Category: dressage

dressage · training board

Training Board

Amanda2 Comments

About a week and a half ago, I emailed the barn’s main trainer, who was now back from Florida. My work schedule is ramping up to a truly ridiculous degree, and will stay at that fever pitch through late June. I’d had a few evenings in which I went to the barn prepared to ride – and could not flog my brain through the basics of dressage. Input/output was broken. I wasn’t reacting fast enough, I wasn’t processing at all, and I was not riding well.

I asked: in light of my upcoming work schedule, can we talk about partial training board? We talked. I was thrilled with what she outlined. I said yes.

On Wednesday, Tristan had his first proper training ride in many years. It was great in many ways: first, he did not magically become an amazing dressage horse. Whew! So I wasn’t riding him all that poorly.

Second, I was able to see pretty clear progress from start to finish, and watch as the trainer’s assistant trainer/barn manager M. did things that I would’ve had trouble doing easily, quickly, and cleanly and moved Tristan through his usual evasions and trouble spots.

Third, she enjoyed riding him! She pegged him right away: stubborn, smart, not terribly supple but with a good understanding of the basics. It was a pleasure to watch Tristan go, to know he was getting a great ride, and to chat with the trainer, who had come to watch.

I’m going to watch a training ride again tonight, and then he’ll be on his own riding schedule 2x a week with M. We talked through my goals for him, and what a realistic outcome of six weeks was, and I’m happy all around.

I’ll continue to do fitness rides, hill work, hacking out – the stuff that I don’t need to engage higher thinking for. Fun stuff, for me. He’ll have someone else doing the calculus with him, and I may play around occasionally but it is a huge weight off my mind to know that I don’t have to.

I’ll try to get pictures tonight – I’m excited to see what his next ride brings!

dressage

Outside!

Amanda2 Comments

Ever have one of those rides where you start out and you think “holy shit, I have no idea what I’m sitting on, but if I can get through this it’s going to be awesome”?

That was last night. I tacked up and we walked the field for a while to loosen up, and then we did our first real school in the outdoor arena. Tristan was UP, and I couldn’t blame him: first ride outside, a bit cool, quite windy, and I’d led him out of the barn just as the other horses were being grained.

I was keeping our goal of consistency in mind, and worked hard on getting him supple and focused. Lateral work took some time, as did bend: he was too busy powering around and looking at everything. Then he wanted to canter every time I put my leg on; in the canter, he wanted to ramp up and up until he was hand galloping around and blowing through aids in order to lean back toward the barn.

Lots of patience, keeping him straight, and using his safe word: “eeeeeeeasy.” I taught it to him sort of by accident years ago, and it’s his cue to chill the fuck out, already. Often, it comes with the side effect of making him too quiet, but usually I can then work him back up again. Last night, it just calmed him down. After about 30  minutes of a “limbs, limbs, everywhere” kind of ride I got my first glimmer of consistent softness, and then shortly after that brilliance: deep, round, powering up behind, accepting my half-halts. Gorgeous, gorgeous trot.

It didn’t translate to the canter, but then it never does. (Side note: I made arrangements before mounting for the trainer’s barn manager/assistant trainer to sit on Tristan in the next week or so and help me figure out the canter. Will report back with pictures.) Canter was still productive, though, and had some nicer moments.

After a break, the trot picked up even better, and we were done. It was too cold and windy for him to be sweaty, but he’d gone rounder and better than he has in months – possibly years. It’s going to be a good summer!

dressage · lesson notes · shoulder in

Lesson Notes: Shoulder-In and Counterflexion in the Canter

AmandaLeave a comment

The plan for the lesson was to warm Tris up thoroughly over his back before it started, and then drop the stirrups and do a 30 minute lesson in shoulder-in and work on the canter a bit.

It mostly succeeded. The catch was a bit that I didn’t get him really through and supple enough in my warm up, so we spent the first bit of the lesson working on leg yield at the walk and then trot to get him connected and responding. Then we switched over to shoulder-in, starting at the walk.

Tris and I have both ridden shoulder-in before; it’s not new to us, but it’s been a long time and we haven’t really ever had good eyes on the ground when we’ve schooled it. Plus, I’m finding that most things are a bit of a re-learning, both because we were out for so long with his injury and because the new barn is much more dressage-focused than the old barn.

