4 Questions to Ask If Your Dressage Horse Is Struggling in a Movement

If your dressage horse is struggling in a movement or exercise, ask yourself 4 questions:

1. Is he going too fast or too slowly?
2. Is his neck too high or too low?
3. Is his frame too open or too closed?
4. Am I asking too much?

If you’re not sure what the problem is, adjust one of the 4 things above to see if that helps your dressage horse.

Would You Like Private Dressage Coaching From Me?

From my own experience, I know that consistent coaching and being able to have regular follow-up is essential to your progress as a dressage rider and successfully training your horse.

So I’m working on a special project called the Dressage Mentor Platinum Coaching Club where, through the magic of technology, I can actually teach you dressage lessons in “real time” no matter where you live.

You get help moment to moment as you go through your dressage lesson just like I’m standing in your arena with you.

You’ll never have to leave the comfort and security of your own dressage arena or go through the hassle and expense of organizing a clinic for other riders.

This is a very exclusive program, and you’ll need to apply for a spot because I can only accept 6 people.

You don’t need to be a professional to apply. You just need to be serious, hard working, and willing to do your homework in between lessons.

If you want to know more about these private “virtual” dressage lessons , click the link below or paste it into your browser to get more info.

http://www.dressagementor.com/dm/platinum.html

There is NO obligation to do this. You’ll simply be put on the “more info” list. And ONLY those people on the list will get additional details on the Platinum program in the next couple of weeks including how to apply if they choose to do so.

How to Find Your Seatbones When Riding Your Horse

Are you unsure of how to put weight onto individual seat bones while riding your horse?

Try this exercise.

Sit up straight in a chair. Keep your shoulders and hips square while you alternately put more weight on your right seatbone and then your left one. You’ll feel each seatbone press down (heavier, deeper) into the chair. Once you can alternately press each seatbone down into the cushion of the chair without leaning left or right, try that same feeling on your horse.

Click on Program Your Position for more tips on correcting your riding position.

Dressage Training by the Mile

Remember that dressage simply means “Training”. You don’t need to work in a regulation dressage arena to “do” dressage. Every second you’re on your horse, you’re either training or “untraining”! So you’re always doing dressage no matter what kind of horse you have or what style of riding you’re doing.

Think about how you can continue to train your horse yet add some fun and variety to his life.

Carla Varasso writes: My friends and I, who like to hilltop with the local hunt club, use the phrase, dressage by the mile, all the time, referring to our rides on the trails. We use leg yielding, and haunches in/out when negotiating trees on the trails, and turns on the forehand when asked to open or close a gate. It’s quite fun, and of course it all comes in handy when negotiating questions on a x-country course.

My friend and I rode today — she on her very tall (16.1) QH — who is not going to run barrels because he is getting too tall. As she was riding around in circles she complained of his right shoulder drifting out — I (to my surprise and delight) was able to demonstrate counter flexion for her, and she tried it, and liked it very much — so did Jet, her 3 year old!!!!

Needless to say, I was proud of Chico for being such a good boy while we demonstrated — I was visualizing you with Moshi in the DVD (on Making Your Horse Straight) the entire time.

I always tell my students, you really know when you understand something when you find that you can teach it to someone else — what fun!

Then we went outside and rode around the big hay field, and did our “dressage by the mile” — shoulder fore, some leg yields, and some upward and downward transitions — what a great day in the saddle it was!

Click on dressage training for more info on training your horse in a systematic program.

Dressage Mentor Platinum Coaching Club

If you’d like to know more about the new technology for the Dressage Mentor Platinum Coaching Club that would allow me to personally coach you from anywhere in the world, go to http://www.dressagementor.com/dm/platinum.html

There’s no obligation to be put on the list to get more information.

What Does The Dressage Term “Long and Low” Mean?

How To Help Your Stiff Horse Bend

You can help your stiff  horse bend better by gently doing the opposite of what he wants to do with his body.

Few horses are ambidextrous—meaning they can bend as easily to the right as to the left. So your goal is to make your horse’s soft side more “stiff” and his stiff side more “soft” and bendable.

