Half pass, travers and renvers and are all excellent exercises for developing suppleness, performed in different places in the school. Introduce travers with care or your horse will not produce travers but a twisted contortion. Start at the beginning of the long side of the school and maintain a slight inside bend with your inside leg. Do not over bend the horse. Lightly touch with your outside leg back to bring your horse's quarters to the inside. As with half pass use intermittent touches with your leg, and only use the leg as necessary so you don't rush your horse in the movement. Don't over bend them to the inside or the outside shoulder will fall away. The wall on the long side can prevent forward movement, to resolve this ensure your horse is carrying the movement from the inside hind leg not the inside shoulder. Renvers is the reverse of travers, the quarters are to the wall and the shoulders are on an inner track with the horse bent in the direction of the movement. To position your horse for renvers, turn on to an inner track on the long side of the school. Change to bend towards the outside of the school. As with travers use your outside leg (outside to the bend, which will be on the inside of the school) to move the horse's haunches towards the wall. Travers and renvers can be ridden on a circle and are both very beneficial to the development of a horse’s suppleness, engagement and collection. Care must be taken to ensure that the horse is correctly round the rider's inside leg and not just crooked. The picture below shows the position of a horse in half pass, travers and renvers. The red line represents the wall and you can see how in each exercise the position of the horse is the same. . Diane Followell - Training riders, Transforming Horses
A word that is often used in relation to schooling horses is gymnastics, and it’s a good description because it creates an image of what we need to do in our training to create a light, balanced and manoeuvrable horse. If you look at a gymnast, they are strong, supple and perfectly balanced, and from that balanced position. They can move in any direction. It’s the same for horses. A horse that is balanced, supple and strong will have a steady head carriage because they are light in the front and the weight is moved back towards the haunches which makes them manoeuvrable. The exercises we use for developing this quality were created centuries ago, defined and refined by subsequent dressage masters. They consist of building the horse through circle work and moving on create suppleness through the lateral exercises; shoulder-in, quarters-in, and renvers, ridden both on the straight lines and on circles. All horses are one sided, left handed or right handed, and it’s the work that you do to encourage the horse to release the stiff side and stretch the soft side that creates a horse who is even on both sides and ultimately straight. Good training develops the qualities of Straightness produces Self Carriage helps achieve Lightness Balance is key to developing self-carriage and lightness. Circles start to create a supple horse and are the first lesson in balance. A correctly ridden circle teaches a horse many things: To give round the riders inside leg To start to engage the inside hind To stretch to the outside rein To develop suppleness in both directions You can feel when a horse is out of balance through the weight in their shoulder, the horse will drift towards the heavy shoulder. On a circle, your horse will drift out when the weight is to the outside shoulder. When the weight is to the inside shoulder, your horse falls into the circle. Identifying a loss of balance In the first picture below, you can see that the horse has lost her balance and put weight in the outside shoulder in order to come round the corner. The second picture shows the effects of this unbalanced corner, as the horse is comes down the straight side of the school crooked. In the third picture the same horse coming round a corner in balance Diane Followell - Training Riders, Transforming Horses
Self-carriage is a quality that results from correct basic work and gives lightness to the horse. A trained horse should be able to maintain self-carriage throughout his work, whereas a younger horse may only be in self-carriage for a few steps before losing balance and needing help from the rider to correct himself. Self-carriage is a combination of balance, strength, straightness and energy, maintained by the horse without intervention from the rider. Additionally the horse needs to be mentally calm and receptive, as a tense horse will be trying to escape the rider’s aids and therefore will not be in self carriage. Developing self-carriage in your horse takes time, carefully working through simple exercises (ref Circles) makes your horse supple, improves their balance which leads to a straight horse, and this is where self-carriage begins. Once the horse is straight and has no weight in the shoulder, you can increase the impulsion which will elevate the forehand. There is a lot of discussion around horses being in self-carriage but the rider must also have self-carriage. An unbalanced rider who uses the reins and grips with the legs to stay in the saddle will create and unbalanced tight horse. A correctly seated, balance rider is able to give clear aids to the horse and remain quietly with their horse when the horse has responded and is performing the movement. The ultimate test of self-carriage is “descent de mains”, where the rider simply opens the fingers, and the horse remains in the same posture, gait and cadence. The pictures below show horses in self carriage (top row). Below them are 3 more of the same horses when they have lost their self-carriage. (All the riders brought their horses into self-carriage again after the photos were taken.) The first horse has fallen through his outside shoulder on a circle, he has lifted his head in order to regain his balance. The bay horse has lost his balance on a straight line, he has dropped onto his shoulder and is leaning on the rider’s hands. The last horse has come off the rider’s inside leg in travers, she has lost the bend and is pressing weight to the inside shoulder. Diane Followell - Training Riders, Transforming Horses
Impulsion is not just the energy required to move a horse, nor is it having a horse going round the school as fast as it can, (that just creates a tired horse), so I am starting this blog with a quote from Nuno Oliveira,
“Impulsion means to maintain the energy within the cadence.” Impulsion is often misunderstood by riders, in dressage it can be your greatest friend or your greatest enemy. Too much energy at the wrong time unbalances and makes the horse heavy in the shoulder. Whereas insufficient energy makes the horse flat and unable to perform the movement you are asking. The right energy at the right time gives a freedom, mobility and lightness to a horse, linking to self-carriage. Impulsion is not a one size fits all, different horses need different levels of impulsion at different times, and it is the skilled rider who knows how much to ask and when. Good impulsion exists when you have a straight horse, supple and balanced with his hind leg travelling straight under his body, the impulsion directs the horse forward and up, lightening the forehand. When the horse has impulsion it is the rider who directs it either upwards to give a collected step, or forwards for a more extended step. With young horses don’t ask too much too soon, begin by asking for a very little lengthening and collecting in trot, in balance, on the long side of the school, retaining the energy from the lengthened steps to the collected steps. As the horse develops his strength and suppleness so the balance improves and the impulsion increases. And a final though on impulsion; don’t ride with more energy than you or your horse and cope with. Collection is the result of correct training, with a strong, supple, balanced horse that has self-carriage, can control his paces and respond instantly to his rider. It is developed over years from methodical training, starting with correct circles, where you begin to engage the inside hind leg and balance your horse, moving on to suppling the quarters and shoulders through carefully selected lateral work, and then developing strength and impulsion. Classical collection comes from the horse engaging the hind leg under his body which results in a lightening of the forehand. The degree to which you can see this engagement depends on the level of training and the horse’s conformation. Some horses show a distinct lowering of the quarters, and the lightening of the fore hand is easy to see. For other horses, the change in the quarters is not so evident, but this does not mean that the horse is not collected; you can see the same qualities in both horses, just displayed differently. A horse that is heavy in the hand and has weight in the shoulder is not collected, regardless of the perceived action in the legs. The hind leg should appear to be working under the hips, not out under the tail, the back should not be hollow or braced and the fore hand should have a lightness and freedom of movement through the shoulder with the neck stretching forward from the withers. The ultimate expression of collection is in the “decente de main” and “decente de jambes”, most easily seen in piaffe, where the rider lowers the hands and releases the contact and lightens the action of the legs, while the horse remains in the same piaffe. Collection is the result of the careful development of a horse through training, ensuring each stage is correctly developed, creating a supple, balanced, strong horse, able to control their impulsion and therefore able to respond instantly to the riders aids. If you rush the early training, you will have problems in the more advanced work. Diane Followell - Training Riders, Transforming Horses
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AuthorDiane Followell Classical Dressage Trainer
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