So, shoulder-in went reasonably well; Tris had a tendency to be overbent through his neck and not get his haunches through. I had a tendency to hunch to the inside and let my outside leg flop around uselessly. Correcting the shoulders through the outside aids and tapping with the crop helped straighten him out, and discipline corrected some of my postural problems.

It really got cooking in the trot, though: Tris had enough forward energy to really load his hind end, and when I got him lined up, BAM, I could feel the sizzle in his hind end as if I had unstuck a cork. In fact it became a bit too much at times and he got fizzy and rushed and disorganized at the end of the long side, so we then incorporated half-halts every stride or two to collect the trot more. It felt like every pass we made was better than the last and with great substantive improvement. I was feeling his body much better and able to catch when it was going out of alignment, I was sitting more deeply and through and straight, and we had some very nice passes. Best of all, I was really connecting through my core in the shoulder-in – feel the burn!

Tris was huffy and puffy from working so hard through his hind end and over his back in that shoulder-in, so we walked for quite a while, and then picked up some canter work. The goal here was not necessarily to school, but rather more to demonstrate where we are in the canter. Right canter met with approval: I am more straight and deep in the saddle, more even in my hands and seatbones. He’s more supple and more flexible and on the outside aids.

Left canter was better than it has been, but still not nearly the right canter. So we did end up schooling that direction for a bit, as he flung his shoulders around on the circle and was not nearly as sharp to the aids in the transition. Trainer had us school counterflexion and back for a bit to get control of his shoulders, and once I got the feel of it, applying it correctly really unlocked some nice things in his left canter. Basically, before each “point” in a 20m circle, counterflex for one stride; then correct flex for the “point”; then counterflex the stride afterwards. It was a way really emphasizing my outside aids, and not allowing his shoulders to rule the day.

So it actually ended up being more like 45 minutes, all without stirrups. Hoorah and huzzah! I felt great, and especially loved schooling the canter without stirrups. It’s not an all the time solution – in particular, I can’t warm him up effectively without getting off his back and I can’t do that for long enough without stirrups – but I loved pulling them for the second half and getting a workout at the same time we did more technical work.

alois podhajsky · dressage

The Leg Yield: According to Alois Podhajsky

Amanda4 Comments

I have made no secret in the past of my love for Alois Podhajsky (see also my review of Miracle of the White Stallions). His The Complete Training of the Horse and Rider is one of my training bibles, a book I return to on a regular basis when I’m thinking or seeking inspiration. So with my current emphasis on leg yielding, I went back to see what he had to say – and I was surprised! Here’s what he writes:

As a preparation for lateral work the exercise known as yielding to the leg may be practised in order to make the horse undersatnd the effect of the rider’s legs pushing sideways. But the importance of yielding to the leg must not be over-rated; it should be used only to teach the young horse to understand the rider’s leg aids. Unfortunately in recent years the contrary is often the case when practising equitation. This auxiliary aid has taken too great a part in the German instruction for cavalry. The Spanish Riding School has always used this yielding to the leg only to a limited degree, recognizing its original purpose.

[he then describes how and why to teach the turn on the forehand, and concludes that it should never be asked for in a dressage test]

Yielding to the leg will be made easier for the horse by giving his head more position to the opposite side, that is to say, when yielding to the left, the position should be more to the right.

When the young horse has learned in this manner to answer to the pressure of the rider’s leg by stepping to the side, the yielding to the leg should be practised only when in motion in order to consolidate the understanding of these aids. At the Spanish Riding School it is practised in the walk only and disapproved of at the trot. It seems illogical that the horse should be taught to go sideways and forward with exactly the opposite position to that which will later be demanded of him in the half pass.

 As soon as the young horse is obedient to the sideways pushing action of the rider’s leg, the rider may start to practise correct lateral work.

Correct lateral work, to Podhajsky’s mind, is the succession of shoulders in, travers, and renvers. He goes into great and loving detail about each of these exercises, how they work the horse’s body, how they are to be ridden correctly, and what they do to benefit the horse in its progression toward the haute ecole movements.

On the one hand: Podhajsky always backs up his advice with good reasons, and when you think about it the shoulder in works many of the same muscle groupings and gets at the same things that a leg yield does.

