Do I use my legs or hands more for collection of my horse?

The answer is legs — unambiguously and without qualification — and understanding why changes the way you ride everything, not just collection. The hands finish the conversation that the legs start, but if your legs are not creating the energy and engagement in the first place, your hands have nothing to work with. A rider who tries to collect a horse primarily through hand pressure is essentially trying to push a car by pulling on the steering wheel. The geometry is wrong from the start, and the horse that gets collected that way is not truly collected — he's just compressed at the front end with a hollow back and disengaged hindquarters, which is a picture that looks vaguely right from a distance but feels completely wrong from the saddle. Your legs are responsible for everything that happens from behind the saddle back. They create impulsion — the engine that powers the whole system. They control the horse's rib cage, straightness, and lateral position. They ask the hindquarters to step under and engage. They maintain the forward energy that collection depends on. Without an active, communicating leg, the horse has no reason to engage his hind end, no reason to lift his back, and no physical mechanism to shift his weight rearward. Legs first, always, and legs throughout — not just at the moment of asking but continuously to sustain what you've created. The hands play an equally important but secondary role. Once your legs have created genuine forward energy and engagement from behind, your hands act as a soft, elastic barrier that redirects that energy upward rather than allowing it to run out through the front. The key word is elastic — a hand that is fixed, rigid, or pulling is blocking rather than redirecting, and the horse that hits a fixed hand either braces against it, goes above it, or ducks behind it. None of those responses is collection. A following, feeling hand that closes softly and releases immediately when the horse gives is the hand that produces true lightness. The practical takeaway is this: if your horse is not collected, add leg before you add hand. If adding leg produces more speed rather than more engagement, your horse needs more gymnastic work to learn to channel that energy correctly rather than just run from it. And if your hands are working harder than your legs in any given moment, something fundamental has been skipped in the foundation — and going back to build it is always faster than trying to force the result from the front end.