It's all your fault!

If going to the gym has taught me one thing, it is that no matter how tired and unmotivated you are... you must do it!

As the weather gets colder and the days shorter, it is easier and easier to skip going out to the barn.
"I have so much shopping to do before everyone comes over!"
"This isn't the show season, so I can get away with riding 4x a week."
"It is too cold, we won't get anything done in 35 degree weather."
"It is too dark to find my horse in the pasture."
"I am tired from work, my horse can have just another day off without killing him."
and the list goes on...

Think of how much you lose every time you skip a ride. After a while, it really adds up!
Before you know it, spring will get here and you will be less prepared for the dressage tests you rode so nicely at the end of last fall!

I have put off going to the gym for a long time, because I was to busy/tired/intimidated. On my first day, the exercise class played a song with the lyrics "It's all your fault". The teacher kept telling us "It's all your fault!" and added, that we wouldn't be tired if we had started doing this last year... It's all your fault!... you wouldn't have to work so hard if you hadn't had a muffin for breakfast... It's all your fault!

What I learned from that "lecture" was that fitness and riding have a lot in common - you get out what you put in.

So next spring, when you have been working your horse(s) at your chosen, winter pace. Just think of that song.

Whether you nail that change you didn't have this fall or you can barely sit the trot you had mastered this past spring... It's All Your Fault!

Intercollegiate Dressage

A friend recently posted this photo on Facebook of our Intercollegiate Dressage Team. It has been years since I saw that photo and had forgotten how much fun I had EVERY minute on the Mount Holyoke College Dressage team .


In Intercollegiate Dressage competition, you pull the name of a horse you have never seen before and get to watch someone warm it up in front of all of the competitors. Later in the day, you have 15 minutes to warm the horse up yourself and then go in and ride a dressage test.
(Someone correct me if I have any of this wrong, it has been a while!)

Sure, you were a slave to luck and you could end up pulling a somewhat fancier horse in your class. But, most of it was about how strong of a rider you were.

I remember, in the fall of my first Intercollegiate season, writing an article for Equisearch.com about how easy I thought it would be to ride a First Level test - when I had just come off FEI Young Riders on my own horses. Was I wrong! Getting on a strange horse and scoring in the 60s after riding it for 15 minutes is a far cry from competing your own horse, no matter what level!


Let's just say I did well, but not amazingly well. Our team captain, Amelia, had never ridden at Young Riders and was the strongest rider in our First (highest) Level division in the country. I think I ended up 3rd in the year end rankings, behind Colleen O'Connor (who is also a lovely rider and now a trainer at Majestic Gaits Farm in New England).


Intercollegiate riding takes the skills of a trainer to be able to get on a strange horse and recognize the best way to get the two of you successfully through a test. It takes the knowledge of a judge to appreciate where you can get extra points. It takes the mental focus of a professional athlete to be able to juggle schoolwork with a demanding schedule of training/competition AND remain calm in this high-stress environment.


Apart from my experiences competing/riding my own horses, I credit Intercollegiate riding (yes, I also did the Equitation Team!) with preparing me for all aspects of my dressage career. Besides Colleen, I know that my teammate, Nina, has a great equestrian blog herself. I am sure countless others have gone on to pursue careers in the equestrian world.

-I feel more comfortable getting on a new horse and connecting with them as soon as possible.
-I have a deeper understanding of how accurate and correct your test needs to be to succeed.
-I appreciate the dressage marks that can/cannot be changed by brilliant movement.

-I see the value in a support system for dressage. The more people you can have on your team, the easier it is to succeed.

I am so excited to see the Intercollegiate program growing (when I competed, we just starting hosting a National Championships), like the USDF/USEF Young Rider Graduate Program, Lendon Gray Youth Festival and USDF Youth Team Championships.

Having attended all of these programs, I think that they are the future of our sport in the United States. I believe that the emphasis on equitation and horsemanship at all of these programs will create a higher caliber rider in our younger generations.


So, if you know of anyone that is considering Intercollegiate Dressage... tell them that it is educational and fun for any level of rider. In the meantime, enjoy my Intercollegiate Dressage photo from my archives:

Mount Holyoke Dressage Team with our amazing coach, Rebecca Schurink at Dartmouth in 2003(?). First and Reserve placings for our A and B Teams!

Just 5 more!

