What Do You Do in Beginning Dressage?
I’m starting english lessons soon and my instructor said we would be starting off with basic dressage. What does that mean? I know dressage is sort of like horse dancing (at the more advanced level) but what will I be doing?
mostly you will start with transitions, and then probably riding circles and keeping the horse on a perfectly strait line. and learning about diagonals too. keeping the same tempo whilst riding a certain pace etc. dont worry you wont be doing hard things and im sure your instructor can tell you what to expect before your lesson.
Basic Dressage:
Extending
Collecting
Transitions
Shoulders-In
Haunches-In
Turn on the Forehand
Haunches Out
Dressage is the movement of the horse and learning how to control the horse while guiding them through different maneuvers.
You will be learning to ride.
You will learn to walk, trot, and canter your horse. You will be working up the "training pyramid" of rhythm, relaxation, connection, impulsion, straightness and collection. You will learn what those terms mean. (It it a long way up, takes years and years to get really good at it, days to start enjoying it).
To start, you will need to learn to sit on your horse so that he can do what you ask him without your weight interfering with his movement. You will learn to sit so that your hands are still and don’t jerk on his mouth. You will learn to sit so that you are not afraid of falling off all the time and can concentrate on the other aspects of riding.
Training level dressage tests require walk, trot, and canter in straight lines and circles, as well as halting. Nothing very exotic or difficult, but you are judged on how well it is done. (how straight, how round, how the horse trasitions from one gait to another, how relaxed and obedient the horse is) If you can ride dressage, you can learn other styles of riding with no trouble.
Have fun and don’t worry about the details of what you will be doing, just every ride try to be as good a rider as you can, because it will help your horse be as good a horse as he can be and together you will get better.