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The Old Masters’ Views On Straightness

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The Old Masters’ Views On Straightness

The old masters considered the horse’s natural crookedness to be a major obstacle in developing balance, suppleness, collection, impulsion, and “obedience” (i.e. positive responsiveness to the aids). Put positively, functional straightness is the foundation of balance, suppleness, collection, impulsion, and “obedience”. Without straightness, the horse won’t get very far in his training. Unfortunately, overcoming crookedness is not a trivial matter. It requires constant attention, and if the rider doesn’t work on straightening her horse every day, his innate crookedness will gradually increase again.

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Consequences of Crookedness

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Consequences of Crookedness

In one of our courses, a member asked a question about crookedness. She wanted to know which exercises to ride on the hollow side and the stiffer side to combat the symptoms of crookedness. There is unfortunately not a simple, straightforward answer to this because crookedness leads to imbalance on several different levels, such as…

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Why Bother Straightening Your Horse?

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Why Bother Straightening Your Horse?

I’m sure you are all familiar with the concept of Straightness as one of the elements of the German  FN Training Scale. Those of you who are rooted in the French tradition know it as one of Alexis L’Hotte’s three main training principles (Calm, Forward, Straight). You have probably also run into its opposite - crookedness - as a tricky and quite pervasive issue. But has anybody explained to you what straightness is and why it is important? Why should you spend your entire equestrian life correcting the horse’s natural crookedness, as Jacques d’Auvergne wrote? Can’t we just go out and have fun on our horse?

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Don't lose sight of the whole picture

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Don't lose sight of the whole picture

This week’s blog is another practical tip that comes out of mistakes I made in the past. Every time something goes wrong it is an opportunity to look more closely at what is happening, how it is happening, and why it is happening. It is a great chance to learn something new and to gain deeper insights into the biomechanical and psychological causalities in riding. So, in many ways mistakes are blessings in disguise because they can push us further along and help us attain a higher level of understanding and competence.

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Dressage Movements As Points On A Continuum

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Dressage Movements As Points On A Continuum

Many dressage riders view the movements in very absolute terms, based on the definitions in the FEI rule book. When someone rides a movement, like a shoulder-in for instance, it either fulfils these criteria or it doesn’t. In other words, it either IS a shoulder-in or it’s NOT. This is very much a judge’s viewpoint, which is valid in competitions and exhibitions. However, in training, I take a more fluid approach. I prefer to look at movements as points on a continuum because it’s unrealistic to expect a horse or a rider to be able to perform a perfect shoulder-in or half pass, the first time they try it. So, we as trainers and teachers have to build a road, or a staircase for the student to get from where they are to the finished product. This means we have to set priorities in the way we teach movements and approach the end goal in many small learning steps. If we aimed for perfection or demanded perfection at the first attempt, we would set the horse and the rider up for failure, stress, and frustration.
Setting priorities means ignoring certain imperfections for the time being because they have a lower priority than other aspects of the movement.

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The Historical Development Of Elevating From A Low Head Position

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The Historical Development Of Elevating From A Low Head Position

Looking at the development of equestrian art over longer periods of time, you will detect pendulum-like swings of opinions in many areas. There are fashion trends that are taken to a certain extreme. Then, opinions change, and the pendulum swings in the opposite direction until it reaches the other extreme. Although these developments are often based on correct observations in some areas, extremes are usually counter productive and often damage the horse’s soundness and overall health. It is always dangerous when an observation of one training aspect is made the only criterion for evaluating training progress and then taken to an extreme, following the motto: more is better.

One example of such extremes are two diametrically opposed opinions on riding long and low. On one end of the spectrum are those riders for whom stretching forward-downward is the highest goal of dressage training and the solution to all problems. Many of them believe that you are not allowed to do anything else in the training of your horse until the horse is able to stretch forward-downward. On the opposite end of the spectrum are those who categorically reject any and all forward-downward stretching because they believe that it puts the horse onto the forehand and ruins the horse’s legs.

