Impossible things in dressage

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Tsavo
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Impossible things in dressage

Postby Tsavo » Sat Jul 07, 2018 12:51 pm

1. Expecting inexperienced people to sort out "good" from "not good" trainers (AKA blood from a stone).

2. Expecting everyone using a particular term to mean the same thing. (e.g., stiff side being used in the exactly opposite sense by various people).

3. Getting up the levels before you die without certain SIMPLE abilities (shoulder blades, hip angle, core, etc.).

4. Learning dressage from books or in any way that doesn't involve one million wet saddle pads. You cannot truly understand something you read until you figure out the physical control to achieve it. I understood the footfall and bend for SI YEARS AND YEARS ahead of ever riding a correct one despite all my knowledge and effort. Book learning is rarely if ever the bottleneck. We know this from the fact that everyone can read but few are GP trainers.

5. Expecting some people to know the difference between tricks and correct movements.

6. Getting some people to admit HP is travers on a diagonal and that steep HP has the identical bend as a travers. Shallow HP has LESS bend than a travers. The geometry is a knockdown argument. Nobody has shown otherwise with geometry.

7. Unstated reality that the training scale for the horse is NOT similar to that for the rider. It is beyond question that some higher level movements are easier to learn for the rider than some lower level ones. Nobody talks about this. Here is my training scale for the rider for riding correct movements on a trained horse...

Training level: (not sure)
First: Piaffe, medium gaits
Second: Passage, FC
Third: SI, C/W
Fourth: travers/HP, collected gaits
FEI: Piro, extended gaits, posting trot LOL

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musical comedy
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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby musical comedy » Sun Jul 08, 2018 1:20 pm

Tsavo wrote:1. Expecting inexperienced people to sort out "good" from "not good" trainers (AKA blood from a stone).
Even some experienced people fall prey to the wrong trainer. I'm not even sure what a 'good' trainer is. There are 'successful' trainers that have very different approaches. By 'successful', I am not just talking about show ring successes, but successes in training horses through collection or training young horses. It's hard to find the right trainer. You can't even go by if their students are successful because one can buy a super advanced horse the allows them to progress.

2. Expecting everyone using a particular term to mean the same thing. (e.g., stiff side being used in the exactly opposite sense by various people).That is a real pet peeve of mine and why I shy away from discussions on straightness.

3. Getting up the levels before you die without certain SIMPLE abilities (shoulder blades, hip angle, core, etc.).It depends.

4. Learning dressage from books or in any way that doesn't involve one million wet saddle pads. You cannot truly understand something you read until you figure out the physical control to achieve it. I understood the footfall and bend for SI YEARS AND YEARS ahead of ever riding a correct one despite all my knowledge and effort. Book learning is rarely if ever the bottleneck. We know this from the fact that everyone can read but few are GP trainers.
Actually, my observation is that (with exceptions) those that read a lot of books on dressage are usually not progressing. Maybe that is just my observation from what I see on the internet.
5. Expecting some people to know the difference between tricks and correct movements. LOL. I know what you mean.

6. Getting some people to admit HP is travers on a diagonal and that steep HP has the identical bend as a travers. Shallow HP has LESS bend than a travers. The geometry is a knockdown argument. Nobody has shown otherwise with geometry. True. (Oh please let us not have this discussion again. It was like that 'how do you ask for canter' thread.
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7. Unstated reality that the training scale for the horse is NOT similar to that for the rider. It is beyond question that some higher level movements are easier to learn for the rider than some lower level ones. Nobody talks about this. Here is my training scale for the rider for riding correct movements on a trained horse...

Training level: (not sure)
First: Piaffe, medium gaits
Second: Passage, FC
Third: SI, C/W
Fourth: travers/HP, collected gaits
FEI: Piro, extended gaits, posting trot LOL
Oh my. Is this a joke? I don't agree with this at all.

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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby Tsavo » Sun Jul 08, 2018 4:28 pm

Not a joke. I don't think I am alone with learning how to ride upper level movements on a schoolmaster while not being able to ride a Travers. I have ridden piaffe and yet I am not an FEI rider. I have learned other correct upper level movements despite being a lower level rider. There are lower level riders routinely riding P&P but there is probably a correctness argument to be made about that.

If you had to rank the movements in terms of ease for a rider to learn on a correctly trained horse, wouldn't it diverge from the training scale for the horse?

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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby Tsavo » Sun Jul 08, 2018 4:30 pm

Lol on the canter aid thread. That was breath taking. It was like claiming perpetual motion machines exist.

