This also meant that there was no real 'contact' in between moments: my rein pressures gave me responses, and I had to release after those responses, which meant unless a response was required, no contact or rein pressure was required. Again I was gifted with these really happy, open framed horses, who felt amazing to ride, who were 'round', obedient and athletic...but not on the vertical.

Photos from Germany 2017 - I was blessed to have a boss who didn't care the horses weren't 'on the vertical'.

*My personal definition of 'contact' is: I should be able to pick up the reins and take the loop out of them without a response, but should my contact/pressure extend to the point the reins act on the bit, a response should occur.

So after 6 years of playing with this idea that on the vertical is NOT required, that I simply focus on stop/go, faster/slower, shorter/longer and straightness/longitudinal flexion and basically IGNOR the horses facial plain (i.e. unless the horse is on/behind the vertical. If the horse is on/behind I actively encourage the horses to 'poke his nose') I'm not disappointed. I have lost absolutely nothing and only gained happier and better performing horses.

Additionally I have looked into the biomechanics and I can't see any link between a flexed gullet and improved physical performance. There are plenty of musculature links between the HEIGHT of the poll, and LONGDITUDIONAL flexion of the cervical spine to the thoracic sling, but the muscles that flex the gullet are highly localised, none of them have a direct link to the thoracic portion of the horse. *If you have any VALIDATED contradictory or additional evidence on this please send it too me.

I have lots of theories as to why people still do it - none of them are particularly comforting and that is a discussion for another time perhaps.

I just want to put it out there; I don't see the point of 'on the vertical' and in fact I would like to see it actively discouraged in horse training practice and frameworks.