Part 1 - The scales of training; Rhythm and Relaxation the
foundation of all good Dressage training.
Last weekend I had a thought provoking lesson with Ryan.
Ryan learnt to ride from scratch over the past 12 months at Moorwards and now I
also teach him privately on his family horse ‘Puzzle’ whom they bought from
Moorwards on my recommendation. Ryan is an exceptional rider. He is only 13
years old, but he has had a natural position and excellent balance since day
one, and he also is very body aware and is able to lower his energy and use
relaxation to ride more advanced and high energy horses than many people of his
age.
Ryan enjoys hacking and jumping but is keen to progress
towards doing some dressage with Puzzle as he feels it would benefit her
physically and mentally.
“Do you know what the word ‘Dressage’ means?” I ask him? Ryan looks at me blankly.
Dressage is in fact the French word for ‘training’. And what
is it that dressage trains?
“Horses are perfectly design to be horses” I explained to
Ryan. “They need no training to be observant, to graze, to run from danger,
this is what they are designed to do and they excel at it. They are not designed
however, to carry a human around on their back although many are humble and
willing enough to do so. Dressage," I explain "is the training process by which
we train a horse to use its body more effectively over time to carry the weight
of a human".
So where do we start?
At preliminary level a judge will be looking for a few basic
levels of training.
Correct paces (walk:
4 time beat, trot: 2 time beat and canter: 3 time beat) which maintains an active
and regular rhythm.
Suddenly I realise we are drifting in to a vocabulary that
is going to need further explanation.
‘Active’ meaning it has the appearance of having natural
energy and the horse gives the impression he is carrying the rider rather than
the rider driving the horse.
‘Regular rhythm’ means that the footfalls (the timing of
each foot making contact with the ground) is in a rhythm and neither slows down
or speeds up despite the movements in the test.
Ryan practises walking, trotting and cantering and allowing
himself to feel Puzzle’s footfalls and notice when her rhythm changes on both
reins. It’s apparent that Puzzles walk and trot tempo varies greatly although
her canter rhythm is very regular. I ask how Ryan could go about trying to
influence Puzzles varying tempo. Ryan as always hits the nail on the head. “If
I keep the rhythm I would like to keep going in my head and maybe even count it
out loud at first, maybe this will be enough signal to Puzzle of the speed we
should be going at”. I’m often quick to clarify when the words speed and rhythm
are used, which one is correct, but I knew exactly what Ryan meant. Off Ryan
went again and at only his first try Puzzles trot and walk rhythm was already
showing greater consistency.
I explained to Ryan that Rhythm is the very first step on the
Dressage scales of training and you cannot have rhythm if you do not have
relaxation from the horse, and of course, you cannot have relaxation from the
horse if you do not have relaxation from the rider. I realise this might be
getting a bit complicated for a 13 year old boys first ‘Dressage’ lesson! But
Ryan was taking it all in…. he is a sponge for knowledge and when he understands
why something should be done one way or another, then he feels confident about
what he should be doing.
Knowledge comes with understanding
A while back Ryan asked me about side reins. Some one had told Ryan he should use side reins when lunging Puzzle to
help her build more muscle. ‘More muscle” sounded like a positive thing for
Puzzle to Ryan and he feels he cannot challenge those who have been riding for
a greater length than he has, even though I know, despite only recently taking
up riding, he probably has a far greater breath of knowledge about horses and
riding than many who have been riding all their lives.
I asked Ryan to explain to me how side reins work and he
realised he didn’t know the answer. I explained to Ryan how muscle is built in
all animals. By contracting and stretching/relaxing a muscle over time, the strength
and size of the muscle can be increased (just like a body builder doing biceps repetitions
with a dumb bell in a gym). Only by relaxing and then contracting the muscle is
it worked. Put this into the context of a side rein. Yes, the side rein
encourages the contraction of the muscle but it doesn’t allow the muscle to
relax, it is simply held in a position. Like any muscle, held in contraction for
a period of time, it will begin to ache and because the muscle cannot be
stretched/ relaxed the horse will compensate by trying to support with
additional muscles. This may lead to the horse leaning on the contact or over-arching
to relieve the pressure on the mouth and as a consequence, the horse is
likely to end up building muscle in undesirable places. Following this
explanation, Ryan decided he didn’t want to use side reins on Puzzle, not
because I had told him not to, but because now he understood how they worked
and why they would not help Puzzle in the way he thought they would. I told
Ryan not to disregard suggestions from others as some may be very useful and I
encourage everyone to share the best practises they have learnt through
experience, but if someone suggests something to you, and you ask them to
explain how and why it works and they can’t, then it’s probable their theory/
belief is misguided or at the very least, will require further research.
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