Advanced Dressage

Ok so first of all, not at all theory, but if you have competed in any dressage ever you should seriously consider reading Dressage for the Rest of Us. This was put together on COTH when I still had time to lurk there (yeah I *might've* contributed to the list; not that I'd ever admit that of course :). Funniest dressage thing ever. COTH is one of the better Equine BBs out there. Worth a read.

The things I could write in this section could (and has!) filled many books. I've decided that for today we limit discussion to some of the basic lateral movements, but it'll be more of a "what is" than a how-to. Honestly, for the how-to, my advice is simple: find a qualified coach. I'm adamantly against arm-chair riding lessons. These are not things to be learned off the Internet. No matter how many horrendous videos are out there. The what, however, can be :)

Lateral movements are ones that require sideways movement in some way, shape or form. They encourage flexibility, obedience, and coordination (of both horse and rider :)

Shoulder-in: in shoulder-in the horse's front legs come to the inside, so that the outside front is directly in front of the inside hind. The horse is flexed and bent to the inside (approx the same degree as for a 10m circle). The inside hock is engaged and carries the most weight. The horse travels forward on a straight line maintaining the inside bend to create the lateral movement. In this situation the horse is moving away from the direction of the bend. The most common fault when schooling shoulder-in is to overbend the head and neck; this causes the horse to lean on the outside shoulder and thoroughly defeat the purpose.






Traverse: in traverse the haunches come in instead of the shoulders -- the outside hind moves just slightly inside of the inside fore. The horse moves in the same direction as the bend. As with shoulder in, the most common fault in traverse is to overbend the neck, this is compounded by bringing the quarters in too much so the horse is at too steep an angle.






Renverse: is a combination of the above two. The shoulders come in off the track as in shoulder-in, but the horse is bent in the direction of travel as in traverse. The legs also move on four tracks, as in traverse (think haunches out rather than haunches in). Wanna guess the main fault in renverse? You got it, overbending the neck. This leads to the horse having to step just sideways instead of forward and sideways. Loss of rhythm and activity are also very common in this movement. This movement is rarely asked for in dressage tests, but is an excellent training exercise.






Half-Pass: my favourite :) Half-pass is essentially traverse on a diagonal. The horse moves forward and sideways on a diagonal line, bent and flexed in the direction of the movement.






So there are more of course -- pirouettes, tempis, and not to mention all the longitudinal movements! hahaha see how many of them you can pick out in this example (one of the few tests I've ever watched multiple times; could do without the commentary but as it's appropriate to this Theory Thursday I figured it'd be a good one to use):



Read more...

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!

Read more...

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

Read more...