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| Photo credit: Paul Dobson Photography |
Here we are, almost half way through the six scales of
dressage training and in this part I’ll take a zoom into contact. The first
thing to note which is very important is that you cannot achieve a true contact
between you and your horse without establishing correct rhythm and ensuring
that your horse is showing true suppleness.
Actually, that’s a very key point to all six scales of
dressage training – none are as isolated as independents as this post series
would make out. They are all connected and interlinked, and crucially they must
be balanced for you and your horse to progress through the scales and advance
your dressage training.
As with the previous two scale of training posts, let’s start
by looking at the FEI’s definition of what ‘contact’ is – what does it mean and
what does achieving it mean?
“Contact is the soft, steady connection between the rider’s hand and the horse’s mouth. The horse should go rhythmically forward from the rider’s driving aids and ‘seek’ contact with the rider’s hand, thus ‘going into’ the contact. The horse seeks the contact and the rider provides the contact.”
So this scale clearly promotes “going into the contact” but
that should not mean that to achieve this you need to start pushing your horse
out of his established rhythm. If you do so, you’ll lose not only your rhythm,
but you’ll start to affect his balance, his cadence and ultimately his suppleness.
To achieve contact, you need to think forward and get your horse to think the
same without adjusting his rhythm or falling out of balance.
Just jumping back to the definition of contact, it could
give you the wrong impression that contact is all about the hand and mouth,
& by definition, it is. BUT… In order to achieve what is described between
the horse’s mouth and rider’s hand, you’ll need to have a number of other body
parts working in almost in a complete cycle.
A horse’s engine is like a fast super car – it’s at the
back. So firstly, you’ll always need an active and engaged hind leg. The hind
legs to be snappy to create the jump needed to achieve cadence, but should be engaged
& forward and looking to land on the hoof fall of the front foot. Your rhythm will hugely help you here. Next
comes in the suppleness, as you need to ensure your horse is swinging and loose
over his quarters, back and along his topline giving that lovely elastic
feeling. Eventually, this feeling will arrive at the front & into the mouth
where it travels back up the reins to the rider. The rider needs to also be
soft and supple, not only in their hand, but in the body and down into their
seat. If this is an uninterrupted connection, riders will be successfully be
able to perform their aids through their seat and supporting hands, as well as
continuing their driving aid and activating the horse’s engine. And there were
come back to the engine and the active hindlegs.
Maintaining the cycle of contact as described above will
prevent the reins, hands and elbows becoming a blockage in the system for
achieving true contact. The contact ecosystem needs to work in unison and
harmony to avoid independent parts blocking its achievement.
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