Getting the mental, emotional, and physical dynamic right throughout your horse’s life can be challenging. The more you understand how all the pieces fit together, the better.
For every young dressage horse that is being pushed into physical collection too soon, there are even more horses with riders who feel unconfident, unable, or unready to ask their horses to improve their biomechanics.
Every horse and rider pair is different and this blog will give some guidelines to help everyone make better decisions around knowing when it's appropriate to focus on improving your horse's way of moving and when there are other things to prioritize.
The Happy Athlete Training Scale shows the basic priorities. (You can read more about it HERE). It tells us that biomechanics is not important until you and your horse are happy, trusting of each other, and can communicate well. This makes sense if you agree that it doesn't matter how cadenced your horse's canter is if he is afraid, out of control, and trying to run you out of the arena.
Following these priorities doesn't mean your horse's way of moving won't improve while you are in the foundational stages. In fact following this scale, and spending enough time in the basics can be the fastest and easiest way to improve how your horse moves. Fear, confusion, feelings of helplessness, or boredom actively work against the posture of healthy biomechanics. A happy, healthy, calm horse who is mentally and emotionally connected with you will not have the postural problems associated with tension, fear, confusion, or use of strong aids for control. I call this dynamic 'active unhealthy biomechanics'.
'Active Unhealthy Biomechanics'
Horses moving in this tense, contracted way require that you address the underlying happiness, harmony, and/or communication issues that are at the core of the biomechanical problem. These horses don't need more aids, they need more understanding. If you have a horse stuck in this dynamic it is really important to get a fresh perspective, and learn how to work with the mental, emotional, and physical aspects of your horse equally.
I like first to create a horse who is a 'happy camper', or 'comfortable transportation' as my original dressage trainer used to say. Those horses are the 'clean slates' that are easier to influence.
However, students who are unsure of how to improve their horse's biomechanics may wait too long before asking their horses to move more athletically and in balance. They risk creating what I call 'Inactive Unhealthy Biomechanics'. It's when horses plop along on the forehand. This can be physically damaging to the horse over time, even if mentally and emotionally they are in good shape. If your horse is a happy camper, it is time to focus on biomechanics!
So many professional riders with super-talented horses skip this step of creating a nice pleasant riding horse. Unfortunately, super-talented horses can look 'good' and score well even when they are out of control. Our predatory human instincts (consciously or unconsciously) love the sight of a scared prey animal. You can see this any time someone comes into an arena with a bag on a stick to chase their horse around to get impressive photos or show him off for breed shows.
"Pretty is as pretty does" is a good thing to remember. To me, calmness, harmony, and understanding is more beautiful than a tense horse, no matter how extravagant the movement. The hallmark of good biomechanics ought to be that it is a positive, functional, harmonious dynamic. Dressage cannot be better than the quality of the happiness, harmony, and communication underneath it.
Experienced riders need to exercise self-control and avoid over-manipulating the body to gain control. You'll know when you're doing it; the key is to recognize it and choose to address the underlying problems. This was the hardest thing for me to do when I started doing dressage 'differently'. It felt so much easier to just use the techniques that were effective in holding body parts where I wanted them. Ultimately taking the time to address happiness, harmony, and communication was the fastest and most reliable way to find healthy movement.
If you are less experienced, you need to become confident in the process and understand the full value of creating an excellent foundation so you are not tempted to emulate the people who skip that step.
Regardless of your level of experience, if you have self-control and educate yourself to have a more harmonious picture of what you are aiming for, you are set up for the most success. During the foundational work, you will be able to make more refined choices and will notice (and appreciate) the significance of even small changes in a positive direction.
You don't have to go get a science degree in biomechanics. I help people who are brand new to this process by simply asking them to think about the adjectives they would like to feel from their horse. You can do this, too. Take a moment to list (or say out loud) some adjectives you want to feel. As you play with your horse to develop the mental and emotional connection, notice whenever your horse becomes a little more _____ (fill in the blank with your adjective). Horses who feel calm, trusting, eager, and who understand what they are being asked to do carry themselves differently than horses who are afraid and confused.
When you notice them you can highlight those moments in your training, as well as review in your mind what you did to cause that good result.
When you follow the Happy Athlete Training Scale and appropriately prioritize biomechanics, you will approach training differently. You will work with your horse and perform the exercises for your horse.... rather than doing dressage to your horse. Your dressage work will be part of your partnership, rather than an assault on it.
This is the crucial bridge between foundation and sport-specific training, where the mental, emotional, and physical challenges increase. This is the specialty of what we do in Dressage Naturally, and specifically the Sweet Spot of Healthy Biomechanics program.