I am going to post this before I have lost all use of my arms :(

My first session at the gym was great, but hard as heck! It has made me think about a few things:

1. Do my students hate me as much as I hate my fitness trainer?!?! By the end of the session, I wanted to smother her with my gym towel.
2. I have a new appreciation for being told: A. How much time I have left before I am done. B. When the next break is. If I can incorporate this even more into my teaching and training, I am sure my horses and students will be even happier with me.
3. Keeping your toes up encourages your knees to bend and stay that way. When riding, think toes up - not heels down - and your knees will stay bent and underneath you more easily.
4. Pushing yourself past your fitness level is good... to a point. After that, you just turn into a hot mess. When riding, never push your horse or yourself past the point of fatigue - it doesn't accomplish anything except improper execution of a movement, which can lead to injury.

After a quick recovery, I am off to teach and ride my own horse. I hope he doesn't expect me to carry him, now that I have my new muscles!

Anyone can just sit there! (Or, why dressage riders need to think about Dynamic Balance more)

How many of you have heard someone refer to riding dressage as "just sitting there, while the horse does the work"? We ALL know that is not true, though our job is to make it look like we are just sitting there (doing nothing).

At Session A, we discussed this immobility. Our instructor, Sandy Howard, highlighted a story about a group of "body experts" that went around to different sports and analyzed the muscles required to succeed. At first glance, they assumed that a rider did not use many muscles to perform with the horse. However, the stabilizing muscles in a dressage rider are working harder than it appeared to these "body experts". Like a gymnast on a balance beam, a dressage rider uses muscles to remain immobile when forces would prefer them to be falling all over the place - known as dynamic balance (the ability to control the body during motion).

These balancing muscles are very important for keeping us not only upright in the saddle, but effective. We can only relax our hips and let our legs drop in the sitting trot when we have enough strength to function without these training wheels.

Working without stirrups, doing transitions on the lunge without rein aids and "core" strengthening off the horse all help improve a person's balancing muscles for dynamic balance.

That is why I have signed up for a gym membership... and a personal trainer.

Someone once told me that you need to ride 2 horses to be fit enough to ride 1 well. As a trainer, I would rather ride all of the horses at 110%. It is time to have a taste of my own medicine and let a professional push me past where I would go on my own :)

It may not be time for New Year's resolutions yet, but I say we all promise ourselves that we will work without stirrups a little more... take lunge lessons a little more... and treat ourselves like athletes.

So get those stabilizing muscles working and kick off those "training wheels" for good. Anyone can just sit there. A real dressage rider does not!

Here is a random golf video that 'drives' my point home. Watch the video, think about this blog post and see how you can combine the two to improve your balance while riding:

Giving Back

A few people were surprised to read my Linda Zang blog post. They couldn't believe that a professional would candidly write about their weaknesses as a rider, especially in writing. Others were shocked to hear that I shared my clinic video with some of my students, pointing out what I was doing wrong and how to fix it. The thing is, if I have students/potential clients that imagine I am a perfect rider, let me be the first to point out that no one is a perfect rider!

I truly believe that if my learning experience can be another's learning experience, than I don't mind "throwing myself under the bus" for a few minutes. I carry the same belief when writing this blog. When I don't make it through the "L" Program perfectly, I hope that the good, bad and the ugly will help all of my readers learn something.

Story time....

In 2008, I was fortunate enough to attend the USDF/USEF Advanced Young Rider Graduate Program that ran in conjunction with the USDF FEI Trainers' Conference. Carol Lavell came to speak and told us that we should never be afraid to be seen as a learner. I take that to heart every time I feel like hiding my own riding weaknesses, when strengthening them can only improve my skills as a trainer and help educate my students.

Carol Lavell also told us something else, that I not only remember when I share my own riding lessons but also keep in mind when I have any opportunity to give back to the sport (even if I still have a road ahead to get to 'glory'!):

"Give credit where credit is due,
Don't take credit when it's not about you.
Remember the dressage world is very small,
Fame comes to those who stand very tall.
Honor those who give you their time,
Boosting you so your star can shine.
When and if you climb to glory,
It's now time to write a new story
About sharing , giving, helping, support,
It's now your time to give back to your sport."

"Old School" photo from the '07 USDF/USEF Advanced Young Rider Graduate Program!

Special thanks to the Dressage Foundation for sponsoring such great memories.

