Beware of Training Programs Advertising "Collection" Training! Anyone who advocates teaching collection will be apt to turn your horse into a mental and physical trainwreck. Collection is a R E S U L T of all the steps and stages of the Training Scale or Training Pyramid having been mastered (see picture), not something you … Continue reading COLLECTION
Slowly Disappearing Knowledge Excerpt from upcoming book "A to Z Rider Hints" - copyright Dr. Rivkah Roth Bits come in all kinds of materials and shapes. Here we will only mention a few, perhaps less commonly considered aspects. Often the less experienced and less educated rider resorts to harsher bits for control. This is a … Continue reading Single-Jointed Snaffle Wisdom
A hundred years ago there was no such a thing as dressage or jumping. It simply was called riding or equestrian training. Gymnastic work, jumping, gallops on the race track, and outings on groomed trails and through natural forests and terrains were all equal part of horse and rider training. Indeed there were horses that … Continue reading Dressage for Jumpers?
An Advance Teaser from the Upcoming Book A to Z Rider Hints Correction riding is a highly specialized, often thankless, branch of correct dressage training. It would be wonderful if we wouldn't need it, but sadly, we see more and more need for good correction work. Not every good professional trainer will make a correction … Continue reading Correction Riding
25 Days, 25 Letters of the Alphabet... By popular demand we republish a Rider's A to Z Glossary of technical terms; a more or less alphabetical Series of rider expressions that, in form of a Rider's Advent Calendar, Rivkah Roth wrote for and posted on her CoachMeToo and Equiopathy Facebook pages in December 2019. 1/A: … Continue reading Rider’s A to Z Glossary #1
(Not) for Debate - and not just for DQs: "Close your hand!" An edited and updated version of an article initially posted on January 16, 2015 on my Equiopathy Facebook page and prompted by an paper linked to in that original post's comments. Equiopathy questioned: exactly, how?... and why? There is a lot more to … Continue reading On the Position of the Rider Hand
The One Place where Thumbs Up are Unwanted! Growing up in a classically correct training environment it never occurred to me that any rider would stick their thumb tips up or hold their entire thumbs flat while grabbing the reins with their whole hand or fist. But that is exactly what I see more and … Continue reading Rider Sin #2: Thumbs Up
Or Why "We Can't Ride on the Horse's Head" Horses are not built to be steered by their heads but by our seat and legs. A rider attempting to control the horse by its head - i.e. "hold" the horse by the bit, with running reins, or other contraptions - will fail because riding front-to-back … Continue reading Rider Sin #1 – Pulling Back an Elbow
Know Your Trot! A Reminder for Riders, Trainers, and Judges Introduction For any rider and trainer, and in particular for dressage judges, to be able to recognize and understand the various forms of trot asked for in dressage is of penultimate importance. Yet, possibly because a rider's feel rarely coincides with a viewer's picture, confusion … Continue reading The Six Trots that Nobody Rides and the One that Gets Everybody Nowhere
Understandings or Misunderstandings? Emotions are flying high when and where it comes to the competitive aspects of dressage. On one side, there are spectators hungry for circuslike displays of bigger-is-better movement excitement. These include horsy and non-horsy admirers of our field that is (always has been) the culmination of art, not of artisanship. Dressage hence … Continue reading Action Needed – Unfortunate Developments in Dressage
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