The Horse Forum banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

What are you working on?

54K views 510 replies 109 participants last post by  Tigo 
#1 ·
It might be interesting to see what everyone is working on with their horse's dressage training at the moment. Any minor training hiccup, feel free to post in here and get some help etc.


I'll start :)

I picked up my new little WB gelding on Saturday, and have started gradually working him. He has a tendency to plow along on his front legs, so at the moment it's all about getting him forward, off the leg and doing millions of trot-canter-trot transitions to get that back of his swinging. He has already improved significantly, in just 3 rides. I have a lesson booked with my regular coach this weekend, and then a 2 day clinic with my coach from interstate in mid-May.
Sphiggi is quite the princess, everything is going to kill him! So as far as that goes, its just been a matter of riding confidently forward, and on the ground handling him in a very no nonsense manner. He has yet to spook with me under saddle, he's thought about it a couple of times but as soon as I put my leg on and ride forward, he snaps out of it.
I am looking forward to working with this horse more, he is so eager to please :)
 
#2 ·
Congrats on your new boy! I saw the post where you were looking to purchase him! Glad to know things are going great!

Right now I'm working on straightness and relaxation. My now retired TB gelding was always too straight and too relaxed, so this is a completely different issue now with my little QH paint haha. His previous owner only trail rode him and believed in ALWAYS riding with draw reins, so I'd say we have a lot of retraining to do..
 
#3 ·
Right now with Victress we are working on keeping her in the right frame in all her moves. It is my fault because I tend to forget about her hind end in change in hands mostly. We are also working on relaxation in tempi changes. That's about it as of last week! :)
 
#4 ·
With Oliver I am working in trantions trantions trantions! Keeping him forward and responsive to my leg and just to stay relaxed and forward through each and every transtion. Also working some small lateral work, leg yields and some shallow loops. I'm throwing in one pattern each ride ti help him stay alert and ready to change things up. with jumping bits just rythem, and staying blanced and not sucking back and chipping in. He's doing so good, such a hard worker and happy camper to be back at work!
 
#5 ·
With myself, and Zulu, I am working on improving my following hands. I have a tendency to stop following softly with the outside rein when I am doing something with the inside rein, suhc as softening the horse to the inside.

I learned at my one and only lesson so far this year that to think more of asking for the softening to the inside by asking with my whole inside arm, from the shoulder and elbow kind of squeezing back toward the core muscles along the rib cage, instead of just vibrateing or milking with my hand.
The first gives the horse a very smooth signal , the second is more like "dot, dot, dot". horses like smooth better.
 
#6 ·
For Honey and I we are at the basics - keeping forward whilst asking for a bit more of a connection and working under herself more. So far we've come a wee way but contact is still an issue for her. It gets better with each ride though, so I'm rather pleased.

For myself, I'm trying to fix a few issues to help balance better and ride more forward thinking myself. Just today I enjoyed the trot feeling effortless to keep up with - so either I'm getting fitter or her trot is improving. Probably both!!

Great thread idea Kayty :)
 
#8 ·
Making Selena actually use her hind end! Grr! So frustrating, feels like she doesn't even have hindquarters sometimes! She almost has it down at the trot....The canter is still pretty strung out though. bleh.
 
#12 ·
Haha I can sympathise with this! Sphiggi has got these lovely active paces, but wants to go wide behind rather than sit and bend his hocks, so thats going to be my biggest challenge for the next few months.
Anyone with any exercise suggestions on helping this process along, feel free to through them at me! I have got a whole shelf in my study filled with note books that I have written in every exercise I have heard or read, so can always add a few more :wink:
 
#9 ·
Daughter is working on lengthening stride (new for her), loops, and was introduced to turning on the haunches in her last lesson.

One hiccup we are having is the horse cantering when asked for lengthened stride. It is very new to my daughter still so she is learning the correct aid to give and our horse is really wanting to canter. My daughter was riding yesterday, no in a lesson, and asked the horse for a very slight lengthening and it went well so she left it at that and worked on other things. I think part of the problem is that my daughter is barely 11 and is still learning how to deal with frustration, so she gets tense and it feeds directly into the horse.
 
#10 ·
Same as always, Ro and I are working on increasing collection and suppleness. Before June I want to have the PSG/I1 stuff solid and am aiming for scores above 65% this season.70% and some championships would be nice too!
For myself, working on keeping my legs down and hands pushing forward, riding to the contact. So lots and lots of core strengthening at the gym and on my yoga mat!
Posted via Mobile Device
 
#11 ·
Right now I'm working on getting Kitty flowing in through her back. She has a tendency to get "stuck" and can't push from behind.

