Beginner Dressage

So you've got the hang of going up and down with the trot; you can canter -- and even ride a big circle at one end of the ring. And now your coach has told you you're going to be doing a dressage test. Test?!?! What? but it's riding. It's supposed to be fun! No tests.

Ok - let that go. Seriously. The far more important word in that statement was dressage. Scary, intimidating, and boring. Why would anybody want to do that? But it's not, not really. Not any more than XC is insane anyways :) Dressage is figure skating on horseback. Accuracy, grace, controlled power. Seriously impressive when done right!



Dressage at its most basic is training. Training your horse to respond to the subtlest of movements. The sport originated out of training horses for war. You can't fight well with a sword if you have to use the reins to steer! So soldiers trained their horses to respond to the slightest of leg cues. This is eventually what you want to be able to do. Well, minus the sword. I hope!



Less traditional dressage!

At the lower levels it's all about basics. Can you make your horse go, stop and turn. Can you do this seemingly effortlessly? Have you ever heard somebody tell you "riding's not a sport; you just sit there!"? This is because they've only ever seen the pros who are so good, it looks easy. Just like it looks easy to do a double back handspring on a balance beam. A little bit of common sense would tell you it's not. Sadly common sense is not all that common >;-P Have them watch any beginner rider trying to get their lazy horse out of the middle of the ring :)

Anyways, you want it to look easy. And once you've got the hang of stop/go/turn/easy then you'll get to refine it into GOOD stop/go/turn. And eventually IMPRESSIVE stop/go/turn. But really, the general concept never changes.

Dressage, which is the first of the three eventing phases (more about those another Thursday), is also a sport all in itself. It is ridden in an arena that's either 20mX40m (often seen in low-level eventing dressage, rarely in straight dressage) or 20mX60m (not until Training/Prelim in eventing, but at the beginning of dressage). Those arenas have letters around them:




Easiest way to remember the letters around the side:
All King Edwards Horses Can Manage Big Fences
For the ones in the middle: X marks the spot (dead center).
The others read: After Dressage Go CrossCountry.



The extra letters read RSVP (counter-clockwise). But most riding schools don't have these so I wouldn't stress about it!

Why are the letters in this order? Nobody knows for sure. They were randomly introduced for the 1920 Olympics. Two standard stories are:

* They were the first letter of the names of cities conquered by the Romans. I read this one and it amused me, but you'd think it'd be relatively easy to verify -- I just haven't had time yet *g*.
* My fav option: in the old German Court apparently the walls of the stable yard where the soldiers drilled were initially marked with letters indicating where each horse was to be parked to await its rider:
K = Kaiser/King
F = Furst/Prince
P = Pferdknecht/Ostler
V = Vassal
E = Edeling/Ehrengast/Guest of Honour
B = Bannertrager/Standard Bearer
S = Schzkanzler/Chancellor of Exchequer
R = Ritter/Knight
M = Meier/Steward
H = Hofsmarshall/Lord Chancellor.
And since the riders schooled and trained there, they began to use the letters and so set them that way when they hosted the Olympics.

There are, however, lots of fun ideas -- here are some of the less serious ones:

* After riding 500 20m circles in rapid succession, who can remember the alphabet?
* The letters are consecutive and in alphabetical order, in a now extinct language spoken only by early 18th century Hanoverian carriage horses.
* The very first dressage arena was designed by the lowest-bid contractor.
* The letters were originally laid out by beleaguered riding pupils to facilitate pranks on their instructors, in which the pupils would pretend to be schooling various movements and figures while actually spelling out slanderous curses, in German, against their cruel and heartless instructors, their diabolical horses, and whatever silly person invented this dressage thing in the first place.
* The letters are actually advertising billboards paid for by Sesame Street (This piaffe-passage transition was brought to you by the letter G!).
* Well, the letters are supposed to be in alphabetical order, but somebody's Trakehner keeps getting out at night and rearranging them.
* The other letters in the alphabet are there all right, they're just invisible--what do you think your horse has been spooking at all these years?
* What, you mean they're NOT in alphabetical order? Hey, that would explain why nobody else seems to understand how I've organized the office files...

And that's about all you need to know for now. But keep in mind, while many take dressage *very* seriously, there are still some who have fun with it:


Pas de Deux