Your outside leg is a very important ingredient in your bending aids. And many riders seem to forget all about it! Don't forget to keep it down, back, and close to your horse's side.
Did you know that your spine doesn't end at your neck?? It goes all the way up into your head! So when a rider looks down, or juts their head and chin forward, they are compromising that stretched up, vertical spine.
"The rider must listen into the horse, in order to judge when the moment for an aid has come, which aid is needed and how intense it must be. He must know how to create or wait for the right circumstances, to prepare the horse." ~ Gustav von Dreyhausen
If you learn the whys behind each aid or exercise used in each specific circumstance, you will become a more educated rider with a greater ability to be productive. If your instructor doesn’t tell you why, ask!
On riding your horse in a round frame: "If you have the body, you have the head - if you have the head you don't (necessarily) have the body." ~ Jack LeGoff
Always think about the depth of the water when deciding how fast to approach and negotiate a water obstacle. Riding too fast in deep water can easily cause the horse to lose his balance or even fall.
Think about "collection" when asking for a trot or canter extension, so that you remember to keep the rein connection and think about being more up in front, instead of down and out. This will help you to create a more uphill frame with more true hind leg engagement.
Never rush a horse into a complex of jumps that might be hard for him to understand quickly. The more complicated the combination, or the greener the horse, the more time you need to give them to assess the situation clearly.
"Today, people learn to compete before they learn to ride, and that makes it difficult for them to be truly competitive and to progress to other levels." ~ Jack Le Goff
From Facebook fan Joan Childs ~ "Your hands must be free in order to use them effectively. You can not pull, push, follow, open or close your reins if they are busy being a source of your balance."
"Don't try to see a distance, your horse has a pair of eyes and you need to let him use them. The more you do in front of a fence the more you will distract them." ~ Chris Bartle
Even if the rider has all of their body parts generally in the right place, they will feel out of balance and out of "sync" with their horse's movement when the shock absorbing joints in their hips and legs are locked and rigid.
"You should recognize that your equine partner has an eye of its own when jumping and allow a good horse to have some role in the decision making process." ~ Frank Chapot
A little trick for those of you who need to be more stable with your outside rein connection, and your outside hand in general, is to try the temporary exercise of holding onto your saddle pad with the fingers of your outside hand. Stabilizing your outside hand in this way will also help you to learn to better use your body, rather than your hands, to turn your horse.
Too much use of the inside rein will almost always make a horse fight. If your horse is fighting with you in any situation, check that you are not hanging on the inside rein unconsciously.
"Dressage is not an easy sport, there are so many variations, but the reaction to your leg, and straightness, are so important. You just don’t see top Grand Prix riders kicking or straining for a result. Don’t tease him, tap there so quick he doesn’t know it is coming. Everything in a horse’s life should be black and white, not grey." ~ Debbie McDonald
The most energy efficient way for a horse to gallop cross country is to gallop in balance, so that very little adjustments are necessary in front of the fences. If you could gallop in such a way that a fence could drop from the sky and land in front of you when you are just 3 or 4 strides away, and you could jump it well - then you will be giving your horse the best chance to finish the course with plenty of gas in the tank.
Your training goal for the "hot" or high strung horse should be to help him to learn how to control his energy. Don't try to wear him out. That will never work with the truly hot horse.
Michael Jung says he puts particular emphasis on checking his horses’ heart and respiratory rate once before and twice after each ride, the first time immediately after work and the second time after the horse had time to recuperate.
Don't forget that the way the distance rides between two jumps changes as the fence height changes. The horse will land further into a line or combination when the jumps are larger, which makes the distance effectively shorter.
The old masters learned early on that riding accurate arena patterns is the key for improving a horse's balance and straightness. Always keep this in mind in your training.
When you are teaching your horse something new, begin to teach it to him in the direction that he finds the easiest, so that it is a more positive experience for him.
Be extra careful when conditioning both young horses and older horses. Young horses have tendon/ligaments/bones that have not yet been strengthened. And the older horse’s ligaments and tendons tend to become less elastic and resilient over time.