Today she finally used her hind end and we had some amazing walk, trot and canter moments!
 
#13 ·
gypsy and i have been working on haunches in at the walk and trot. we've also been doing trot leg yeilds to canter, which really helps her step under with her inside hind, something she can be quite lazy about ! i had my best dressage ride on her the other day, it was awesome - especially as im the kind of eventer whose always just survived dressage. ive never really loved it or had a horse that likes it =]
 
  • Like
Reactions: DressageDreamer
#14 ·
working on a nice training level frame through the transitions, we have a tendency to go "CANTER?? dic you say canter??? time for my giraffe impression" also introducing him to leg-yields and some smaller circles.

for me: relaxing and waiting for him to come to me. patience, as usual. and the whole leg seat, not just with my clavles(and losing my seat/thighs) or with my knees(pinching!)
 
#15 ·
Making my canter transitions less crap. I'm going to put a sign between my horse's ears: "sit up FFS and stop throwing yourself off the inside shoulder in the canter transition!" And drop the reins, do anything with the reins, other than hang on the inside one, which causes her not to canter. My horse lives in eternal hope for the day I won't cock up a canter transition in this manner. I'm working on it.
 
#17 ·
I had a wonderful ride this morning before work. Looks like the weather is turning bad again next week, so I'm making the most of my 6am rides when it is so beautiful.
Sphigi had his head 100% screwed in this morning and gave me such a lovely feel! I did a lot of leg yield work with him, down the long side alternating between haunches in and out, and putting a turn on the haunches or forehand in at the end of the long side. At the moment I am not allowing him to work on any straight lines, everything is curving or lateral other than to cool down after the ride. The trot work really improved, and he started to sit on his haunches rather than come wide.
In canter, I did some very shallow loops down the long sides on both reins, and multiple trot-canter-trot transitions on a 20m circle. The canter also improved after this and I was getting some semblance of a connection from the hind legs.

Lesson tomorrow afternoon, then he can have Sunday off. Work sessions are being kept short with plenty of walk breaks at the moment, I don't want to tire him out.
 
#19 ·
I am new to dressage, and English riding in general. BUT what I am working on (I know as simple as it is,) is keeping my heels down and not looking down and to the left. My trainer says every time I get tired or the going gets rough, I look down at the horse's left shoulder. I watched a video of my last lesson and it's really ridiculous how often I do it. I would like to figure out how to post videos on here so maybe I could get some pointers from some of you folks. Here is a picture of what I do:



Anyone know why I might have a tendency to do this?
 
#470 · (Edited)
About the heels down, I didn't really understand the whole concept until lately when I've been trying to get a more stretched out dressage sorta seat. It's like something is pulling my head and the top of my body up into the sky. Something is pulling my belly button forward. Something else is pulling my legs down. The longer and straighter I can get my legs, the easier it is to stabilize myself. When my legs are long and stable, my heel just naturally is down. When I was thinking "heels down heels down" it's like my entire leg from my hip to my ankle were just flopping around. And thats the whole thing I ended up needing to focus on to get my heels to just be down on their own.

*now watch someone come along and say thats wrong too.. <shifty eyes>*

EDIT: (cough) so umm yea I just noticed you posted that two years ago. So how's your riding now? Way more advanced than mine, LOL!
 
#21 ·
Always to the left, even when the left is on the outside. My trainer said it might be because my left side is much weaker then my right, so when I get tired my weight will naturally fall to the part of my body that is the weakest. Which makes sense to me... I have started with some yoga for balance and strengthening that left side. But sometimes I do it when I am not tired. I do it a lot, I feel like she's constantly telling me to pick my head up and look straight over the horses ears.
 
#24 · (Edited)
You know, that's funny. The judge at our show last weekend told me something similar. She indicated the connection isn't as nice when we are tracking left but tracking right we are dead on. It just so happens that Paddy's "bad" side is tracking left and she asked me if I was right handed. She says it is natural for someone to have weaker aids to their non-dominant side and with Paddy being stiff to the left as well, it just exacerbates the problem. Needless to say we are doing a lot more work on left rein than right these days.
 
#23 · (Edited)
My first job is exposing the horse to just about everything. We still have issues with pink or purple flowers, we don't like to walk through puddles (they might swallow us whole), we spooked at a pile of manure yesterday and tracks in the dirt from jump standards being dragged create these really deep gullies we just are too smart to walk over...(rolling eyes). However, we don't care about the tractor, motorcycles revving up, weed trimmers or electric hedge trimmers.