On the other hand: Podhajsky’s goal in this book is to build a horse in the correct classical dressage way, and the leg yield is not a classical dressage movement. He’s referring to a broader body of work, and his method is half scholarly erudition and half military precision (he was, after all, a career cavalry officer until World War II). Training a horse is like painting a masterpiece, and extraneous brush strokes are not necessary.

So taking that into account, Podhajsky is working from the blank slate of an impeccably bred and well-started young horse. He doesn’t (at least in this book) talk about working through physical deficits of an older horse, or a mis-trained one, or a less talented one. (He writes eloquently about those horses in My Horses, My Teachers, but that book is not the training manual that this one is.)

I think he has a point about moving on to the shoulder in, and I’ll try and start working that in more. Mastering a corect shoulder in, and building the muscles to do so, will address many of the problems that we’re working on with the leg yields: a more supple hind end, more controllable shoulders, keeping straight, and keeping rhythm through it all.

Does anyone have any other thoughts about leg yield vs shoulder in?

dressage

Two rides, or, how having a plan for a ride doesn’t always work out (in a good way)

Amanda10 Comments

I’ve been doing really well keeping Tristan to a consistent schedule with varied work. The last two weeks I’ve had energy and plans and executed them well. When I got stuck at work way late and was cracking my jaw with yawns by 7pm, I swapped days and went out on a planned rest day. Of course, some of that is about to get waylaid by winter (high of 3 on Tuesday and Wednesday!) but I can look at those days more as a planned rest rather than a frustrating interruption, because we’ve had some good rides lately.

Friday, the plan was to incorporate lots of leg yields and lateral work. Supple, supple, supple! Then straight, straight, straight! Back and forth times infinity, at all gaits. Well – that plan didn’t work out. We ended up in the ring at the same time as a lesson with a horse that was being extremely crabby and cow-kicking, so scratch that. I could barely do centerline leg yields without bumping into him somewhere.

So we worked instead on transitions and keeping straight through them. Changes of direction, turns on corners, walk-trot-canter and back and forth between them on a circle. My job, keep my body and hands still and straight. His job, respond to the leg, don’t pop the shoulders, stay in the outside rein. It wasn’t the kind of ride that set the world on fire but we accomplished things, and there was a good progression.

Saturday, my planned rest day, became instead a day of planned poles and hind end action. I laid out eight poles and the idea was to work through them in the walk and trot, then change them up and do some individual poles at the canter to work on hock action and jump. Straight through all things!

Instead, I got on at the walk, and we warmed up straight and forward on a long rein. And he was striding forward beautifully. He’s easily 50% more forward right off the bat than he was even two months ago, and he’s holding it better – my signal that he’s starting to get that muscle back and he’s responding to my drilling the forward. So I started to play with that, picked up the reins enough to feel his mouth and keep a steady contact but not do much more with it.

We ended up doing 30 minutes in the walk, which I’ve rarely, if ever, done with so much productivity before. Leg yields everywhere: quarter line to center line, center line to quarter line, off the wall and back to the wall, into turns, onto diagonals. Straight and even in the reins, riding every step. Cueing each individual step over and then going straight again. Mixing it up, so he didn’t just zoom to one direction or the other. Simple, basic stuff, but focused and thoughtful and good.

I had set up poles after all, eight of them in a row along one long side, and we walked over those from time to time: straight down the middle, go where I point you, stay forward and reaching. I didn’t prop them up to make full cavaletti, since it was already clear that poles were not going to be my focus for the night, but I did jump off and adjust them for trot – they were a touch too close together. God love a horse who ground ties: I literally jumped off, said “Stand!” and he watched me from where I’d left him as if rooted to the ground.

He really likes the poles when I use them as I did, as something to aim him at and trust him to figure out. My job is forward; his is the footwork. He clearly thought of them as an interesting puzzle, and having eight of them – twice as long as I’ve ever laid out for him before! – was a bigger challenge. He couldn’t just power through on a wing and a prayer. He had to have a plan and a rhythm and an adjustable stride.

I did most of the trotting poles in two point, looped rein: something about my posting rhythm wasn’t helping him, and after two or three passes I figured I’d get up off his back and let him use it more effectively without me. We also did a teensy bit of cantering after the poles. The first few times through, he was losing impulsion toward the end despite my aids, and so when we finished I sent him forward into a strong canter on a circle, then brought him out and sent him down the poles again. That seemed to do the trick.

