This week’s article discusses different types of equestrian dressage professionals and what they may be able to offer depending on their expertise and educational background. (more…)
The focus of this week’s article is to shed some light on some commonly used — and almost as commonly misused — pieces of equipment found in training and discuss what their original purpose is.
“[C]ollection creates better balance while performing harder tasks, which then also creates greater cooperation from the horse due to having the ability to stay balanced while performing these tasks.”
“What almost everyone has forgotten, or may have never learned, is that dressage is a training system, based on the European cultures and horse types of antiquity, and it was created over centuries to develop horses for war and for ceremonial purposes.”
A student asked for a timeline for the development of the Grand Prix horse. While there are all sorts of variations and time elements that may get in the way, there is a generally accepted, age-based expectation of the horse’s development.
Since this is the season of New Year’s resolutions, it seems to be a good time to talk about habits and changing them, since the ability to do so is directly related to your ability to progress as a rider.
This week’s article begins to look at the differences, and very important similarities, between classical and competition dressage. As with most things, the important truths tend to lie somewhere in the middle.
This week’s article discusses what you can see in a still photo and explores how to begin sorting out what is “a moment in time” versus what is most likely a constant state (which is, of course, indicative of the training).
This week’s article was born of the recent discussion regarding the education problem in our sport and looks at the importance of, and ways to, begin to assess potential dressage teachers.
This week’s editorial is a follow up to my previous article discussing the proliferation of the consumption of talent rather than the training of it to further develop it for the competitive sport of dressage.
It was my intention to discuss how the training scale relates to Second through Fourth Level in this installment, but I think it’s important to broach a broader topic about the direction of Dressage in the United States. (more…)
This week’s article takes the importance of the training scale and looks at how the training scale aligns with, and is woven throughout, the competitive levels, as designated by USEF. Part I will focus specifically on training and first level.
The last article discussed the importance of the three base layers of the training scale. This article builds on that, focusing on the top three layers — which do not stand alone or separate from the lower half and cannot exist without or disconnected from them.
The training scale is a method with which to order your thoughts within the training process. It is a logical progression of how a horse is developed from untrained (feral) to fully trained (mostly civilized).
“In the right way is intentionally separate from the meaning of more concrete words like talented, perfect, and correct as it denotes that good training is completely separate from natural talent, that perfection is, in fact, unattainable…”
“Whenever you see a rider and horse in harmony and balance, performing their jobs fluidly and enthusiastically, you are witnessing the product of horse training and riding in the right way. No matter what, that is a product of what dressage was initially meant to be.” (more…)