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musical comedy
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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby musical comedy » Sun Jul 08, 2018 5:27 pm

Tsavo wrote:Not a joke. I don't think I am alone with learning how to ride upper level movements on a schoolmaster while not being able to ride a Travers. I have ridden piaffe and yet I am not an FEI rider. I have learned other correct upper level movements despite being a lower level rider. There are lower level riders routinely riding P&P but there is probably a correctness argument to be made about that.

If you had to rank the movements in terms of ease for a rider to learn on a correctly trained horse, wouldn't it diverge from the training scale for the horse?
I think I misunderstood your Rider Levels, but I'm still not in agreement. Learning how to ride any work, whether it be low level or upper level, is easier on a schoolmaster or trained horse. Lots of people think they are better than they are because the can do stuff like Piaffe and FC on schoolmasters. They find out later just how hard it is to teach those things on a horse that doesn't know them, or even ride a more difficult horse that knows the stuff, but needs good ride to perform them.

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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby Tsavo » Sun Jul 08, 2018 5:33 pm

I take your point but I will still maintain more lower level riders can learn a FC correctly sooner than they can learn a SI correctly.

The various movements don't all require the identical amount of tact and timing. I am just saying the order of difficulty for the horse as embodied in the training pyramid is different for riders. There is a reason some people skip second and go to third to cite a famous example.

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Chisamba
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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby Chisamba » Mon Jul 09, 2018 4:11 pm

Hmm, I dont think I've spent a lot of time thinking about rider training pyramid.

I would say the most common issue I have when I put an intermediate rider on a well trained horse is that the horse will go sideways.

By which i mean riders will tend to hold with one leg and sit with more weight in the other seatbone.

I do think agree a shoulder in and half pass are higher up the rider training scale.

I still tend to twist in flying changes. It might be that I suck or it might be that its easy to do badly

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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby Ponichiwa » Tue Jul 10, 2018 6:42 pm

Chisamba wrote:I still tend to twist in flying changes. It might be that I suck or it might be that its easy to do badly


I was just thinking about this yesterday as I defaulted to looking straight down at Kiwi's shoulder like some sort of gargoyle when she was slightly late to the flying change aids. On trained horses, it's easy to get a flying change. It's not so easy to improve them or to install them in the first place.

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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby musical comedy » Tue Jul 10, 2018 7:12 pm

Ponichiwa wrote: On trained horses, it's easy to get a flying change.
That may be so to a point. I've seen several situations where someone gets on a horse that knows 2's and 1's, and they are throwing in unasked-for changes. If a rider isn't pretty straight, how are they going to get decent straight changes?

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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby Ponichiwa » Tue Jul 10, 2018 8:04 pm

Oh for sure. It's easy to get _a_ flying change. It's not so easy to get a _good_ flying change, and is much harder to get a good set of tempis.

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Re: Impossible things in dressage

Postby Dresseur » Thu Jul 12, 2018 1:21 pm

musical comedy wrote:
Ponichiwa wrote: On trained horses, it's easy to get a flying change.
That may be so to a point. I've seen several situations where someone gets on a horse that knows 2's and 1's, and they are throwing in unasked-for changes. If a rider isn't pretty straight, how are they going to get decent straight changes?


Dear Lord, I could write a book on this. Based on my "me-search", I don't agree with this at all. Sure, you may get lucky and get some single changes off the trained horse's schooling, but it devolves quickly. Changes are incredibly specific to the horse and rider team in terms of how they are asked for etc. I've gone through hell and back trying to figure out how to ride tempis on a horse that can do all the counts in her sleep. When I was learning the single changes - they would start fine, then I'd allow crookedness in because I didn't know any better and then I couldn't get a change to save my life. This went on for months while we diagnosed what I was doing, and teaching my how to ride changes correctly. I still tend to lean forward and allow some crookedness. The tempis showed me just how much I was off from being ship straight. You can roll a ball between Gala's front and back legs in her lines of changes, she's that straight... and with me... I had her twisting and doing the hula. And then I'd miss the count... at first, the count would be missed early on, as I got better at managing the straightness, I'd lose the count toward the end as the canter got bigger and bigger. First it was 4's, then 3's. Then the 2's and the 1's blew everything out of the water again because the canter quality had to change for them. So I had to repeat the process. Again, this is all on a horse that could do the tempis in her sleep, any count, any pattern, and I just sucked. :lol: :lol: :lol:


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