“Train your eye with Amelia Newcomb”- The nifty 5 minute read that helps train your eye for dressage, rider position, and more.
This is Allison and her late horse Tebow who recently passed away.
What I see:
A lovely rider who seems to be in balance with her horse’s movement. Her leg is under her hip, and while she could be a little straighter up and down with her upper body, it’s a nice overall picture. This looks like a kind horse with soft eye that might be experiencing a bit of stiffness today (totally normal on a show day!). He shows a bit of tension in his mouth and the inside hind leg could step even more underneath his body. But the tail is loose and he’s going to the bit, which tells me that he is trying to do as the rider wants!
The rider is a bit tipped forward in the hip and holding slightly on the inside rein (we may have caught her at an odd moment), which is a very common defense stance if your horse is stiff or tense. After all, when humans are tense/stressed we naturally go into the fetal position, and tipping forward is the closest we get to fetal position in the saddle! If the rider tips her pelvis slightly back from being on her crotch to more straight up and down on her seat bones, this will allow her to move her hips more with her horse’s movement and help him be more supple in his body.
If the rider could soften a bit more on the inside rein it would allow more the flow of energy in the horse’s body and the inside hind leg could come more under to track up and have even more pushing power. The ability to track up (the hind hooves landing in the front hoof print) means that the horse is supple and using their topline properly. This is actually a great photo to demonstrate it. Side note reader: next time you feel like you can’t get to your horse’s engine /hind leg, check that your inside rein is soft. That doesn’t mean you never use your inside rein- it just means you don’t hold it.
You can see that this horse’s haunches are slightly closer to the inside than the shoulders, this tells me that while the horse has some suppleness in his body as he’s moving away from the rider’s inside leg. But he isn’t connected from inside leg to outside rein because the it’s actually the outside shoulder falling out (slightly!) which gives the haunches that closer stance appearance. It’s not that you have to push the haunches out, it’s that you have to catch the shoulder from falling out.
Improving the relaxation in this environment would help this rider and her horse. Which is much easier said than done in a show environment! Relaxation comes in both body and mind, and is actually part of suppleness on the training scale.
How to improve/exercise to try:
A show environment is extra hard place to find relaxation because 1) riders/horses are general tense/stressed from being in a new place, things that could go wrong, timing to get into the ring, etc, etc, and 2) warm up rings can be difficult to find relaxation through lateral (side to side) suppleness because can be hard to find room to circle!
Riding steady rhythm with lots of transitions within the gaits and as many turns, bends, and changes of direction as possible is the best way to achieve relaxation and suppleness. Because that is hard in a warm up, find space on a 20m circle and work on forward and back within the gaits, as well as spiral in and out to an 12m circle ideally using leg yields but just a spiral would work too. Trying to find patterns within that to help your horse settle and understand the job at hand.
Doing this, gets you both longitudinal suppleness (the forward and back), and lateral (leg yield, and the different bends on the 20m to 12 m circles). Finding that steady, repetitive rhythm and nature in the exercise as the horse stretchs both over their back (longitudinal) and left and right (laterally) should help both the horse and rider find relaxation.
Leg yield: https://youtu.be/JsUYzo2j3Cw
Spiral circle:
Forward and back/transitions within the gaits:
Want to have your horse or position featured in Amelia’s next “Train your Eye”? Submit a high resolution image for review HERE and you just might be picked!
