Why Back to Basics?

This is a still image from a video in low light where the rider is working on rhythm and relaxation with minimal contact and encouraged lower head carriage. The result is some brief long and low work, in which the horse must use her back correctly, thereby strengthening all the correct muscles we want strong. Note the long stride as there is no restriction here, just a relaxed natural stride. The martingale is unnecessary for this task, but was habitally put on. The blue bandage was to support an injury to heal. Also note that although the horse is behind the vertical, it is not due to the rider, but because the horse is testing this new frame and how she must balance.

So often I find people forget about their basics. They assume their horses can do something when they haven’t practised in years. Often the horse does not do it successfully, let alone in a relaxed manner. Experienced horse people realise this when they reflect that their most recently trained horses are the more reliable. The knows-how-to-do-everything-and-no-need-to-practice horse is great at what they get pulled out of the paddock for but little more.

Basics means they yield to pressure

and they are RELAXED at all times.

For if a horse is not relaxed then they cannot perform at their best.

Relaxed means your horse is learning, is focused, is calm, and therefore is reliable. Relaxed means they are least likely to spook or shy.

Relaxed means:

1. if they do spook they will still listen to you and therefore should do little more than flinch
2. they won’t become stressed if pressure is persisted with. A relaxed horse will know to keep looking for the correct response when the pressure is maintained. This is the horse thinking about what that pressure might mean, and yielding to your pressure.

If a horse is not relaxed then they will be tense, reactive, will be easily distracted, will not be focused on what you want them to be doing.

Relaxed is your Basic Goal.

Once your horse is relaxed you have achieved rhythm. I say it this way because you can have rhythm without relaxation, but provided your horse isn’t lazy you cannot have relaxation without rhythm (except with cases of lameness).

To achieve relaxation ask for an attempt, reward it, and repeat it. With successful repetitions you can then ask for more, like a full stride, reward it, repeat it, and you have obedience. By this point in your training thanks to repetition and consistency you will have relaxation. Rhythm comes easily with a relaxed horse.

Once you have a relaxed, rhythmic horse then you can work on your contact. If you try to get contact first then you will be interrupting your horse’s rhythm and probably making them tense. That is why the pyramid works this way. It’s quite logical. Don’t forget your straightness though. If your horse moves in a crooked fashion then its too early for improving contact.

Contact naturally develops after rhythm, relaxation, and basic straightness are established. Then you will begin to feel the improvement of impulsion, and thereafter true straightness, and eventually at very high levels of dressage training: collection.

Without this gradual progression you cannot attain excellence. The progression builds the muscle for later success.

And there is absolutely no fault in working on the basics. Improving the basics, especially relaxation, will benefit you no end. At the least you have a calm horse who is improving his strength and listens well in his training. At the best you progress through the levels of dressage with a calm ease.

Consider an exercise in a dressage arena, where along the long side you increase the trot to become ‘a big trot’ making sure it is ‘overtracking’ or ‘tracking up’. Along the short side you bring the trot back to a ‘small trot’ where there is no requirement to track up, and you encourage the opposite (but do not attempt collection yet, just let your horse have a lazy small trot). The acceleration and decelleration improve impulsion.

Do not work on both collection and extension at the same time. This is why I say small and big trot. Work on one thing at a time. This is extremely important because then your horse has an opportunity to relax. For dressage riders, rather than big and small trot, you will have working trot with either collection or extension.

Ideally there would be two opportunities for relaxation.

First, once the big trot is established (because impulsion comes from the acceleration; only later is a horse strong enough to maintain it at pace). Establish the big trot then you should relax and let them move underneath you covering ground in a big trot.

Second, after you have shortened their stride, preparing for the corner, and then having established the small trot is when you should you relax. The basic activity does not require a working trot, just the horse’s comfortable pace (for they are probably not strong enough to achieve the more rigorous activity so don’t let them fail at it).

If your horse slows down or speeds up during the relax point this is okay. They will be trending towards their normal way of going. So a lazy horse will maintain the little trot but slow after you relax in the big trot and a reactive tense horse will maintain a big trot (though it will likely be more fast than big) but speed up after the little trot is established. This is okay and not to be punished in the early stages.

Early stages are when you are rewarding your horse’s attempts so that they know what is expected of them. Then you work towards a couple more strides before relaxation, and then a couple of strides at consistent rhythm before deliberately slowing for relaxation.

Back to basics means you reward the attempt, and through practice and gradual shaping you perfect it until you have the four paces: medium, working, extended, and collected trot. This is the very end goal. Think small trot and big trot for now. You might even need to have your riders figure out what their small, medium, and big trots are. This is very helpful for polocrosse riders, since they need those three paces and the control it requires at canter and gallop as well.