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What? Why? How?

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What? Why? How?

What? How? and Why? are the three big questions that every rider asks herself constantly and thatoften seem to be very difficult to answer. What should I do? How should I do it? And why should I do it? The reason why this information seems so elusive is on the one hand that many good riders make these decisions on a purely intuitive level without being able to render the decision making   process transparent or to explain it. - That was not really part of the traditional teaching paradigm, because it relied very much on the schoolmaster horses. In the old riding schools the trained schoolmaster horses were the true teachers. On the other hand, these decisions are often not that easy to make. Since we usually don’t have well trained Grand Prix horses as lesson horses nowadays, we have to find other solutions.
 

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5 Common Rider Errors In Leg Yield

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5 Common Rider Errors In Leg Yield

There are 5 mistakes that happen very frequently and that make it almost impossible for the horse to perform the leg yield correctly.  Many riders struggle with the leg yield, especially in the trot. So I decided to discuss the subject in a newsletter article in the hopes that it will be of interest to others as well. You can apply this discussion also to the “real” lateral movements. Most of the points I address are universal and tend to occur in all lateral movements.

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Ride Like a Composer: The 4 Things You Need To Do Improve Your Movements

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Ride Like a Composer: The 4 Things You Need To Do Improve Your Movements

In lessons I often see that riders start a movement or a transition without any noticeable preparation for the horse (or themselves). As a result, the movement or transition doesn’t turn out as well as it could. Since this seems to be rather widespread, I thought I would turn this subject into a newsletter article. It’s an important topic that doesn’t seem to be addressed in a systematic way very often. There are some simple strategies, however, that will help you to improve your and your horse’s performance quite significantly.

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We Don’t Have To Name It Yet: Defining Priorities In Training

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We Don’t Have To Name It Yet: Defining Priorities In Training

We all know from experience that we can’t get everything at once, especially when we are teaching the horse a new movement, or when we ourselves are learning a new movement. It’s very difficult to have all ducks in a row. Often we’re lucky if they’re even all on the same lake. This means that we have to make a decision as to what elements of a movement we want to establish first. Which aspects are the most important ones? Which aspects are fundamental? Which ones are peripheral and can be fixed later? In other words, we need to set priorities. We need to start with the most central, most important ingredient, and then work from the center to the periphery.

 

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Thoughts On The Function Of Lateral Movements

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Thoughts On The Function Of Lateral Movements

Lateral movements are pretty to watch, when they are ridden well. They are fun to ride, and they are contained in certain competition tests. In addition, they are indispensable gymnastic tools in horse training. In this newsletter I want to share a few thoughts and observations concerning the gymnastic function of lateral movements. It is not a comprehensive, ultimate treatise on the subject. That would go beyond the scope of this post.

Due to their sidestepping aspect, lateral movements are very well suited to mobilizing and strengthening the horse’s hind legs and oblique abdominal muscles.

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How to improve your horse's body awareness

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How to improve your horse's body awareness

One important aspect of horse training is that in teaching a new movement or a better posture the rider first has to improve the horse’s body awareness, coordination, and balancing ability. This includes teaching the horse to place his feet differently, to distribute his weight differently, and to use different muscle configurations than he has been up to now.


This only works, if the horse knows where his feet are, of course. This means creating neurological connections between the brain and these muscle groups, so that the horse learns how to find them and activate them.

4 Things you can do when the inside hind leg pivots in Turns on the Haunches

4 Things you can do when the inside hind leg pivots in Turns on the Haunches

One problem I see in many riding lessons is that horses pivot with their inside hind leg in a turn on the haunches. In dressage, this is considered a mistake because the footfall sequence of the walk is interrupted, if only three legs are moving and the fourth one is stuck on the ground. It also cause the horse to brace with his belly muscles and the muscles of his inside hind leg.

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