Basic Dressage and the Training Pyramid

I have been reminded about the dressage training pyramid lately.  I just gave a beginning dressage lesson and have also been working with a young horse via another rider.

In the lesson the rider has to be able to start somewhere.  So even though rhythm and relaxation are on the base of the pyramid, things like connection, impulsion, straightness and collection are also needed but are not considered the base of the training.  This horse in my recent lesson is an Arab gelding and is willing to move out.  So in addressing rhythm and relaxation we worked on a couple of things.  We worked on walk halt transitions and trot walk transitions.  From there we worked on half halts and having the horse understand to follow his rider and find his steady relaxed tempo from there.  This worked really quite well.

This horse also liked to over bend his neck and leave his body straight and that would disrupt his balance.  So the other thing I had his rider work on was to keep his neck fairly straight with only a slight bend and then push him with her legs.  This is a straightness issue that helped rhythm and relaxation - so even though it is higher on the training scale, we worked on it as well.  One of the easiest ways to get the horse to start steering from your legs is to do some spiral in and out on a 20 meter circle.  We did that and talked about even bending. 

Another horse however, (a Quarab mare), likes to go crooked and fast and rush or sometimes stall out.  This mare really needs the up and down transitions and needs to follow the rider in her tempo.  The rider was worried about her straightness and I agree that straightness is important - but being relatively straight is enough at first.  It seems like if the rhythm and relaxation is addressed first that the straightness will come.  Perfectly straight is a goal that is critical as you go up the levels.  At first a basic relative straightness will be functional enough.

Each horse has its preferred way of going or of solving problems.  It is fun to help them all come to the middle ground and be more fun to ride.