How Do I Make the Stiff Side “Softer”?
Dressage riders in particular tend to think that the stiff side is the “bad” side because it feels harder for them to bend their horses when that side is on the inside. But you need to think outside the box. The stiff side is not the problem. Your dressage horse feels stiff to the right because the muscles on the left side of his body are shortened and contracted.

The solution to this problem is to stretch those shortened muscles on the left side by riding your horse with too much bend when you track to the right. In schooling, you’ll live in “right bend” until you feel the muscles on his left side elongate. (You’ll know those muscles are stretching because it’ll feel easier to bend your horse to the right.)

So, let’s track to the right—the stiff (hard, strong) side. The main reason your dressage horse feels stiff to the right is because the muscles on his left side are shortened and contracted. These shortened muscles limit how much he can stretch his left side and bend around your right leg.

Here’s an exercise to gently stretch and elongate the muscles on the left side (the hollow side) of your dressage horse’s body.

If your horse is really stiff, do the exercise in the walk.

• Go on a large circle to the right.
• Pick a point somewhere along the arc of the circle, and turn onto a 6-meter circle.
• While on the small circle, think about your bending aids. (Put your weight on your right seat bone, keep your right leg on girth, place your left leg behind girth, flex your horse to the right as if you’re turning a key in a lock with your right wrist, and support with your left hand.)
• Ride the 6-meter circle a couple of times until your horse’s body conforms to its arc.

• Once he’s bending, keep applying the 6-meter bending aids, but blend back onto the 20-meter circle.
• If it gets difficult for your horse to stay bent this much to the right, blend back onto a 6-meter circle. The idea is to ride the 20-meter circle with a 6-meter bend.
• Once you can do this on a circle, try riding straight down the long side with your horse bent as if he’s on the arc of a 6-meter circle. (The feeling is a bit like doing shoulder-in in front and haunches-in behind at the same time.)

When you go down the long side, bend your horse to the right from nose to tail as if he’s on the arc of a circle. Be sure you bend him behind your leg as well as in his neck.

How Do I Make the Hollow Side “Stiffer”?
The flip side of this “stiff to the right” issue is that your dressage horse will be hollow or soft to the left. You might think his soft side is his “good” side because he feels easier to bend, but the hollow side of your horse needs help as well.

On the hollow side, your horse doesn’t have true bend-equal from poll to tail. He usually overbends the neck to the inside and places his inside hind leg to the inside of his line of travel. By doing so, he can avoid bending the joints of his inside hind (engagement), and he also doesn’t carry as much weight on it. As a result, that leg gets weaker, and your horse develops unevenly.

My solution for this problem is to ride your dressage horse without any bend at all when the stiff side is on the outside and the hollow side is on the inside. Keep your horse as straight as he is on the long side even when you go through corners and circles. Think that his body is like a bus that can’t bend on turns.

Let’s say your dressage horse is hollow (soft, weak) on his left side. When circling to the left, ride without any bend at all. Keep his body as straight as a bus.

• To get a perception of straightness, halt somewhere on the long side. Make your horse’s body parallel to the long side all the way from poll to tail.
• Also, ride him either with no flexion (His chin is lined up with center of his chest.) or in counter-flexion (-1). In counter-flexion, his face will be 1 inch to the right.
• Ride through corners and circles with no bend through his body and in counter-flexion at his poll. If you ride in this position, your horse’s left hind leg will step underneath his body.
• This will make that leg stronger over time. (This exercise is only for schooling– not for horse shows.)

If you use this philosophy of doing the opposite of what your dressage horse would do on his own, and it’ll be easy to get him to bend on his stiff side. You’ll also find that you rarely get stuck solving training issues. Invite your horse to do the opposite of what he chooses until it becomes easy for him. Once that happens, settle back into a happy medium.Click on suppling the stiff horse for more help for you stiff horse

Have a Laugh with Funny Images To Help You with Equitation and Horse Training.

Here’s a fun training tip to improve your horse training and equitation. I call it RIDES WITH FRUIT.

