Intermediate Dressage

Dressage is training. Literally -- if you run the Babble Fish and translate French to English it'll tell you dressage is training. Therefore to properly do dressage, you have to understand the training scale. At this level I expect my students to be good at the first two steps and working on the third. Obviously it depends what you're sitting on at any point, but really they're pretty important.



So the idea here is simple: start at the bottom and work your way up. It is not, however, easy.

"Rhythm comes first" -- anybody who has ridden with me more than about oh 30 minutes will have heard that at least a few times :) And there's a reason for it. Nothing else works unless that base is there.

(Note: whoever created this example was way too big a fan of Photoshop - to the point of obnoxiousness, but it does make the rhythm point well; esp worth noting is the lengthen stride to collected stride bang on the beat. Turn your sound on.)



Once you have some rhythm, then there's hope for relaxation (yes you worked *that* hard to relax. And yes the friend who told you you were insane was accurate. Enjoy it - normal's boring.). The relaxation we're really hoping for here though is the horse's and comes along with suppleness (can you bend both ways without tension?). It's not so much that you seek relaxation as that you try to eliminate tension; when you succeed in ridding your horse of tension, you're left with relaxed and supple. Sweet.

From relaxed and supple you can have hope for contact. That elusive "on the bit". Notice though that it came from a rhythmical and relaxed horse!

Beyond that, well now you need impulsion - aka power. Just pretend you're setting up to jump a 4' oxer off a roll-back turn. Now land from that nonexistent jump going straight. This should be a breeze after all your suppling work earlier.Then take all the pieces and collect them!

That's all it takes to master dressage. You're welcome :)



How it looks when you get to the top of the pyramid (turn sound on)

Ok so you've got your horse going forward, bending properly in both directions and the hind end's connected to the front by more than anatomy. The world is good and it's time to go show off. Dressage tests are set patterns ridden in a measured arena (see beginner) in front of a judge (or sometimes more than one -- but that's not something you need to worry about at the beginning).
At this level it is *really* important that your test be accurate! Transitions that are supposed to be at a specific letter, should happen when your shoulder is beside the letter. 20m circles should be 20m. And round. Artistic interpretation is frowned upon in dressage >;-P

Corners should look like corners and circles should look like circles. This means if you're doing a 20m circle right at A, the corner between F and A is square while the one between A and K is rounded off since it's part of the circle. There should be a noticeable difference. An easy way to practice this is to put pylons in the track -- square corners go outside, round ones inside. This is obviously an imperfect technique, but it does make the difference apparent.



Circle vs Corner

Now that you've learned all the basics, it's time to put it together. Practicing the test over and over and over again is not such a good idea because your horse will start to learn it. Seems like a great plan until he starts to anticipate the next move -- suddenly your transition is three strides early and nothing that resembles relaxed. Remember step one? Yeah. Oops.

Click here to download Training Test 1 (technically the level before First Level -- but hey, in eventing there are three levels before you get to Preliminary so what did you expect? :) This is where you start.



Now since it's not such a good idea to ride it multiple times, you need other ways of memorizing. Well -- you can practice the test without your horse. Depending on your level of self confidence you may wish to wait till there's nobody else in the arena, but seriously walking/running the pattern you're going to ride, will help. As always, accuracy is important. You're not just memorizing the test, but actually practicing it. So 20m circles, should be 20m. The FXH diagonal should actually touch each letter. And so on.

There's always the good old "visualization" -- practice riding it in your mind (more on this another week). This has been proven multiple times and works brilliantly so long as you can focus ALL the way through the test. Otherwise the first half will be remarkably better than the second *g* Not that I learned that the hard way or anything.

One last technique -- you can learn it draw the test out. Download this sheet and print off a few copies. Then in each box draw one movement. If you're feeling particularly creative each gait can have a different colour. Good luck!