Does the basic idea of bending your horse leave you fruitless?
Do you feel that you need to be able to speak a different language to decipher dressage terminology? Do the phrases travers, half-pass, renvers, pirouette and shoulder-in make you shake your head? Welcome to the often confusing world of Dressage. Fortunately, it can be summed up in two words:
GO BANANAS!
(ILLUSTRATION by Sandy Rabinowitz for Dressage Today)
All lateral movements include some sort of flexion and bend of the horse, and the shape of the banana helps to visually show what your horse should look like.
Most horses are ridden bent in their head and necks, but their bodies are relatively straight. Since we don’t have a bird’s eye view of the whole horse, we often see the bend of the neck and head in front of us and assume that it must continue underneath and behind the saddle.
Actually, riders need to think about bending the body of the horse, focusing on the ribcage, and the neck and head will follow.
Create the correct banana shape in your horse
Imagine you are at a party that inevitably ends up in the kitchen. You will naturally rest your hip against the kitchen counter. This gives you a slight curved shape. In horses, we want their ribcage to rest on the kitchen counter to create the curve.
To encourage your horse to create this shape, you need to be both the kitchen counter and the encouragement to get them to bend. Think inside leg to outside rein.
These two things give your horse the balance and confidence to allow his ribcage to bend. So first make sure you have consistent contact with the outside rein (kitchen counter), then add a slight flexion in the head — just until you see the eyelashes of the inside eye. Lastly encourage bend in their ribcage by adding inside leg. With patient and persistent asking, your horse will trust the outside connection, giving in their ribcage and softening in the poll to give you the perfect banana!
When riding a circle, hold the banana shape throughout the entire circle
Ideally, when you ride a large or small circle your horse holds the banana shape throughout the entire circle. People often say that a horse is straight on the circle, meaning their body and footfalls match the shape of the circle.
If you can keep the same amount of bend in your horse, you will ride a perfectly round circle.
This, of course, is much harder to create in real life!
For lateral movements, move parts of the banana off the pathway.
Lateral movements keep the banana shape, but move the banana off the pathway. For example in a shoulder-in, the shape the horse stays curved, but the line of travel is straight. The horse’s shoulders come towards the inside, because of the banana shape, not because you have done something special to their body. Think inside leg to encourage moving up the wall and maintain the curved shape. Think outside rein as the kitchen counter, something for the energy to balance on and help maintain the outside shoulder connection.
If you keep the image of a banana in your mind at all times, lateral movements seem much more straightforward.
Next time you are eating breakfast, before you peel your banana, try moving it around your placemat in the different lateral movements. It really helps to clarify what your horse should look like on each pathway.
With ‘bananas’ in your mind, and connecting the outside rein with the inside leg, you will outshine for sure!
