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Simple
1. warm up allow him to be long and low, but his paces must be snappy, do 10 minutes of snappy walk and trot and ask for one short canter each way on large circle.
2. start to collect him up a little and now do heaps of transitions. Is he listening to your aids – don’t allow him to have you kicking all the time. Ask with a squeeze, tap once or twice with your leg then use your dressage whip with a tickle or occasionally one firm get up from the whip is required. He must go from your aids.
Now do heaps of transitions. Each time you ask for a transition up and down he has to move his hindquarters in underneath himself. It is like a mini push up. Then repeat the same from walk trot etc. Then move onto halt trot, trot halt. Once you have mastered this then try walk canter, canter trot. Till you can eventually get walk canter walk, then halt to canter.
My 11 year old trained her pony to do this in around 4 weeks – thats to give you an idea how long this training tacks. Have someone check that he is going snappy forward – but not rushing.
That is where impulsion and lightness come from, these mini push ups. All dressage riders do lots of transitions (or should) on Advanced horses you’d do 200 in a training session.

Dropping his shoulder in circles/corners. Sorry this comes from your riding. I’ll list aids as I don’t know where you are up to.
1. Thought, which way am I about to turn and prepare with a half halt if needed.
2. Weight – this is how you sit in the saddle. You lead with you seat aid. If turning left, place you inside seat bone slightly forward and press slightly into the inside stirrup.
3. Leg, place inside leg on just behind the girth with a little extra weight in this stirrup. Outside leg rest on horses side further back.
4. Rein aid. Turn your sholders in the dirrection you are turning. Give forward slightly with the outside rein but still hold weight in this rein – don’t loose contact. With your inside rein lead the way (move the rein away from the horses neck, a bit like gently opening a gate with the back of your hand). Now this is important keep your thumbs up when riding – soft hands. When you lead with that inside rein your hand turns slightly over (thumb away from you) – so you could check out that your nail polish is okay! This is riding with soft hands leading the way.
5. Then back these aids up with voice, whip as required.
6. You can carry your whip on inside shoulder to prevent a leaner from falling in – but best correct your riding.

Falling in could be incorrect bend at times – I’ve got tricks to prevent this also. Here is my email: hayd.s@xtra.co.nz. Feel free to email me any questions you’d like answered. I trained at the Talland School of Equitation in England, and I have riden horses through to GP level dressage. But more importantly I train my daughter and neice so can relate to all these issues you are talking about and have had them myself. So don’t mind helping a keen dressage person.
Hope this has helped. Best of luck with your competitions.

p.s. set up rewards for yourselves. Start with 10 minutes very good work, then increase to 20 minutes by end of first week. Keep at 20 minutes solid work then in 3 weeks time aim for 30 minutes each time you ride of good hard work. After this reward yourselves and do what ever you want to keep you both happy – ride down road, jumping, games, ride at beech….

You need to urge him on into the bridle and into your hands to increase the impulsion, because he should WANT to be moving forward. When he drops his shoulder, you need to be aware of your legs and you need to use them without quite so much moving them in order to push his body OUT of the circle. And sometimes (this is kind of a bad habit) when you’re out exercising him and he’s heavy on the forehand, drop your hands slightly so he isn’t leaning on them. Hope this helps a little.

what kat said is what i would say!

I just answered your other question and the same answer applies – you need to work on getting those quarters under him and lifting him off the forehand. You might find it useful to use spurs.

The ability to carry weight on the hind legs is something that a horse needs to develop over time. It’s hard work for them, and if they’re in the habit of going on the forehand it can be quite tricky to convince them to change.

Some exercises I use with a horse that’s heavy on the forehand:

Lots of upward and downward transitions – The horse has to use its back end properly to do a good transition, and the more you practise them, the more likely the horse is to improve.

Increasing and decreasing circles – Start on a 20m circle, then spiral your horse in to a smaller circle. Only do the size of circle that your horse can cope with for his level of fitness and training. Then spiral him back out to the 20m circle. Another variation of this exercise is to spiral the horse in, and then leg yield back out to the larger circle.

The point of this circle exercise is to get the horse’s inside hind leg coming in underneath his body properly. Focus on bending the horse nicely through his whole body, and remember that the bend on a smaller circle is greater than that on a bigger circle, so the horse will have to bend more as you spiral in, and then he can straighten out a bit and relax as you get back on the bigger circle.

Make sure you do it evenly on both sides, use a lot of inside leg, a consistent contact on your outside rein, and keep a nice steady forward pace. I’d do it in walk first, and then trot. It sounds simple, but it’s a really great exercise!

The other thing I’d suggest is that you work on your half halts. There isn’t space for me to explain this, so I suggest looking it up in a few good books, or asking an experienced dressage trainer.

Oh, and focus on keeping nice light hands. If the horse takes up a lot of contact on the reins, then give the reins forward so you don’t end up having a pulling match. Have no contact for a brief moment, and then take up a light contact again with the horse’s mouth.

This stuff is kinda complex to get across in a yahoo answer, but I hope some of what I’ve said is useful to you. Good luck!

I find these to be very common issues with new dressage horses. What you have to remember is that just like for us dressage techniques have to be practiced over and over again until he "gets" it and is physically ready to remember it.

I had a gelding just like your horse. He was hard and heavy. This horse was not lazy he just didn’t understand how to use his body and had used it incorrectly for 11 years.

I would guess after 6 or 7 months of work ( I rode 6 days a week, 4 in the arena 2 out and about) the light bulb finally clicked on. He went from hard and heavy to soft, light and big moving in one lesson. It just had to finally click for him.

For the most part, in the beginning, we simply let this horse move the way he felt comfortable as long as it was forward.. We worked on leg yields, long and low, lengthening at the trot, always working on creating more quality in the gait but focusing on skills that would help develop that quality. We also did many many longline sessions teaching him to collect and then lengthen without a rider. Many times he just didn’t have the muscle to have a quality gait and it just took time to get there.