Training Tip of the Week with Kate Chadderton: Perfecting Your Transitions

Kate Chadderton and VS McCuan Civil Liberty at Blenheim. Photo by Samantha Clark. Kate Chadderton and VS McCuan Civil Liberty at Blenheim. Photo by Samantha Clark.

Normally at this time of the year I’d be in Australia enjoying time with my family and friends, eating pies and sausage rolls, checking out our young horses, and flipping burgers in my mum’s fish and chip shop. However, this year I’ve stayed in the U.S., primarily to save some money, and have been treated with some very agreeable winter weather.

Instead of the average below-freezing temperatures, it has been T-shirt and vests every day! On a side note, I’m available for hire as the good luck weather charm next December …

Whether you’re lucky enough to travel south for the winter or December begins the looong abyss that stretches from now until the first spring event, this time of the year is a great time to fine-tune some of the smaller details of your riding. My horses are legged back up and are starting to resemble event horses rather than wild yaks, so I’m working on transitions. Transitions can be useful for so many reasons: control, balance and preparation for other movements.

For the hotter horses, I find it useful to do less stimulating transitions. For example, I’ll spend a fair bit of time going from extended walk to collected walk to extended walk to collected walk. Then I’ll do a lot of trot to halt, or canter to halt. These get the horses thinking to wait and want to slow down.

For the more laid-back horses, I do a lot more transitions involving forward energy. For example, I’ll move up to trot or canter quite early in my training session, then make transitions from working canter to medium canter, or working trot to medium trot. This gets the horses more interested and excited about their work and quicker to move forward from the leg.

Then come the first event of the year, hopefully they’ll remember all this pre-Christmas work, and I’ll be rewarded generously by the dressage judges!

What do you want to hear as next week’s tip? Please let me know; I’m all ears!

As a bonus, here’s a video from Kate showing ideas for indoor training exercises this winter:

Bored this winter? Here are some ideas to play around with.

Posted by Kate Chadderton on Wednesday, December 16, 2015