Cut Ribes and Forsythia to the ground? When?

Somewhere along the line I saw a suggestion to cut Ribes and Forsythia shrubs to the ground after flowering in order to encourage them to put out long stems of flowers the following year. Has anyone tried it? I've got a couple of unruly shrubs and was thinking a radical approach might be fun for next year. I'm not sure when exactly to do this as I couldn't find any articles detailing this approach to pruning.

 

After flowering, so now...sort of. I don't know if to the floor is too drastic, but a foot high should suffice

 

I suppose it won't matter too much if it's too drastic, especially for the Forsythia. It is the product of accidental propagation when I used a stick to support another plant and it took me years to get rid of the parent shrub (which was in an awkward spot). I can always take some cuttings as backup.

 

You could always try removing 1/3 of the growth to ground level, reduce another 1/3 by half and the last 1/3 a trim rather than a full hair cut.

 

There was a forsythia in a previous garden that had to be stooled following unavoidable damage during some tree work … it grew back into an elegant fountain shape (much better than the shaving brush the previous owners had chopped it into) but didn’t flower for at least three years. However it was worth it … it looked much prettier, eventually.

 

For forsythia I take out about 1/4 to 1/3 of the stems each year, choosing the oldest ones, down to the ground or as close as I can get. I did it a couple of weeks ago. I don't know about ribes - I don't have that.