This past week I’ve been incredibly inspired watching the World Equestrian Games. Those horses and riders are incredible. All of the rides are available on Clipmyhorse and Carl Hester did some of the announcing. It was inspiring to listen to him critique the riders and offer suggestions on how they could improve each movement. The best part was that he was so incredibly positive about every single horse and rider combination. He pointed out over and over again that Dressage is hard and it takes a long long time to develop and train a Grand Prix horse.
Here are a few tips that I got from his commentary:
Halts and rein back:
- If you feel like you’re leaning a little off to the right in the halt, it’s because the right hind leg is back – use your right leg to bring the right hind leg forward. When your horse it halting square, you will feel like you are sitting straight above your horse.
- For the rein back, it is extremely important that the steps are diagonal and that the horse maintains the exact same frame – many horses tend to drop the poll and front end
Accuracy:
- You must ride from letter to letter and focus on being accurate. Otherwise you’re just giving points away.
Rhythm:
- Rhythm is the bast of the training scale. You must always keep the same rhythm.
- Particularly in the collected walk, make sure that the walk rhythm and tempo stays the same. The horse should not be speeding up and slowing down
- Sit in the passage “like you’ve had a big chocolate pudding.” In the piaffe you sit a little lighter to allow the back to come up.
Perhaps one of my favorite takeaways from Carl was after one of the riders had a particularly disappointing ride and the horse did not want to piaffe, Carl said “It’s only Dressage.” It is really important to remember that at the end of the day, we’re dealing with horses who are unpredictable and sometimes the get scared or overwhelmed and have a bad day!
If you went to get inspired, click here to watch the World Champion – Lottie Fry and her winning Freestyle on Glamordale!