As for actual work :), well, we are working on slow and easy. As Paddy gets quicker he gets tight and starts more of an up and down motion. Slowing him down gets him to really work under himself. Also doing a lot of work with stretching down and forward in the walk (for the free walk) and in the trot in order to start showing training level next month (I am barred, nicely :), from riding Intro in away shows just due to scheduling). As one poster already mentioned, we are also working on desensitizing the urge to canter...Paddy does that same giraffe impression as soon as he thinks it is time to canter and once he DOES canter, every time we come around a corner or are in a circle, he tries to canter...in other words, sheer anticipation. I do a lot of trot work with him in between until he settles but he usually resembles a pogo stick and is tossing his head like crazy for a few minutes until he settles again. If he thinks I am taking too long to ask again, he starts sidepassing and dancing....crazy TBs..gotta love 'em :) If I ease him into the canter transition he will do a proper transition but once I get one, asking for another at any time during that same ride results in the giraffe imitation.

He does do better at the training level tests in the canter than in Intro C..he has more time to settle down into his stride before having to trot again.
 
#25 ·
It makes total sense! Since I started taking lessons (about 8 weeks ago) I have noticed A LOT of things that I don't do well with my left side. So I have started to just do small things like leading with my left foot when going up the stairs, and stepping out of bed with my left leg first. I think it's made a difference!
 
#26 ·
Until we start, I'm never quite sure what I'm going to have to work on!

In general, though, somewhere along the line we went from just getting the canter without bucking, to improving the canter, so we're doing much more cantering, smaller circles, counter-canter etc.

Probably the main issue is still getting my horse light to the leg. She likes to "go" but it can take awhile to remind her!:) After that, we do laterals, and we've begun to develop the leg-yielding into vigorous shoulder-in and half-pass (which is still pretty vague.)

I'm working on keeping my short legs long (!) with heels down, not using them so much, which is impossible unless my horse is on what we call "whisper leg." I'm also working on finding places we can ride, with decent footing. It's come to the point where our lumpy. slippery "arena" isn't really good enough.
 
#27 ·
Noblessa - She's still a big baby, so all I'm asking of her is a light contact with the bit. That she will go forward when I ask her, and go slower when I want her to go slower. And I'm teaching her that if I ask her to trot, she is supposed to trot in the exact speed I asked her to trot in, until I say otherwise. It's so simple to rider horses that understand this. I think you call it - off the leg?

She's the type of horse that is spooky, and she will jump, stop and stare at anything that's unnatural - according to her. So that takes a lot of work too.

And then there is a thing called turning. Lol, well we're working on that too, and now she does nice circles and turns whenever I want to.

Primanova - Another baby, but she thinks she's a queen. If she don't want do it, she wont. Lol, typical warmblood with really good gaits and lots of temperament. But she's a great horse. We're working towards a steady frame, and for her to seek more contact with the bit. Mostly we're just out on the trails working cantering, building up strength.

Florencia - This one is a feisty one. We're working on her canter a lot. Whenever she thinks I'm giving her a hard time, she will start doing flying changes all over the place. All I'm asking off her is to keep in that darn left shoulder in all the work we do. Often I have to start with the pirouette work on this one to get a grip on that shoulder.

But I'm mostly doing the normal work on this one, working with the basic stuff until she will be willing to start working correctly with that shoulder.

She rather do the piaff or passage, than walking straight forward with the same contact on both reins.

Highlight - He's a real baby, three years this year. Been ridden a month last year, but nothing since then. He's this huge thing, spider legs and tiny body. I guess I need to crawl up on him to find out if he's as sweet now as he was last year.
But with him, the work will be him getting used to me as a rider, start understanding the leg and the reins.
 
#28 ·
I've started some 'baby' travers over the weekend, to get some more strength in his right hind. At the moment, while on the right rein he wants to step with the inside hind forward and sideways to the outside, rather than tracking true. So Using some travers of a 20m circle, so build up that hind leg.
In the canter, pretty similar work to the trot, trying to get those hind legs straight and working, as he wants to plow around on the forehand. I've been riding spirals in canter, alternating between medium canter and working canter. This approach has made a huge difference in his hind legs and he's starting to carry himself rather than relying on me.

The half halts is another sticky issue. At the moment there is no reaction to a half halt from my seat, there is only a reaction to the rein. So I've been working on getting reaction to my seat, my lesson on Saturday was a real break through moment in that respect.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top