I needed to put down some thoughts about dressage again so you get to suffer for my OCD about this crazy sport.
Vento is wiggly, I mean really wiggly. He’s like a freaking gummy worm of a horse. Which makes dressage a challenge because straightness is an essential part of our sport. Now this isn’t to say, he isn’t good at it — he is a Grand Prix horse and has done very well on a very tough circuit against big warmbloods (he’s a Lusitano), but he and I have to work for it.
One of the ways my coach has addressed this is to have us work on adjustability. Meaning that even when I’m traveling left and normally his head would be flexed to the left and he would be bending around my left leg I should be able to flex his head to the right and still keep the rhythm, impulsion and relaxation. And I should be able to do this at all three gaits. Walk and trot it’s not so bad, but the canter is more difficult.
It takes understanding that flex is not the same thing as bend. Flex is just a slight tilting of the atlas bones which are right behind his ears that tilt the horse’s head to either side. When you are counter-flexing a horse you need more soft contact on that outside rein, and you need to back it up with the outside leg as well so he doesn’t mistake this for a half-halt.
Now the real trick is to keep the horse from flipping a flying lead change when you do this counter-flexion and to accomplish that you rely on your seat — the position of your hips and pelvis in the saddle. If I’m counter-flexing in the canter my inside seat bone is slightly forward and my outside leg back more to indicate that I want the horse to stay in the lead I have selected.
I also don’t want my mount to think I’m half-halting for a transition to trot or walk so I keep my hips swinging forward toward my hands, and I lift and with my inside leg in a pulsing movement to keep the horse’s hind legs jumping through. And don’t forget your core. Riding an F.E.I. horse (F.E.I. stands for Fédération Equestre Internationale) is like doing internal sit ups for your entire ride, particularly when you do the piaffe or the passage.
When I am ready to go from the canter to the trot or walk or halt I briefly still my hip and stretch down through the leg, and use my core muscles. Those core muscles also control how quickly the horse is moving inside each gait. More hip swing with a softer core — extended canter. Less hip swing, more lifting the horse up rather than forward and more core — collected canter. However, when you are going from the trot or canter into the walk your hip still has to think forward so the horse doesn’t plant their front legs, and job onto the bit. Basically a transition should be as light and fluid as a duck landing on a lake.
For reference I’ve included the dressage pyramid of training. My new horse and I are working just on rhythm and relaxation right now because he just turned 4 yesterday. It will be a few years before we get to collection.