Today, a lighter ride planned – I’m going to be teaching my boyfriend a short longe line lesson – and then Monday through Wednesday off for work insanity (me) and temperature (Mother Nature).

dressage · dressage tests · soapbox

Soapbox Moment: Dressage Salutes

Amanda8 Comments

Okay. I need to come clean about this.

The way the vast majority of people do their dressage salutes drives me absolutely crazy.

You may argue that since I am very distinctly in the minority here, I’m in the wrong. You may even be right.

I don’t care. Seeing a quick, careless, sloppy salute gets under my skin immediately and fills me with irrational anger.

Please note that I did say “irrational.”

What do I mean? Here are a few examples. Please note: the riders here are more or less a random sampling, and many of them are really lovely riders. I’m only using them to talk about their salutes, not their general tests.



Do you see what I mean?

That quick, hurried flip on an antsy horse, before it’s even settled. The “get this over with” attitude toward the whole thing.

I see it in almost every single test I scribe for, and I do a fair amount of scribing – probably more than your average rider. (I have problems saying no.)

Here’s how I was taught to salute:

Ride your centerline.

Halt. Wait a beat for your horse to settle and square, and while doing so, seek out the judge’s face and make – if not eye contact – then at least a moment of connection.

Lower your head. Wait a beat.

Lower your right hand. Wait a beat.

Return your had to the reins. Wait a beat.

Raise your head, and in the moment that follows, re-find the judge’s face and get your horse ready.

Strike off.

Does that sound really long? It’s not. By “beat” I don’t mean even a full second, but I do mean a pause. Take a breath. Let yourself settle and have a moment of space. The whole thing takes perhaps twice as long as one of those flippy salutes, but by that I mean it takes perhaps 2-3 seconds, total, rather than a fraction of one second.

To me, a quick flip salute like the majority of riders do presents two major disadvantages.

First, it’s disrespectful. The point of a salute in the dressage test is to acknowledge the judge, and his/her role in what’s about to occur. It always makes me think of the (mostly apocryphal) gladiator salute. (“We who are about to die salute you!” though maybe that’s not very cheerful?) It’s a sort of mutual gesture of partnership. You present yourself to be judged, and acknowledge that the judge will be evaluating you. Giving it the space it deserves is only right. (Though, judging by how many people blast through it and the pretty good scores they’re still getting, most or all dressage judges don’t care too much!)

Second, it’s a built-in deep breath. Dressage is stressful. Riders are often nervous, frightened, worried – you name it. Going down the centerline is one of the biggest pressure moments in all of equestrian sport. Why blow through the one moment in the whole test where you can relax for a split second? Take that moment of zen. Appreciate it. Then get on with the business of riding the test. Don’t waste it!

So there. My soapbox moment. I realize this is a really small thing to go crazy over, but it really fills me with an all out of proportion amount of frustration.

Agree? Disagree?

dressage · winter

Getting in a short ride

Amanda3 Comments

Last night, I was bound and determined to ride. Though he had been worked at other times, I hadn’t sat on my horse in a week, and I hadn’t schooled him under saddle in a week and a half. I watched the weather all day, left work on time, changed into warm barn clothes, made a snack, and I was at the barn in a reasonable time frame.

I checked the thermometer there: 18 degrees. Cold, but not insurmountable. I tacked up with a quarter sheet and laid out a line of poles on the quarter line.

Actually riding was colder than I thought. We walked with a good forward energy and rhythm for about 10 minutes, over the poles each time around, and I mostly steered through my seat aids while keeping my hands in my pockets. Which was actually a good, useful exercise, as it forced me to pay careful attention to my aids and not over-correct. I have a tendency to ask for him to turn off my leg, over-ask, and then boomerang him back with the other leg, resulting in a weird wobbly line. Last night I played Goldilocks and he responded well, getting a good turn off the track, marching forward, and even changing direction a few times all while I kept hands in pockets.

I picked up the reins on the buckle for the trot, and we worked on forward and stretchy, with poles each time around, and then picked up the reins a little bit more. Nothing dramatic, nothing even like a frame, but I wanted to encourage him to reach for the bit even with a very light contact. He did beautifully, stretching down and staying forward.

