Planning and thinking about your ride are a part of dressage training, but just as over-thinking can be detrimental, over-planning can cause the rider to overlook or become ignorant to a particular horse's weakness on that particular day. Horses, just like humans, are never the same one day to the next. Whether it is because your horse slept in an odd position, or he just feels a strange ache down one side, he will need to account for that in his daily training.
So, even though you may have an idea in your mind about what you will work on that day and you may have a particular outline for your daily training, you must use this as a guide only and then work specifically on what your horse needs on that particular day.
Yesterday I came out and Batialo was being lazy off my left leg, so sticking to my normal warm-up guide, I adapted it a little to work more leg-yielding left to right, to really get him more reactive with his left hind leg and to help him relax and work this area. My trainer reminded me that the horse is never the same day to day, and as riders it is our job to feel these areas and to first work on them until we feel our horse even, and relaxed, and ready, to begin the plan for the day.
Talking recently with some of the world’s top grooms, I was reminded how important it is to pick up on the little things going on with the horse, and this is equally, if not more important, for the rider. If you stick too much to a rigid routine, you may miss what your horse is telling you and thus make what would have been a slight tension grow into something more serious.
If you go out for a run and notice you have a sore left foot, and instead of treating that foot you run harder and faster, chances are that later that week you will have a new pain somewhere else, because of the pressure you were putting on that area to compensate for the foot. Horses will also hide things if pushed to ignore them and they may then suffer in other areas.
Feel your horse everyday, because the horse is never the same as he was yesterday, nor will he be the same tomorrow. Plan, but adapt to him today.
Begin at walk, and do not trot until your horse is straight at the walk. If you cannot control your horse's shoulder at the walk, you will not control it at the trot or canter! If your horse will not get off your left leg at the walk, tackle this first. Begin asking him to step off a light aid, and if he does not respond, ask more firmly once, and then begin again. Be direct and then assess if it worked?
When carrying out your daily plan be critical and disciplined. Don’t do a shoulder-in for the sake of it or because you heard somewhere it helps. Do it do determine what your horse is responding too, where is his weight, where is he lazy, and when doing it, do it with conviction. Start it here and end it there, and make sure it is on your terms.
If the shoulder-in to left was a piece of cake, but as you begin shoulder-in right he feels like he is constipated, what is happening? Walk and make sure he is off a light right leg, or make sure your right leg isn’t drawing up and going stiff.
“The geometry of the exercises disciplines the horse, creates the channel. Without correctly ridden exercises the horse risks falling on one or the other shoulder. Respect the discipline of the exercises: If a horse is crooked, he will lose his impulsion, he “floats”,” said my hero Nuno Oliveira.
If your horse loses impulsion during the exercises, is he ready to do it and, more importantly, are you ready and technically able to ask him for it? It’s great to be organised and to have in mind what you will work on. However being too rigid to feel the horse day to day and to respond accordingly means you are planning to fail, because you will not cater for your horse's individual needs!
Text by Sarah Warne
Read all of Sarah's Classical Training Articles here.