Here are a few brief notes from the sessions with Linda Zang this morning at the Ocala ICP Symposium. Sorry they are not terribly well-organized! We will have more from the Symposium, as Yogi Breisner taught show jumping on Monday, and David O’Connor was teaching cross-country riding this afternoon. EN’s own Jessica Bortner-Harris was riding in the Advanced group at the end of the day…looking forward to her report!
Dressage Notes:
Forwardness and straightness are the key. Counter canter is a great exercise to improve the canter– it’s not about creating a “10” counter canter, as it is to improve the true canter. Many horses improved simply by getting straighter through their bodies– and a reminder that even riders like Cathy Weischhoff and Leslie Law are mortal– they too hang a bit too much on the inside rein and collapse their inside ribcage! In the rider’s position, it is important to sit tall and square. For proper bend (lateral movements, such as half-pass/haunches in), the rider’s outside seat bone should shift to the middle of the saddle, the inside seat bone moves forward and in. The inside leg should sink down and forward, but the rider must still stay tall through the inside shoulder– no curling!
A good exercise, ridden in trot and canter, is to leg yield off the rail, straighten, then think Go Forward. This allowed the horses to open up through their shoulders, unlocking at the wither and stepping through from behind.
When a horse tilts his head, he’s not in balance. Maybe let the horse stretch down and relax in the neck– take the blame as the rider, let the horse stretch, check your position.
For horses that tend to get deep, it is often because the rider is overusing the inside rein. “Inside rein bends and brings down, outside rein straightens and brings them up.” You could see an immediate difference when riders let go of the inside rein and straightened the horse with the outside aids. The horse wouldn’t always stay there– but for two strides, the horse shifted its balance up and into a better position. Bill Hoos, in particular, had a lengthy lesson on straightness. His horse Carmac tended to be very crooked (overbent) in the canter, and Bill struggled to sit straight (not off to the outside). Letting go of the inside rein, and shifting his outside hip to the center of the saddle caused the horse to open his stride and look much more through over his back.
Half pass is simply a haunches-in on the diagonal. It is a FORWARD movement, so the shoulders of the horse must lead the haunches, by remaining forward-placed on the diagonal line. In this country, we tend to get too fixated on remaining parallel to the long side, curling the horse around our inside leg, and then shoving them sideways. This is incorrect; get the shoulders positioned on the diagonal, and bring the haunches in, maintaining the bend.
Demo rider Peter Gray received some “oohs” and “aahs’ with his lovely Prix St Georges horse, demonstrating a beautiful counter canter, then stepping forward into a jaw-dropping trot springing with suspension. Peter demonstrated a very correct position, and it was easy to see how rider form allowed the horse to function properly.
Addressing flying changes: Lisa Barry’s gray horse was a bit tight and tense, and his problem with changes (other than being less experienced) were due to his lack of straightness. Linda had the horse leg-yield off the outside leg, to straighten the outside shoulder and get the horse a little softer and more relaxed. After several trips around doing leg-yields off the rail, she had the horse counter canter on a 15m circle. On a right circle (left lead), ask for right flexion; not to get a perfect counter canter, but to get straightness and softness. By thinking a little bit counter bed, and then asking, the horse then produced a very soft, correct change with no fuss whatsoever.
