And lessons from a book

Ben and I have been working through a few of the exercises in 101 Dressage Exercises. While ideally we would take dressage lessons, it's been difficult to find someone willing to come out to the farm to teach. And with one jump lesson a week and often another adventure or show, poor dude spends too much time traveling already. 

I got this book secondhand on Amazon for less than $10. It is well laid out, broken down into various sections starting with a "Why Warm Up" section. That is followed by "Looseness", "Straightness" and then "Rider Position". Next comes the "Lateral Work" and "Improving the Canter" then "Building Suspension" and "Flying Changes". "Developing Lightness" and "Lengthening the Stride" follow, and then the book finishes with "The Importance of Fitness". There are exercises for every level, with a quick visual guide of the number of horses by the Key on each page. I've used this book both for Yoshi, who was just beginning to understand lateral work, and Ben who has a first-second level understanding of lateral work. I have not progressed through the book in a linear fashion at all. I've been using it purposely by browsing a section and selecting if there is an area we are struggling with and also using it for days where I have zero plan but to "do dressage". Those "do dressage" days, I'll open to a section at random. If it is a rider position exercise, I'll do that and one other from a different section. 

Each exercise takes up two pages: 

The first page gives a diagram of the exercise, the difficulty level, and the benefits. This exercise came from the lateral work section 

Ben and I have made it through a handful so far. We may be able to get a dressage trainer to come out to the farm soon, but until then we'll keep doing these once or twice a week. 

Exercise 12: 

If I were grading the challenge level, I would have given this one two horses, not just one. But maybe that's because we were struggling with suppleness. JT and I have noted that Ben holds a lot of his stress and anxiety in his ribcage, and so this exercise jumped out at me. It was incredibly helpful for him. When he spooks he tenses through his ribs and then it seems to become an emotional-physical spiral. We did this exercise at the end of our usual walk warm up (lots of serpentines, leg yields, and baby half pass) and when we picked up the trot, he felt AWESOME. So supple and powerful from the beginning. 

It took probably 3 trips around the cone before I felt that we were actually doing it correctly. We did it off the left leg first since that is easier for me, and then reverse mirrored my hip position from there to go off the right leg. 

Exercise 15:

We did this exercise on a spooky, chilly day in the arena. I already know that having something to do OTHER than picking at his spooking really helps us get through it quicker. But this worked amazingly well also. The first two ovals felt a bit frantic, but after I got the timing down a little bit better, it really helped us relax and flow. I would have actually graded this exercise as easier than #12. The consistent pattern seemed to really, really benefit Ben's brain and body. 

Exercise 43: 

When we tackled this one, it emphasized my side-to-side unevenness. But also made it easier to try to mirror what we had just done. And there's something so helpful about repeating a NEW pattern. Ben was pretty sure when we started leg yielding from the rail we were going to continue all the way across the arena or maybe stop at the center line and go straight. So throwing in the circle after was a great test for both of us and helped keep us more honest in the quality of the leg yield. If he had really led with shoulders and trailed the haunches and barrel, it was pretty hard to change the bend to do the 10m circle. But if we kept the quality in the leg yield, the 10m circle felt easy peasy. 

Exercise 44:

I'm going to return to this one because we struggled a bit with squeezing it all into the small arena and I'm not sure we got all the benefits. It felt a bit like I was cranking down the impulsion too much in order to make the pattern happen. The changes in bend were really beneficial though and he definitely felt more supple after.