If you forget your basics then you will make your horse tense because you will not provide the relax-reward. Everyone can see you have forgotten your basics because you will no longer be relaxed, and likely will not have rhythm either. And if your horse is resisting then you will also not have connection or contact, and without contact there is no impulsion to be pleased with.

The difficult task of a reactive horse

On-lookers, or the audience, may mistake the attempts of a rider on a reactive tense horse as the rider forgetting their basics or attempting too much too soon. A rider on a lazy horse may also attempt too much too soon but that is more rarely acknowledged. The more difficult task is managing the reactive horse. The rider does less training damage (ie creates fewer problems) when trying too much too soon on a lazy horse than on a reactive horse.

Often the more reactive horse needs more to think about to keep their focus. Without focus they cannot relax and they cannot have rhythm. Timing of the release of pressure, especially by the hands, is extremely important in reactive horses. It absolutely must be consistent. You must also remember to always provide leg pressure to make them move forward when you want rather than making a habit of releasing the rein pressure to mean move forward. If you train your horse to move forward at the release of rein pressure then they will always be accelerating on a light rein. Acceleration should only occur with the leg pressure aid.

If your horse has this habit then check yourself immediately and at all times. Always apply leg to mean forward and then vary when the rein pressure releases. This means that sometimes you maintain rein pressure when you apply leg, then release reins, (intended result: walking rather than trotting forward) and other times you will apply leg pressure with no rein contact and then check with the reins (intended result: they jog forward and you check them to walk). After a lot of practice, especially with the loose rein checking regularly, your horse should realise that the most comfortable way forward is in a relaxed manner at walk, and that they do not need to anticipate or get excited about a faster pace until you say so.

For a walk that is speeding up, you must make your horse uncomfortable until he walks calmly again. I find there are two ways in which to easily do this. One by lowering their head carriage and giving with your hands so they take longer strides (automatically more relaxed). Two is by halting your horse as soon as they begin to jigjog, then rein back, and ask with leg pressure applied for walk again.

This is why polocrosse horses and other high performance horses are quite calm. Not only are they fit (and therefore don’t get muscle sore as often) and often get very tired (therefore learn to conserve energy rather than use it all up quickly), these horses are also very well trained. Because they train at speed as well then they learn to tell apart when faster speeds are necessary and when they are not.

This is exactly why you should practice big trot down the long side and little trot along the short side. Intra-gait transitions – or varying the pace in the same gait – is extremely good for your horse and for your aids and training.

Once you have done the big trot a couple of times then you should ask for big, small, and big again all down the long side. Remember how I said above that the impulsion comes from the acceleration? This is why you work towards two lots of acceleration down the long side. Its a strengthening exercise. Do not do this first or you will compromise your relaxation. First only accelerate once down the long side.

The deceleration or down transition is also extremely important, but more for contact and balance, and later for collection. It will be the weaker transition, and should be at first. You can improve it by riding down hills, but be careful not to do too much or your horse will get sore shoulders (just like you at the gym, but they won’t know quite why, only that it hurts).

Beyond the Basics

The rest of the training scale is definitely no longer basics. Straightness is very difficult to attain. In the basics you just want to be not over bent unless you specifically are doing an exercise that requires your horse to be. When collection naturally happens it is correct and beautiful. When it is forced everything else goes wrong and experienced coaches can see this. We know all the common problems because people want what they think collection is. That is often not collection.

But do not think that straightness should not be a focus.

Straightness should always be a focus. Do not think of it as the high goal to be attained until every other element below it in the training scale is achieved. That is collection. The high goal of straightness is about canter strikeoffs on a straight line.

The common goal of everyone else for straightness is about controlling the hindquarters and having them where you want them. Its also about being deliberately crooked whether in leg yeild (where the body is bent just the right amount) or if you want to improve your aids and have your horse walking straight all but for his head curled around. This is quite difficult and differentiates the leg aids from the rein aids. It also requires a lot of balance and strength on the horse’s part let alone a flexible neck and a non-resisting contact. It’s actually a great way to untrain a habitually resisting horse (provided they are fit enough). But only do it when you mean to. Do not let them do it when you haven’t asked or you really will be crooked and have problems.

Basics should always be a goal revisited and practised. When they are achieved everything else follows. Remember Relaxation. If you don’t have it then you need to get it. Slow down your activity and achieve it first. In pony club lessons walk and trot first before going faster. Often in pony club the lack of relaxation is because you need to condition the horse to be used to the activity ie. desensitise.

Good luck. This was primarily about the dressage training scale, or pyramid of training. Read my article about the book Academic Horse Training by Andrew McLean and Manuela McLean to better understand the shaping scale and how to improve your paces most efficiently.

If you are doing something in a relaxed manner then you have achieved them. Have fun riding.