Example 1: Ignoring Priority 2: Harmony
A young horse trailers in for a lesson with a dressage professional. This horse normally is calm and forward, but at this new facility he is afraid to go into the covered arena. It is time for his lesson and eventually 2 people on the ground lead him in. He is clearly still tense and is now in 'freeze' mode. Because of this he doesn't go forward. Instructions of 'more leg' are useless. Soon the instructor is behind him with a long whip. Even without touching the horse, the horse feels pressured and does move his legs faster but is still quite blocked and tense. Now he is afraid of the arena and the instructor and is likely losing trust in his rider also.
His movement is tense and rigid. He is getting worse emotionally. It becomes a horrible experience with dressage as they are now fighting about things that are normally easy for him.
What could have been done:
By using the Happy Athlete Training Scale it could have been easily determined that it is a harmony (trust) issue. Since that is a higher priority than biomechanics, two options could have been successful and positive:
1) Move the lesson to the outdoor arena right next to the covered so they could do a dressage lesson on an unafraid horse
2) Continue the lesson in the covered arena but the focus would be on the horse feeling calm and confident in that space.
Example 2: Ignoring priorities 1, 2, 3, & 4:
A 7-year-old warmblood with a chronic 'mysterious' lameness who was in professional dressage training yet balky and braced. The owner is afraid of him. Because he was a horse in training the trainers felt compelled to keep riding him even though he was clearly uncomfortable. There was a cycle of brace and mistrust created by strong aids asking the horse to do things that hurt him. His (rightful) defensiveness caused more strong aids to be applied. He became increasingly balky and resistant which caused fear in his owner, which caused the trainers to 'correct' him more. The only training goal was to get him to do dressage. He was kept in a stall with limited turnout and no socialization or ability to forage.
What Worked:
This horse improved when he was given to me. I addressed his lifestyle to meet his basic needs as a horse. I increased our harmony by proving to him that I would not ask him to do things that hurt and that if he 'gave' me his effort, I would not take more. We improved quality of communication about things that were not physically challenging for him. Once he was open to communication I used the Sweet Spot protocol to find the place where he told me he could move comfortably and without pain. This created a positive cycle where everything improved everything. He went on to be a happy athlete for many years!
Example 3: Ignoring priorities 4 & 5:
An 11-year-old Andalusian mare with Natural Horsemanship training often became impulsive and emotional. When she was emotional, her back got very tight and her gaits became stilted and tight. She also became spooky. When this happened it was treated as an emotional issue and she was put through exercises that involved encouraging her to keep moving through some sort of 'puzzle' until she found a way to change her emotional state. These types of exercises can work well on emotional horses as they give the horse the time they need to move all the way through the emotions. However, in her case it became a chronic problem that did not improve.
What Worked:
By consulting the Happy Athlete Training Scale, I determined that there were no 'red flags' regarding her happy lifestyle, harmony between her and me, or communication. She was connected at liberty and could be ridden bridleless. By paying close attention I realized that she would always become impulsive and emotional on the right lead canter. Her emotions would often stay high after the canter, especially if it had been maintained for a while.
This helped me determine that it was a biomechanical issue at its core. I used the Sweet Spot protocol to improve her walk, trot, and left lead canter. Then, I applied specific gymnastic exercises to strengthen the weak side, stretch the tight side, and, in general, create better alignment. As her right lead canter improved, the instances of tension decreased. This led to a positive dynamic where her improved biomechanics caused an improvement in her general emotional state and our connection.
What gave me permission to address this at the level of Priorities 4 & 5 were the assessment of 'good enough' in priorities 1, 2, & 3, as well as noticing the correlation (and causation) of the right lead canter and tension.
Good to note is that even though we started with 'no red flags' and a 'good enough' state of happiness, harmony, and communication, those qualities ended up improving even more when we got to the root cause of the problem.
It's never too early to think about how your horse moves as long as you are committed to improving it from the inside out, and from the bottom of the Happy Athlete Scale, up. You need to be committed to using necessary self-control when it comes to physical manipulation. Posture is a dynamic, not a shape. Precision arrives out of the possibilities that playfulness creates and curiosity can be more powerful than knowledge.
By educating yourself and understanding how you want your horse to move, you can target those qualities during your foundational training.
There are consequences to over-manipulating your horse's body, and there are consequences to not addressing your horse's body at all. Every horse is different and it's so important to have an understanding of the mental, emotional, and physical dynamic happening between you and your horse.
In the Dressage Naturally program in general, and the Sweet Spot protocol in particular, we teach the principles and priorities that will guide you from the beginning to the advanced work. We focus on doing it for the horse and not to the horse. The exercises are created to work in partnership with the horse so they are able to show us what feels best for them, and where their willing participation in the process is paramount.
In the Sweet Spot program we start at the foundational pieces and bring students through the process of improving movement, their rider position, connection with the reins and on to the basics of gymnastic development.
Our highly supported Sweet Spot program opens for registration every March and September. If you have questions you can email us, ask to book a (free) private consultation, or at the very least make sure you are on our mailing list so we can let you know when registration opens!
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