11/4/10 - DRESSAGE DEMO WITH RICHARD DAVISON REPORT...

11/4/10 - REPORT FROM RICHARD DAVISON DRESSAGE DEMO AT THE BRITISH OPEN SJ CHAMPIONSHIPS ON 9/4/10.

We were lucky enough to watch a 40 min dressage demo off top dressage rider for the UK Richard Davison, pictured above. This demo had relevance to anyone training any horse in or for any discipline, therefore I though I would share what we learnt.

The main point of the demo was that there were or should be four points/parts to any training session with your horse. Splitting a session into sections helps provide focus within a training session. Now I will talk you through the four stages.

1. Suppling up - It's really important to to warm your horse up and his muscles. Suppling up can help do this. Plenty of circles, leg yielding, shoulder in and quarters in can get your horse engaging his muscles getting ready for the main activity. These exercises should be ridden at all paces to ensure that all the different muscles of your horse are warmed up. Walk should be an explaining pace, the pace which you try anything new at before introducing it at trot or canter... You can tell if a horse is supple and relaxed by whether or not he is over tracking. This means when one of his front legs leaves a print in the arena, the same hind leg should step into or slightly infront of that print... after this you are ready to move on to response training...

2. Response Training - How quickly does your horse respond to your aids? Plenty of transitions, half halts and collection/extension are required to get your horse listening and alert! When getting going your leg should barely need to move and when stopping you should only require a squeeze of your fingers, of course these things take time so try not to over do it!

3. The main body of a session.

After the response training and suppling up you can move on to the main body of a session, whether it is jumping, or flatwork, or a competition. Just remember to keep the response training and suppling up exercises in the back of your mind. Now is a good time, to have someone check if your horse is over tracking!!!

4. The cool down or stretching off - Stretching off is the most important (or joint most important with suppling up) of any session. To do this effectively practice what you did when suppling up, leg yielding, shoulder in etc, then eventually bring it down canter, trot walk, before giving the horse a long rein to stretch his neck. Cooling off like this will help him stretch the muscles you can't see!! It becomes extremely neccessary to have a cooling off session if you are competing more than one day in a row, like i will be at Stoneleigh. You can warm a horse up the first day and he will go well but if you dont cool him off properly he could be achey and crampy the next day and then performance may not be 100%!!

So there you go 4 key training elements from a dressage master. I've already tried out some of these techniques with Jayde whilst out on a hack, particularly the leg yielding and shoulder in which shows even if you don't have arena access you can still use them! Hopefully this post will help you to achieve a little bit more from your training sessions. Will update soon.

Laura :) xx