Linda Zang

I just rode with Linda Zang yesterday and it was very informative. It is amazing how you can train students/horses all day and then work your own horse in some funny way that has nothing to do with your own system... so we straightened that out pretty fast!

First, we looked at the saddle fit - which I do with my own students and horses in training - to determine that, even though it was a custom, it had fallen back since the last fitting. A little padding in the rear and suddenly it was easy to keep myself in a correct position. DUH! number one.

ISSUE:
I had asked to work on a better throughness and contact, because my horse tends to get too tight and light in front and has his head in a false frame. Actually, I explained it to Linda as being in "A Biomechanical Funk!" - I just didn't feel a constant connection between my horse's hind to front and my body to his.

ANSWER:
From riding my horse without mirrors/coach for a while, I had started to look down to "watch" him. It collapsed my torso and got me hovering over him with my elbows slightly out. As a result, I had given up the catching aids of the outside - the constant support of the outside rein and stability of my core.

SOLUTION:

First thing to note, before we do the exercise:
1. Outside supporting aids (rein and leg) keep your horse on a circle that is slightly off the track, so you can monitor that you aren't using the wall to replace your outside aids.

2. Outside rein keeps your horse connected and should be steadily holding him in the contact. If you feel like you need to pull back/sideways with this rein, it means you need to soften slightly and use more outside leg.

3. Inside rein softens and asks him to come deeper if he is too high/tight in his neck. Test this by keeping your outside aids and getting him to drop down lower by opening your inside rein inward (but not back). Inside leg helps you.


As you are riding a slightly smaller circle,
bring your ears over your shoulders,
keep your elbows in at your side,
sit on your outside seat bone,
bring your outside shoulder back
and then drop your weight into your inside, making sure to keep your inside hip to shoulder nice and tall... even though you have weighted your outside seatbone, you are now bringing your weight to the inside and keeping both sides of your body in place.

As you are reading this, try in your wheeled desk chair to turn in a circle with your inside seat bone and note where your torso goes (falls in and collapses on the inside?)... then try pushing with your outside seatbone, keeping your shoulder back, and putting weight into your inside leg and seat as you do it. Notice how the second keeps your torso more upright?

Linda said to think of fencing with your inside hand (where your outside supports and stays back). This is the correct way of staying upright and stable versus turning your horse like a bicycle (where your outside falls forward and your inside collapses). The correct way gives you the ability to stay upright and even with the horse. When you pay attention to your outside, you can more easily fill that outside supporting rein with contact and then the horse is through - even when you turn, do lateral work, etc.

This is not an exercise for everyone, but hopefully (for those who tend to collapse their middle and let go of their outside aids) this will help!

Scribing

Now that my writing hand has rested from an 8:30-12:30 shift as a scribe for "R" judge, Gina La Croix, I am ready to report back on how it went.

Gina said that I could write anything about how the day went, even the bad stuff... unfortunately for her, nothing bad happened and I can only write about how educational and fun it was ;)

I learned how helpful it is to speak to your scribe in language that is easy to get down on paper. For every movement, Gina would say "Movement X. comment. comment. score". For example: Movement 1. Straight Entry. Balanced Halt. Weaving after X. 6."

Also, Gina had a sheet for each dressage test. Each sheet had a diagram of the dressage arena for each movement and she had drawn in the start and stop of each movement. The trot was marked in green, canter in red, so she could tell where the horse was supposed to be and what movement it corresponded to. This made scoring very clear, because when the horse was on the path that corresponded to box 19 (corresponding to movement 19), Gina knew to apply the score from that section towards movement 19. This seems easy to do, but when you ride through the test you realize that there are some gray areas between figures that might go to movement 19 or 20, depending. To maintain fairness as a judge and clarity as a competitor, it is very important that you learn where each movement of your tests begin and end.

Also, scoring each movement makes me understand how long/short some movements can be. For example, in Training 2 there is a movement in the beginning that includes a circle and the whole track before the horse turns onto the diagonal. First 4, however, has so many movements for the canter work that you almost have to rush through the scoring or else you will get behind.

The long movement in Training Level leaves you time to improve the movement's score, but also mess it up when it was going well. On the other hand, the quick movements in First 4 leave you little time to correct something that is going wrong before you have accumulated multiple low scores, but it also allows you to earn more strong scores if you correct something quickly and continue on well.

