See Through the Judge's Eye

Contact Kyle to book in. Details as below. Ideal practice for EI or the PC festival 😊

🐎 Dressage Test Practice Clinic 🐴

With Coreen Abernethy.

17th March 2024

How it works.
- Come and ride your dressage test of choice, receive written feedback and comments on your feedback/score sheet.
- Then we discuss together and work through elements of the test, ride exercises to improve your ways of gaining more marks.
- Re-ride the test.

✔️A great chance to see where you can gain extra marks, progress and prepare for upcoming shows. Open to everyone - even anyone who would like to give riding a dressage test a go!

30 and 60 min slots available.

PM or Call/Text me to book in.

Thanks Kyle. 🐴

Let’s talk about the difference between rhythm and tempo. I hear these words used incorrectly all the time, and it’s more than just a nit picky thing to correct. It’s a very important concept to understand.

Rhythm (in dressage) is the footfall of the gait - 4 beats for walk, 2 beats for trot, and 3 beats for canter.

Tempo is the SPEED of the rhythm. You can discover your horse’s ideal Beats Per Minute (BPM) for each gait.

A huge moving warmblood and a tiny Shetland pony have the same rhythm in trot, but they have VERY different tempos.

If you have a RHYTHM problem, you have a big problem. If the walk is lateral (leaning towards 2 beats rather than 4), or the canter is a 4 beat canter - this is a big problem. Could be a physical issue with the horse, but you will need good help from a pro with a rhythm fault.

Most riders have a TEMPO problem - too fast, too slow, too varied. Ideally, the tempo should be like a metronome - steady and reliable, and YOU have to set it for the horse. (Side note - it’s super easy to download a free metronome app on your phone and ride with one. It will be seriously annoying to find out how NOT steady your tempo is 😂. But it’s very helpful to discover your horse’s BPM for each gait and try to stay steady.)

The rider has to be like the conductor of the orchestra - you SET the tempo for the horse, but you don’t play all the instruments. Tell your horse how quickly (or slowly) to march in walk, push in trot, and jump in canter. Then leave him alone and only adjust when that tempo goes too fast or too slow. You have to be a quiet, feeling rider to notice immediately when the tempo begins to slow down or speed up too much.

Illustration by Susan DiFelice Design

Great day! Such little small improvements to each combination made for increased marks and higher scores. Well done to all!

Another fabulous day at Dalways Bawn Livery Stables with a test riding clinic. Lovely partnerships keen to improve their dressage and learn what judges look for. Just a few tweaks here and there and everyone's scores increased :) Thank you to Jenny Caldwell for the invite and thank you to all the lovely riders and their fabulous horses.

A very educational morning spent with Mark Robinson Equestrian getting my horses’ mouths and bits checked. Fascinating how different each mouth was with one horse having a very narrow bottom jaw with a low palette and a fleshy mouth and another having a fairly normal mouth/jaw/tongue and the other having a large tongue and a slight overbite, all of which can be positively or negatively impacted by choice of bit.

Mark spent a lot of time explaining how the anatomical differences can be affected by an unsuitable bit and then gave recommendations for appropriate bit choices for each horse. I’m delighted with my Informed Designs Harmony D bit for madam in the photo below (Mark, I hope I have correctly named that bit!) and am looking forward to getting my other mare into the Symmetry eggbutt bit. My elderly boy can stay in his Myler.

I can highly recommend Mark’s excellent bitting service - an invaluable service for dressage (and all) riders to ensure our beloved horses are comfortable and happy in their mouths.

A lovely day spent near Tollymore taking riders through their tests. Just a couple of tweaks & pointers led to marks being increased on final ride of the tests. Lovely to see the progress!