hello everyone today we are talking about dressage for beginners or if you're not a beginner then
it's about the basics of dressage so dressage is a french word that means training so it's both the
training of the horse and the rider it's really a sport of perfection and detail so i'm going
to talk a little bit about the basics of dressage be sure to check out in the description below and
sign up for my free mini course on rider position and give this channel a thumbs up and a like if
you like this video so when we are talking about dressage and for example if i have a new student
that comes to take a lesson with me the first thing that i always work on with them
is getting them in the correct position because you need to be in the correct position to give
your horse the correct aids and in order for your horse to operate in the correct manner so the most
important thing to start with is your alignment so there should be a straight line from your ear
to your shoulder to your hip to your heel the two most common mistakes that i see people make
is a lot of riders especially if you're a jumper rider before tend to tip forward and their lower
leg goes too far back so you can see here how that line is no longer straight the other common thing
is riders end up in a chair seat where their lower leg is way out in front of them and they're
sitting kind of back too far on the on their butt so you really want to have this nice alignment
you should be able to feel your seat bones in the saddle and have the feeling like your seat
bones are pointing straight into the saddle the reason that this is really important is because
your alignment is what allows you to absorb the motion of the horse and to stay balanced
and stable in the saddle so if you're out of alignment you're going to be more likely to
fall off and you're also going to be more likely to bounce in the saddle or not absorb the motion
so that's the most important thing to start with and you'll find as you go through your ride you
need to keep checking in with this so when you make a transition or your horse spook so you
try to canner your alignment's going to get out of whack and you need to check in with it again
so once we've got that that down the second thing is how you hold the reins and establishing
the contact with the horse's mouth so you want to hold your rein so that they go here between
your ring finger and your pinky finger you want to be pushing down between your thumb and your
forefinger the reason for this is you push down between your thumb and your forefinger to keep
the rain length the same and then you're able to supple like this with your wrist and your
fingers and give little subtle cues to your horse so that's the second thing that's most important
it's also very important that you maintain a straight line from your elbow to the horse's mouth
so this would be my hands are too high you can see how there's a broken line between my elbow and the
horse's mouth this would be my hands are too low and my arms are straight you always want to have
a bend in your elbows in a straight line from the horse's mouth to your hand so that's the second
thing that's really important those are kind of the basics of your router position that you need
to maintain for dressage now the next thing that we're going to talk about is the eight
so once you find this correct position you want to start asking your horse to do things
so you always start with your legs your legs are the driving aids that's what get the horse to go
forward your hands are the restraining age so your reins are basically what stops the horse
and then your seat is the translator between your driving aids and your restraining aids
the main function of your seat is that it absorbs the motion of the horse's back and you're not ever
asking your horse to go from your seat so let me start to show you all of this in motion so
i'm going to start with the driving aids and i'm going to close my leg and ask my horse to walk
forward and then you see how once my horse walks forward my seat is absorbing the motion of his
back and that's really important because if you're if your legs tell your horse to go forward so for
example if my legs tell him to go but my hips stay locked up you see how he just stops again so my
leg told him to go but my hips are just stopped so now i'm going to tell him to go and now my
hips are moving and you see how he is moving because my hips are moving and that's really
important a lot of riders don't follow the motion of the horse and so then the horse just ends up
stopping again so when we talk about dressage the first thing that we always think about
the base of the dressage training scale is rhythm so just while i'm walking around here
i'm feeling my horse's four beat walk so it's one two three four one two three four one two three
four one two three four i'm counting one when his left front goes on the ground so it's left front
left hind then right front right hind so it's one two three four one two three four one two
three four that's the rhythm of the walk now i can change the tempo of the walk so for example i can
make the tempo slower where now he's going one two three four one two three four one two three four
one two three four that's hard to count or i can make the tempo faster but the first thing always
in dressage is establishing the steady tempo so same thing in the trot if i want my horse to trot
i'm going to start with my leg aid and of course i'm always checking in with my position
and my alignment i have a bad habit of looking down let me know in the comments if you do that
but you can see when i look down how that messes up the alignment because my ear is in front of
my shoulder so i'm reminding myself to sit back and keep my head up my driving aids my legs close
to get him to trot and then my seat is following that and now again in dressage the first thing
is rhythm so i'm counting in my head one two one two one two one two the trot is a two beat rhythm
and for the warm up with my horse i'm just really working on establishing a steady tempo
and a steady contact i'm focusing on my alignment my ear shoulder hip heel and also
my alignment from my elbow straight to the horse's mouth so those are the two things that
i'm thinking about in the warm-up and then for the canner i'm just going through this rather quickly
but again the canner is now a three-beat rhythm but that's always the first thing with any student
or any rider in dressage is feeling and identifying the rhythm and focusing
on your position a lot of what we do in dressage is we want to enhance the horse's natural gaits
and so it's important that you first really are just establishing this steady rhythm with the
correct physician so that you can enhance those gates good boy okay so one of the first exercises
that i do with beginners in dressage is i start working transitions between the walk and the trot
so this is a really good exercise to start with checking out your position checking out your aids
so i'm going to to get him to walk i'm going to pull my tummy in and post slower
until he comes to the walk when he gets to the walk i'm going to add a little driving aid so
you saw i gave him a little kick there with my leg so that he keeps walking with activity and
energy when i want him to trot again i'm going to close my legs and follow through with my seat
immediately absorbing that motion and i really make sure to maintain my alignment
so a lot of what happens in these transitions is people's alignment gets really out of whack
so in the downward transition people tend to do this they just lean forward and pull themselves
out of the saddle and you can see how that threw his balance onto the forehand and he stopped too
much and then a lot of times what happens to the alignment in the upward transition
is people ask for the trot and then they get left behind so they tell the horse come on trot
and then they end up in the back seat so you saw how i fell to the back of the saddle and
made it difficult for him to pick up the trot so it's really important
as you're doing these transitions that you're focusing really on your position so for a correct
upward transition i have that alignment i need to remember to look up ear shoulder hip heel
close both my calf and trot and immediately follow and stay exactly vertical with it
and then for the downward transition i'll do it on the open side of the circle so you guys can see
i'm going to pull my tummy in and stay right with him good boy and also be sure a lot of
dressage is about balance so you want to be sure to spend equal amounts of time
tracking to the left and tracking to the right so i'm going to do those transitions on the right as
well and i'm also really feeling any asymmetries in my horse left and right because i want to work
on improving those over time but again pull my tummy in transition to walk and so these
transitions are really getting my horse on the aids they're getting him listening to my driving
aid where my leg aid makes him go and then my seat and my reign is the restraining eight good boy
the other thing that transitions do and so much of dressage is about transitions is that transitions
start to get the horses hind end engaged so in order to do these nice transitions like he's doing
he has to really come through with his hind end and use his back and his neck and his top line
in order to make these proper transitions and over time with millions and millions of
transitions when you finally get to the grand prix and you're pee offing and passaging that's
what creates engagement that's what creates where the horse gets more up in the withers
and that's really what creates in dressage those beautiful expressive gates that you see
in the olympic horses so this just gives you guys some ideas to start with your dressage and
like i said before dressage is about training and it's really all about the basics so even advanced
riders are always working on their position and working on transitions that never ends so
be sure to let me know in the comments what your biggest struggle is as a beginner dressage rider
and sign up for my mini course on rider position so that you can get some more details
to help you find the correct position and give the correct aids to your horse thanks for watching