Helpful tips for travers?

[MyDanceTilMidnight]

We have just begun working on travers and I am struggling a bit with the aids. My lightbulb moment for shoulder in was being told to pull my inside shoulder back (aligning my shoulders with my horse's, or at least it feels like it...it may just feel more drastic than it looks, but was enough of a hint to get me sitting correctly).

He has a great shoulder in and leg yield, he has done travers before with my trainer and my trainer's assistant trainer. I am working on this with my trainer, but I thought someone here might have a visualization that could help me get my body doing the right thing!

[AmityBee]

There are probably many out there who know a lot more about this than I do, but I'm practically just past that issue in my geldings training, so for what it's worth, this is what worked for me:

Going with the same mental picture that worked for you before, in the haunches-in (I like that term better than the term travers, because it makes more sense to me) you align your hips to the horses hips while keeping your shoulders (and the horses shoulders) straight. No crossing of the front legs in the haunches-in. The forehand continues on the rail, straight. You keep control of the inside shoulder while letting you horse step under himself with the outside hind leg. For me and my horse it worked best to go s-l-o-w. On his bad side, just that first/one step under himself, taking weight on his weaker hind leg was enough.

To get away from the rail (that's what's travers is to me, still no crossing of the front legs but going through the diagonal, or at least away from tha rail), I go straight on to the diagonal line first. Then I go back to the mental picture of haunches-in while thinking of the diagonal as a straight line with an imaginarry rail on one side, and do a haunches-in on that line (rather than thinking diagonal and trying to "push" my horse towards the far rail).

[Niki]

Don't think i'll be much help as my mare loves travers. I just have to think it and she'll do it.

For other horses though i've found i need a solid and light turn on the fore before i star travers. I do a lot of tof, toh, side pass to half pass etc as part of the warm up so its been easy to develop.

[klark_kent07]

Something that I found useful when learning travers was to look over my outside shoulder briefly.
So heading down the long side from K on the right rein, look over your left shoulder- this helps your hips to align correctly and puts your weight onto your inside seat bone, much like how you would align yourself when doing shoulder in

[HafDressage]

I always say do it in the walk a bunch to begin for both your sake and the horses sake.

First, it shows your horse what you mean and second, it's an easy way to get yourself straightened out on the exercise. When I do haunches in, I think ride the front end straight, ask the haunches to come in with my outside leg back, keep weight on the inside seat bone and inner leg down (I visualize it as pole that goes down to the ground on the inside of the horse) and maintain proper bend with the inside rein. If you don't maintain the inside rein, you will end up with your horse's nose pointing out and then you will be doing a leg yield down the wall rather than a HI.

Good luck and let us know how it's progressing!

[MyDanceTilMidnight]

Thank you everyone!!! These are very helpful tips...we've definitely fallen into the leg yield instead of travers trap as well, lol. The weather has turned pretty nasty, here in Texas, so I think we'll spend today's ride focusing on lateral work at the walk and try moving between shoulder in and travers and leg yield easily and smoothly!!!

[MyDanceTilMidnight]

So just to update, everyone's tips were very helpful!!!! We worked on it quite a bit in my lesson today (my trainer really loves having us do shoulder in on a circle and is thinking it's time to start adding travers on a circle but *I'm* just not there yet). So, what finally really worked for me is not worrying about travers yet and just getting his haunches over. We would go down the rail and I would work on keeping his haunches over with an exaggerated leg on the outside (waaaaaaay far back) and using my whip as well as needed. Then adding inside leg for impulsion and asking for bend while half halting with the inside rein. I am way too handsy and really had to focus on letting my body tell him what to do and not trying to have my hands "help". Once I got that through my head we would have a couple of steps of *good* travers by the end of the long side, once I'd added enough inside leg and half halting.

Then we tried it on a circle and didn't worry about what way he was bent at first, just that his butt was over, added inside leg/weighting the inside seat bone and half halting until he let the bend happen automatically because it was the easiest way to be due to my aids. It was pretty cool. Of course, when my trainer got on to show me what he wanted me to do it looked much easier than when I tried it again, but I feel much more secure in working on it now. I also feel like envisioning inside shoulder forward a bit will help me with weighting the correct seat bone as well. We tried on the circle at the trot, but not the long side.

I was also *very* sore by the end from needing to exaggerate my legs so much because my horse is very green to this. The muscles along the top of my hip bones hurt and I didn't even know I *had* muscles there!!!

[MyDanceTilMidnight]

Wanted to add that I think a lot of the tips you have given me will be more helpful once I am better about not resorting to pulling and just letting him figure things out based on my body first...when we are ready to add more finesse!!!

[mari]

What worked for me to get the feeling of the bend required, is to ride a 10m circle. When you have nearly (but not quite) completed the circle, i.e. when the front feet hit the track, just carry on straight up the long side. The circle sets up my body as well, and takes care of the initial bend. after that I just need to keep the bend, and slightly stronger outside leg.

[AmityBee]

... I am way too handsy and really had to focus on letting my body tell him what to do and not trying to have my hands "help". ...

Glad to hear that things are going well. Personally, I don't mind being a little more obvious with the rein aids when introducing a new exercise, as long as subtleness of the aids is the ultimate goal in the end. For us, moving both my hands toward the rail worked best. You get your inside bent without loosing the connection on the outside rein.