Training Level Friesian...

This was a 5 year old Friesian that was very lazy. The rider had to help him with just about every stride. I'm just going to write down my notes as I took them, hopefully they make sense, but I can try to explain anything if there's a specific question.

Warming up...it's ok to warm up under tempo to ensure the horse is calm and adjusting to its environment, but when schooling piaffe/pirouettes over tempo because they tend to go slower because they have to lift their knees.

If you look too much to the inside of a circle fake yourself out by looking at the outside ear

The length of the horse's neck is proportional to the length of stride of the hind legs

"There's no laughing in dressage."

The first few riders Jane spent a lot of time emphasizing elbows. When walking, you push the elbows forward and backward, like rowing a boat (she would often say row, row, row your boat to the rider). When trotting you open and close your elbows like a door hinge.

An exercise for trot elbows is to stand with your legs bent like riding in front of a chair or a desk. Rest your hands in riding position on the chair/desk and practice pushing down as you straighten your legs to simulate posting and keeping your hands in one place, by opening and closing your elbows.

It's important to keep your elbows correct for transitions, move from walking elbows (push) to posting elbows (open/close) seamlessly and as soon as the new gait begins.

Flexion at the jaw encourages chewing which closes the angle of the throatlatch. This is the last kind of flexion that a rider should mess with.

In right/left flexion flip your wrist so that the thumb is facing away from the other hand (palm up) and then back, make sure you support with the outside rein so that he doesn't bend his neck. You need to keep the pinkie of the flipping hand close to the withers, but not over them to ensure you're using an indirect rein, not an opening rein.

The horse needs to be "thinking" forward...
1. It is the horse's responsibility to maintain his energy at a gait, not yours
2. Will be covered tomorrow

To test forward, take your legs away from the horse's sides, see how long it takes for the horse to lose just one ounce of momentum, then give a *correction*, either multiple kicks or taps with the whip, just one kick/tap is an aid, so you want to do multiple to ensure the horse knows it was a punishment

If your horse kicks at the whip, don't use it for the correction, because when a horse is kicking/bucking its hind legs are being directed backwards, behind them, rather than forward, under them.

Start the exercise at the walk, on a circle. Get a good walk, then take legs off, when he slows down a fraction, kick him until he trots, then back to a walk and repeat. The first time you do this exercise you can leave the legs off for a long period, just to see how slow the horse ends up, and if it even stops.

Tomorrow....
In front of the driving aids
On the bit