In my first ever lesson with Portuguese dressage trainer Miguel Ralao Duerte, he pointed out one very fundamental weakness to my daily training. Riding everyday in a very large riding hall, I was using the space like a massive scrap book that I could doodle around in as I saw fit.
If that half pass wasn't good I could just keep on gliding across on a sort of angle until I eventually reached the other wall, or if my circle wasn't exactly 20 metres and Batialo was falling out, then I could just make my circle bigger and pretend that was my intention all along.
Nuno Oliveira used to say that "the arena is a patterned paper and the horse is a circle that draws patterns on it. Pay attention to the geometry of the patterns." What he meant of course was that if we don't have direction, or lines for our horse to follow, then we are just wafting about, without establishing the proper channels in which to analyse the straightness, the balance, or the bend of our horse.
If I am constantly relying on the wall to guide me, how do I know if my horse is falling out? If I don't decide when to start and finish my ten meter circle, how do I know if it was on my terms, or his? Miguel reminded me that I must think about my lines and the first thing to do was to take me out from the wall,and make me ride on my own track, about a metre in from the outside wall.
I immediately realised how much I had been relying on the wall (the straightener) to guide me and the first time I tried to do a shoulder-fore, and bend the horse to the inside, I realised that it wasn't my outside aids that had been guiding my horse to keep him straight, but a long row of wooden planks!
It sounds easy, just ride your horse in from the wall on your own track, but when you begin you quickly realise that the small task of a canter down the long side, becomes an all telling movement of just what is happening, or what control is lacking. Instead of cantering down the long side, canter a metre in from the wall, and ask 'is my horse straight? Where are his quarters?'.
The next thing to do is to point out all the other weaknesses of your training by not only taking away your reliance on the wall, but also beginning the gymnastic exercises without that all important "straightener." Again, the simple task of bending my horse to the inside became that much more difficult and while you may think you have established the proper bend, when you come out from the "straightener" and bend your horse to the inside, ask yourself this: 'Did the rest of my horse stay on the same line when I asked the bend?'
Try to imagine your own line and think that in bending the horse that the rest of his body from his shoulder to his tail must remain on that line.
Taking control of your own geometry of patterns, means that you can create channels and then, as your horse produces power and impulsion, you can allow that energy to flow in the direction you want it.
If you cannot create lines and your horse is falling out through the shoulder, or pushing his quarters to the inside, the power becomes stuck at various points along the horse's body and unlike my messy doodles, the geometry of your training patterns will enable your horse to find his natural swing.
The circle is an even more difficult pattern to draw on the arena and it may sound contradictory, but your circle needs to have straightness. This doesn't mean that you create a square, but that your horse remains with a direct energy flow and thus a straight channel that remains constant even though you are riding a curved line.
A curved line is still a line and it's the line that the rider must focus on. When we see a rider pull both hands to one side across the horse's neck, picture the channel of energy and imagine what happens to it when it reaches the point of rider 'scewiff.' How can a rider successfully channel power and energy with both reins hauling off to one side.
If you watch the top riders, you can see that their hands and legs create a corridor that allow the horse to move within it and they create the borders in a way that is elastic and enables them to take a little more with the inside and allow a little more with the outside, while maintaining the line, and the rhythm, and the energy flow.
So in actual fact, it's not only just about geometry, but also about relativity, in that every action has a reaction! A horse needs to be confident that if he bends to the inside, the outside corridor of the rider will give him the allowance and also the support he needs to guide him on a geometry of patterns.
Being decisive in your training is great, but are you decisive about the line you take in the arena, or more to the point. Are you in charge of it, or is your horse?
by Sarah Warne for Eurodressage
Photo © Dirk Caremans
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