I’m sure you remember Kevin Costner’s movie, Dances with Wolves. Well, I call this horse training tip, Rides with Fruit. I thought it was appropriate since it’s summer in some parts of the world, and many of us start to eat more fruits and vegetables.

So let’s bring some fruity images to your horse training and equitation! When you’re on a circle, your horse’s body should curve like a banana. Feel the weight of a grapefruit in your outside hand and the weight of an orange in your inside hand. Sit deep and relax your gluts by saying, “My butt is a marshmallow.” (Oh? You mean marshmallows aren’t a fruit?)

Click on Program Your Position for more help with Equitation.

Rearing, Bucking, or Lazy Horses Need to be Taught to “Think Forward”

Rearing, bucking, nappiness as well as needing “a lot of leg” are all symptoms of your horse not going forward. Many people think that forward only means going forward over the ground. That’s the physical expression of forward. That is, going forward is a direction in the same way that going sideways is a direction.

But having your horse “think forward” is even more important if you want a horse that’s safe and not exhausting to ride. There are 2 aspects to this concept of “thinking forward.”

1. Your horse needs to maintain the energy of his gait on his own so you don’t wear yourself out just keeping him going. So, in this case, if he stalls out, don’t give a driving aid first. Just correct him by tapping with the whip or bumping him a couple of times with your legs. When he goes on his own (even if it’s only for a few strides in the beginning), be sure to praise him a lot. If he stalls out after a couple of strides, correct him again, and then praise him as long as he’s maintaining his own energy. Repeat this process as often as you need to until he understands you’re not going to “help” him by nagging with your driving aids.

2. If you give a driving aid (leg, seat, or voice), and he ignores you, correct him as described above. Then go back to what you were doing, and RETEST with the same light aid. If you don’t “retest”, you’ve only taught him to go forward to the correction—not in reaction to the light aid.

Once you’ve taught a lazy horse to “think forward”, you can whisper with your aids to get him to “shout” his answer. Not the other way around.

Then you have a way to tell your lazy horse to go forward if he wants to rear or buck. Click on Whoa and Go for more info on teaching your horse to think forward.

How to Supple Your Dressage Horse’s Shoulders

Do you ever feel like your dressage horse’s shoulders are so stiff and stuck that not only is it hard to turn him, but his hindquarters are disconnected from his front end?

If your horse’s shoulders are stuck, it’s like having a kink in a water hose. The energy can’t flow from behind, over the back, into your hands where it can then be recycled back to the hind legs.

Here are two shoulder suppling exercises for you to try with your stiff horse.

1. Make a 20-meter box with 4 corners in the walk.

•  To give you more control of your dressage horse’s shoulders, do the exercise in counter flexion. (That is, you’ll just barely see his outside eye or nostril.)

•  If you’re going to the left, ask for right counter flexion with your right wrist. Stay in counter flexion during the entire exercise.

•  At the first corner, bring both hands to the left to swivel your horse’s shoulders around the corner.

•  Then, soften the contact without letting the reins get loopy.

•  After the corner, walk straight ahead in counter-flexion.

•  At the next corner, bring both hands to the left again.

•  Do this in all four corners.

•  As your horse’s shoulders become more supple, it’ll get easier to spin his

shoulders around the turn without meeting resistance.

•  You can tell there’s no resistance when the weight in your hands stays the same as you swivel your horse’s shoulders around the corner.

2. Ride down the long side of the ring, and move your dressage horse’s shoulders slightly to the left and right.

•  Walk down the long side of arena.

•  Flex your horse at the poll opposite the direction you’ll be moving his shoulders. For example, when riding to the left, ask for a counter flexion to the right by turning your right wrist. Then, take both hands to left to slide your horse’s shoulders over. Move the shoulders over only 1-2 inches.

•  Now change to a correct flexion by turning your left wrist.

•  Move both arms to the right to pop the shoulders back out to the track.

•  Smoothly and fluidly move the shoulders back and forth as you work your way down the long side.

Click on supple my horse, for more suppling exercises for your dressage horse

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