Clear and effective communication is the foundation of good riding and training. Without it, confusion sets in, making progress difficult for both horse and rider. This article explores the importance of clarity in intention and aids, emphasizing the need for consistency, proper timing, and a well-defined training approach. By understanding how to communicate precisely and predictably, riders can create a more responsive and confident horse, leading to a more harmonious partnership.
Since exercises have several different properties at the same time, they can belong into several different categories at the same time. It always depends on which aspect you want to focus on at the moment.
And just because you think of an exercise as highlighting the use of the outside aids, for example, doesn’t mean that you don’t need to use the inside aids at certain moments.
It’s important to keep in mind that these categorizations are neither absolute nor are they mutually exclusive. An exercise can fulfill more than one gymnastic purpose. But categorizing the exercises according to their gymnastic effect can help us understand a problem or design a custom exercise to address an issue we have identified.
Balance is not a static, equal weight distribution of the horse’s weight over all 4 “corners" of his body, but it is the ability, to redistribute the weight quickly and smoothly from any one corner to any other, or from one side to the other, because only then can the horse move smoothly in a small space.
If a horse is not able to redistribute his weight easily, he will become stiff and clumsy and you feel like you’re having to manoeuvre a large ship around a small swimming pool. By contrast, when the horse is truly balanced, you feel like you’re sitting on a ball that you can roll in any direction any time.
Sometimes we are asked about how to structure a training session, or how to build the horse’s training over the years. There are several basic principles that you can follow in structuring the training of your horse in each ride, as well as longterm, through the years. Training should always revolve around refining the basics, such as improving the horse’s body awareness, coordination, balance, straightness, suppleness, permeability, the quality of the gaits, and eventually impulsion and collection. Dressage movements are on the one hand gymnastic tools that help the rider to improve these basics, and on the other hand they allow the rider to gauge to what extent the horse has mastered these basics, where there is need for improvement, where there may be holes in the training, and deficits in the horse’s body awareness or understanding.
When you are working with a horse that is coming back from an injury, you can use dressage exercises to help him recover. Of course, this is more challenging than regular dressage because there is always a risk of re-injury. There are a few things to consider that can help you in the rehabilitation process. The following list can be applied to sound, healthy horses as well, of course, but it’s even more important with horses that are recovering from an injury.
A square halt in which both hind legs are underneath the body, the weight is distributed evenly over the support base, and the horse is round, elevated, and light, is something that many riders struggle with. Most horses will leave one hind leg out behind, or they have one front leg farther under the body than the other.
Are you using the short side of the arena or are you merely waiting for it go by so that you can get to the “interesting stuff”? When I was young I had no appreciation for the short side with its two corners as a gymnastic tool. It wasn't until much later that I discovered how valuable the short side and its corners really are from a gymnastic point of view.
A steady tempo (beats per minute) that is neither too fast nor too slow for the horse is the foundation of balance - together with correct arena patterns. That’s why it is the first element of the training scale. A steady tempo allows the horse to find his longitudinal balance. Accurate arena patterns that are performed in functional straightness (i.e. the horse’s feet are aligned so that the left pair of legs is on the left side of the line, the right pair of legs is on the right side of the line, and the spine forms a segment of the line) allow the horse to find his lateral balance.
When riding lateral movements many riders follow the FEI rule book that defines specific angles for the shoulder-in, haunches-in, or half pass. There are often heated debates about whether lateral movements should be performed on 3 tracks or on 4 tracks. These riders are discussing the finished product without considering the road that leads to it. And they are not thinking about the gymnastic considerations that play a role in this.
A little over 20 years ago I wrote an article called “Gentleness and Discipline”, which became a favorite with many of my readers. I haven’t looked at it since I first wrote it. Writing articles is my way of processing information and experiences. Some of what I write becomes a newsletter article or content in one of our online courses. And once I have published something I generally don’t look at it again, and I move on the next topic that I’m interested in.
Recently, Shana said I should revisit this old article and perhaps update it. Like all my articles it was written at a specific stage in my learning journey. It marks a transition from the old, more authoritarian paradigm that I had grown up with to a more cooperative approach.
When I was riding the other day, I remembered a quote from Nuno Oliveira: “When the horse resists against the left rein, try to replace the left rein aid with your left leg.”
My horse had started out a little stiff on the right that day, and I could feel it coming from the right hind leg through my right seat bone, and I could feel the same stiffness in the right rein. This is a crookedness issue: the contact in the right rein felt heavier and harder than I liked because the right hind leg wasn’t stepping under enough. This usually also means that the horse supports too much weight with his right front leg.
There is a general tendency among dressage riders to have a somewhat rigid view of lateral movements and to evaluate them only as a judge in a competition would do. There is also a tendency to ride lateral movements mostly down the long side of the arena, and to stay in the movement for the entire long side. And while there is nothing wrong with that, it is only scratching the surface of the gymnastic potential of lateral movements. These movements were not (only) invented to evaluate a horse’s training, but they also have very valuable gymnastic properties that can be used to improve the horse’s balance, straightness, suppleness, and collectability.
The way the horse performs transitions to the halt and from the halt tells us a lot about his training. Many horses and riders struggle with these transitions. Half halts often don’t go through in down transitions, so the horse inverts or curls up. The halt isn’t square, the horse is crooked, to name just some of the most common problems.
This is a great discussion of how a thinking rider can correct the horse’s attempts to evade the demands of the shoulder-in by using the other lateral movements to bring both hind legs underneath the body. This somewhat indirect approach is much more effective than trying to create the correct bend by pulling on the inside rein, or trying to create a contact on the outside rein by using “more inside leg and more outside rein”, which are so often the standard recommendations of trainers. These direct approaches actually only make the problem worse, whereas the indirect approach teaches the horse better body awareness and it makes the hind legs stronger and more supple, so that he is able to perform a correct shoulder-in easily and without feeling the need to evade.
