Would Watching/reading Too Many Books on Dressage Be Deterimental Towards My Riding?
I’ve been riding for quite a few years now, but I’ve just recently started riding dressage with a new instructor at a new barn and let me tell you- it’s hard! I was taught how to ride wrong for a long time at my old barn, and now I have a lot of bad habits to break and I have absolutely 0 self esteem in my horseback riding skills right now because I’ve been told that basically everything I’ve been doing for the past 7 years was wrong. Although my new instructor is great, I’ve just kinda had trouble grasping the concepts of dressage and sometimes I don’t really understand what she’s telling me because I am totally lost and confused and doubting everything I do. I’m such a horse nerd and I desperately want to get my hands on every single piece of dressage literature on the market right now and learn everything RIGHT, but I’m nervous because my instructor says that I "overthink" A LOT while riding and that I need to stop thinking and just ride. I feel like thats easy for her to say but I need direction to know how to ride correctly in the first place, right? Anyway, from personal experience do you find that reading a lot about dressage theory confuses you and overwhelms you when you get on your horse to ride, or do you think it’ll be helpful? I just ordered the USDF Guide to Dressage today and was thinking about also getting Sally Swift’s Centered Riding or some of Jane Savoie’s stuff? HELP! ):
I do like the Guide to Dressage; it has less training than the others, but it is a very good place to get definitions of terms.
Both of Sally Swift’s books are excellent for general riding; Centered Riding 2 is actually a refinement and rewording of Centered Riding, and I like it better of the two. It isn’t really a sequel! The DVDs are also good. The first one is great; the second one is very short and only has canter on it. I didn’t find it as useful.
Jane Savoie’s things are almost too simplistic. While I like her teaching in person, and I like the books, her videos are pitifully short, and confusing to me. They seem very expensive for what you get.
Spend some time and money and buy the basic Reiner Klimke DVD. While it is not a specific "do this, do that" instruction dvd, all of them are so wonderful to develop your eye. He makes it so "simple" by working on the horse being straight and loose. I really like these, and they have been re-issued. I first saw them in VHS and they were in German, so all I could do is watch, since my German is limited to lunging terms for the imported horses I have had! http://www.dressage-ext.com/ProductDetail.asp?KEY=41541 http://www.dressage-ext.com/ProductDetail.asp?KEY=4284
When you train your eye to see the big picture of the finished horse, you don’t get lost so much in the trees of this goes here, that goes there.
Always remember: Inside leg to outside receiving hand. That is the ever present precept of every dressage movement.
Good Luck, and try to have fun rather than worry so much. It’s tough that you were taught improperly to begin with; so many riders unfortunately are not given a good base, and those habits are hard to break.