After about 30 minute total of work, my feet were very cold, even with winter tall boots and two layers of socks (one of them Smartwool). I was a bit confused but I’d gotten some good work in. In all, a quiet, laid back, yet productive sort of ride. I was pleased with my plan and my execution of the plan.

I topped off Tristan’s mostly-frozen-already water bucket, threw him an extra flake of hay, and tidied up my things.

When I got back in my car, I checked the temperature again: 8 degrees. It had dropped ten degrees in the hour+change I had spent at the barn. No wonder my feet were getting cold! I immediately felt even better about my decision to plan a light stretchy ride without much aerobic exercise.

Then I went home and crawled under many blankets.

dressage · topline

Is your horse using his back?

Amanda8 Comments

With Tristan’s slow climb back to fitness, I’ve been working hardest on making sure he’s using his back effectively. I don’t have a great natural feel for how a horse is moving underneath me – in fact, I have zero natural feel. Everything I have has been drilled into me by many frustrated trainers.

So I’m always looking for ways to learn more. A friend on Facebook linked to this article, which does a good job of describing what I’m looking for but the real gold is in a video the article linked to. It’s really outstanding. It’s given me things to think about and a much more clear visual reference for what to look for. (I probably could’ve picked these things out before but I don’t think I could have really listed off why I thought a particular horse was better through its back.)

Here it is embedded for reference.

dressage

Sneaking In

AmandaLeave a comment

Endless long day today, which started with a 3.5 hour meeting and by 1pm my hopes of sneaking away to ride in the afternoon (my second office is 8 minutes from the barn!) began to fade. Then my boss poked her head in and said, “The roads are starting to ice up a bit, you should head to the barn while you can.”

Didn’t have to tell me twice! I changed, threw tack on Tristan, and we had a lovely 40 minute ride. The warmup was especially nice: we got a nice forward rhythm established and as I gradually picked up the reins he reached for the bit nicely.

Once he was thoroughly warmed up and supple and had worked for about 20 minutes in a light frame, we took a short walk break, then worked on transitions some more. Tracking right, some of these were lovely and prompt and soft – there were one or two trot-canter moments that had a great feeling of just stepping right into the gait. To the left, not as much, but he was also coming much more round through the outside rein to the left, so that was still excellent.

I was pleased with one aspect of our warmup in particular: I incorporated a LOT of leg-yielding into it, hither and yon, sometimes the entire diagonal stepping over, back and forth, changing directions, and it really seemed to pay off right away in how much he came through his hind end. He didn’t fall forward and get hard in the bridle until the end, when he was clearly getting tired.

Not sure if I’ll be able to see him tonight – I have to travel for Christmas and we are predicted for a nasty little bout of weather that might make it safest just to hit the road and go, rather than swing by the barn. If at all possible, I’ll stop by and longe him, but we’ll see.

dressage

Transitions

AmandaLeave a comment

After our lesson last week, I cleaned my dressage saddle. It was a long time coming. I thought briefly about posting a picture of how filthy the water was after I’d rinsed the sponge a few times, but then I tipped over into “too embarrassing.” So you’ll have to take my word for it: blech.

I decided to leave my stirrups off the saddle for my next ride. We started off with some nice marching walk work, forward into the bridle, with bending on the turns to the cavaletti incorporated into each turn around the arena.

Then we moved on to trot, and this is where my plan for the ride started to unravel. My sitting trot is decent – not great – and it wasn’t quite clicking. It wasn’t awful jackhammering, but it was just bouncy enough to make me think that if I was really trying to get him to relax and work through his back, this wasn’t helping. Our two passes over the caveletti definitely confirmed that: on the plus side, I don’t think I’ll need chiro for my back! I probably could have worked through it but by I would’ve done more harm than good.

So I held onto it for long enough to warm up, about 10 minutes in big passes around the ring, and focused instead on transitions. We started with walk-trot and back on a circle, shortening time in each gait and sharpening the transition, and then moved to trot-canter, back and forth. Eventually transitions got sharp enough that I was able to do halt-trot transitions, then walk-canter and back, then a couple of actual honest halt-canter transitions. They weren’t very pretty, but they were prompt and they existed, so victory!