This leads me to a separate discussion I had with Gina later in the day. I asked her if she thought it was appropriate to move a horse up to Fourth 1 when it had confirmed his changes.
Here is what I think I got from her:
-Third Level only gives you 2 opportunities to change, while Fourth Level 1 gives you 4. If your horse gets the changes clean most of the time, you risk 1/2 of your change scores in Third but only 1/4 in the Fourth 1.
-Fourth Level 1 has more movements and more lateral work that should be confirmed from Second Level, so even if you mess up on a change, you have more movements to make points back.
-Gina also noted that waiting until you can change at a letter before moving up might not be that important, since a clean change a little after the letter can still get an ok score. Is 2 more points worth waiting to move up?

I hope what I repeated is what she was telling me. Either way... I am sold on the idea of moving up to Fourth Level sooner rather than later and am curious to hear reader's thoughts.

More later!

What do YOU think?!?!

As a dressage trainer, I am always giving my opinion on dressage related issues. People are always asking for my opinion and many of my business relationship require that I have an answer.

That is why I really listened in Session A when Sandy Howard outlined the role of the judge. No matter what you know about a horse/rider coming into the ring, you cannot let it affect your scores. While it is your job to alert the appropriate people when a horse is being abused in the warm-up ring, that is where your business in that arena ends. You must always remember that when you are a judge, you are not a trainer. You can point out what is lacking in your test comments, but you cannot suggest a training technique to get there or assume something was done incorrectly to result in what you are seeing.

How interesting that the complimentary roles of judge and trainer can also be such a dichotomy.

Take for example, the case of the "Blue Tongue" at the World Cup. One of my blog readers came up to me at the barn and asked me if I was going to post something about it on my blog. Although I have quite an opinion on the whole thing (as a trainer, rider, competitor and horse owner), I could not think of how to write a post about it from an "L" perspective.

Then, I realized that the very issue I was having was the heart of this whole post - what aspects of this Blue Tongue issue are fair game for a judge to comment on, as a judge in general and as a judge at that event? I have ideas, but welcome your input and look forward to forming a more concrete opinion as I go through the "L" Program and then after that.

In the meantime, I will enjoy my remaining days as a "non-judge" by giving my opinion on any and everything, to anyone who wants to hear it :)

Young Horse Tests

I was fishing through my old Dressage Today magazines and came upon a January 2007 article titled "Young Horse Training As A Career".

Before I begin, let me just say: We have come a long way, baby!

OK. So what I was going to say is that in the final sentence, it reads:

"Also, Blake has found that the emphasis on improving gaits for Young Horse tests is also beneficial when riding dressage tests."

Yes!

This is something I have heard a lot from young horse trainers. When done properly, focusing on the "big picture" for the Young Horse tests allows the rider to focus on the quality of the gaits over the individual movements... which anyone who rides the old(?) horse tests, knows that sometimes we are pressured by the individual movements in a test. However, focusing on the gaits first and then improving the movements will build a quality horse - that is what Blake was saying in this article about the Young Horse tests. I will take it one step further and argue that it is essential to all horses and we need to train every horse with the same quality - by working to maintain/improve the quality of the gaits as we move on to individual movements.

In fact, just the other day I was talking with a client about how I have a more advanced horse that is starting to want to back off in the canter, after his forward warmup and as he collects more and/or does smaller circles.

Today, I plan to lunge him in side reins and focus on driving him into the contact from behind. I hope that, as I carefully monitor from the ground, I can bring him in on smaller circles and keep him jumping behind. Although it is possible to do this in the saddle, lungeing allows me to watch every second of his stride and affect it just as quickly. Because this is an important problem (4-beat canter) to avoid, I cannot risk feeling it from the saddle on the days that I don't have a second set of eyes on the ground.

For the next couple of weeks I may have to do this a few days a week, for short sets, and then plan to get on and school him after the lunge. The goals is to have him working at 100% in the canter on a routine that builds his confidence and strength while he reconfirms a solid 3-beat canter. I also plan to do some forward canter under saddle and a nice gallop outside just as much. For now, the best thing to improve his movements is to improve the quality of the canter. As a result, the movements will improve (without evening working them!).

Visualize your test!

Yesterday, I came across a great website for visualizing your tests - because they actually have a video of each test next to the written movements!

Here is the link, where the list each test.

... and here is a short clip of my latest dressage test on youtube. I put it up recently to show what they are looking for in the release of rein in the Third 2 canter circle. (it is mostly so I can experiment with putting video up on my blog!)