Establishing the medium paces!
(Part two)
By Alison Short
For those of you who read my previous article in the December edition of Pegasus “preparation for medium paces”, you will be familiar with the exercises leading you to establishing the medium paces and will have hopefully identified with the two types of horses, the giraffe and the tortoise. For those of you who didn’t pick up a copy of Pegasus last month you will find this article at www.pegasusmagazine.com under editorial and training.
You should now have a better understanding of connection, meaning the reaction from your leg aids creating a fluent forward movement into elastic yet containing contact, this in turn giving you greater engagement and lightening of the forehand in turn improving your steering.
You will know if this has been achieved as your horse starts to feel more responsive, this will improve over a period of time.”
“I liken this to driving a car with flat tyres and then pumping them up, the difference is truly noticeable.”
Creating combined balance takes time to perfect and now we will explore this to a greater degree with the next exercise.
In December we talked about how the riders balance affected the horses balance and ability to bring his hind legs underneath him.
“Imagine being asked to run with a small child upon your shoulders, difficult enough, but now imagine that child suddenly tipping forward”
You would react quickly rushing ahead of the child’s weight in order to prevent it from falling, this is a common fault in the riders desire to ask the horse to move forward straightening their arms and getting ahead of the movement, leaving the horse unable to use the power from its hind legs no matter how well prepared.
This exercise will help you to understand the influence of the riders balance upon the horse has and how influential it is in developing engagement.
If you have a 20x40m arena ride a 20m half circle on the E/B line to shorten the arena, start by just trotting this movement several times to familiarise both you and your horse with this movement.
Now begin to walk when coming out of the corner after A or C and continue walking until you almost start your half 20m circle, at this point ride another transition back to trot and ride your half circle. When you have reached the track on the other side of your half circle walk again, continue walking until just before the next corner and then ride a transition to trot. Practice slowing your rising down to each walk transition, sitting on the very last stride of trot.
It is vital as I said in the previous article to keep a connection between riding the horse forward off of an easy but efficient aid and keeping a connection to the contact, the rider remaining central to the horse and in balance at all times.
Repeat this exercise on both reins and until the transitions are smooth and active, the horse should travel forward effortlessly in the walk without the rider nagging with the lower leg. If your horse is lazy in the walk try to keep your lower legs away from the horses side and then re introduce them with a quick aid from your ankles, if this is not reacted to then a gentle tap behind your leg with a schooling whip should reinforce your request.
“It is far far better to give your horse an encouraging tap with a schooling whip than deadening him with nagging legs!”
Now we are going to take this exercise to the next level rather than walking the sides of our oval. Now we are going to slow the trot down just as we did in preparation for our walk, but we are going to do the slowest trot we can keeping in balance with our horse. This is the point where we train our horse to understand that we don’t have to be bounding forward to have energy and rhythm, your horse will of course anticipate walking and at this point you need to try to read when this is going to happen, as then you can apply enough leg to maintain the slow trot without rushing him forward and changing his balance. This is all about getting a rhythm beneath you, for those of you who are skilled with your whip, tapping your horse in the rhythm of the trot can help to keep the rhythm but it must be encouraging not punishing. Always remain rising as this helps the horse’s back to be round and so allows the hind legs to step through.
“Think of your horse as a li-lo, if you blow lots of air in but forget to put the stopper in it will just deflate”
This is exactly what will happen if you drive with lots of leg but allow the contact to be inconsistent, your horse’s energy will be lost, equally if you put the stopper in (pull back) and don’t use your legs the power was never there to be inflated.
Now the next stage of our exercise is to come from the slow rhythmical trot to a trot that is bigger than the working trot. So where we had working trot, walk, working trot we now have working trot, slow rhythmical trot and then working trot for one or two strides and then a bigger trot. This means that where you are asking for your bigger trot is on the half circle one end, and the short arena at the other end. The fact that you are bending your horse and keeping him around your inside leg to an elastic contact, will aid you to be bold and push those hind legs up onto the contact.
If your horse canters when you ask him to push more up onto the contact, then pulse gently on the outside rein without losing the correct bend this in turn will encourage him to trot without pulling him right back, then repeat the exercise with a less sharp lower leg, making sure your contact remains elastic at this time. This is more likely to be an evasion of the tortoise, whereas the giraffe is more likely to drop onto the riders hands when being asked to go more forward after the period of slower rhythmical trot, this can be corrected by creating an even shorter rhythmical trot and a more progressive transition into the bigger trot, but riding your horse forward right to the point of needing to come to the slower trot. By doing this you are encouraging him to take more weight on his hocks before he is asked to move forward, developing better balance.
This exercise can be used in canter too, trotting the long sides to start or if established, canter to walk and walk to canter in these two places. Do this until the preparation for the downward transition leads to the canter becoming collected, then riding back into working canter and then more power to lead to the medium steps. Only when the horse and riders combined balance becomes more established will it be as easy to ride the medium steps on a straight line or in larger areas of the arena.
Always question your basics if you feel you are not progressing in these exercises, horses very rarely put a great deal of effort into being un cooperative, it is far more likely to be an element of the exercise that is not polished enough.
ALISON SHORT is a Listed British Dressage Judge and a Freelance Trainer. Please call to discuss you or your clubs future training on 07719900275 or alisonshort@btopenworld.com
