Quality Is Job One

Trainers Conference demonstration rider Sophia Schults on Samour M rides shoulder-in, the movement US national dressage young-horse coach Christine Traurig called "the mother of all good things" in dressage. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

This slogan might sound vaguely familiar to some of you. I had to Google it to identify the source: It was the Ford Motor Co.’s 1980s-era attempt to counter perceptions that its cars were, ahem, not of good quality.

That slogan percolated up from some recess of my memory as I watched US national dressage coaches Debbie McDonald, Charlotte Bredahl, Christine Traurig, and George Williams work with eight horse-and-rider combinations on the second and final day of the 2019 Adequan/USDF FEI-Level Trainers Conference. Although the four trainers have quite different teaching styles, a common theme pervaded their instruction, usually phrased as some version of “If it’s not working, get out.”

What that means is: Never sacrifice the quality of the gait in your quest to produce a movement. It’s an easy trap to fall into: Focused on riding a shoulder-in or a half-pass or a flying change, we’re concentrating so much on bend and angle and timing that we fail to notice that the tempo has slowed or that the impulsion or the straightness has been lost. Problem is, not only will a movement produced in this manner score poorly because we’ve lost the quality of the underpinnings, but the movement itself will not go well—because good execution requires those basics as prerequisites.

In the first conference session of the day, US dressage national youth coach George Williams helped junior rider Tori Belles on Romulus get acquainted with that essential building block toward collection and flying changes, the simple change. A simple change is a canter-walk-canter transition from one lead to the other with no trot steps and just a few walk steps in between. After several attempts, Romulus began to express his displeasure with the increased effort required, backing off and becoming balky during the walk segments. Williams stepped in quickly.

“We need to leave it because he’s getting frustrated,” he said of the horse. He directed Belles to ride some brisk long sides in medium canter to freshen the energy (and Romulus’s attitude) and then went into some work on flying changes. 

Too much repetition and drilling can sour a horse, Williams explained. As a trainer, sometimes you need step away from a topic that is frustrating the horse. Come back to it later in the session or perhaps on another day when the horse has relaxed in his mind and body. 

Build rock-solid basics across the board; they will serve as a dependable foundation for consistent performance, Williams advised the conference audience. “Start with a very solid foundation and consistent tests—sevens, or ‘very good.’ Then we can work on making things better,” he said, the icing on the cake being the “wow” factor that might take that 7 up to an 8 or a 9.

True suppleness—correct “softening” through the horse’s ribcage area in response to the rider’s inside bending leg, not through manipulations of the horse’s head and neck with the inside rein—offers many of the keys to the kingdom of solid basics, according to the clinicians. 

“Ribcage. Ribcage,” Traurig reminded demonstration rider Michael Bragdell. Bragdell’s mount, SenSation HW, was last year’s national US Equestrian Five-Year-Old champion—but Traurig’s keen eye noticed every moment that the gelding was not quite supple enough on the inside. 

“Gymnasticize your horse. [German Olympian and former US dressage-team coach] Klaus Balkenhol used to say, ‘Mobilize the hind leg’ all the time when I was training with him,” said Traurig. “I love that word, mobilize. By mobilizing the hind leg we can make the space between the hind legs a little narrower,” a key element in straightness and collection. And that narrowing is developed “through the mother of all good things, the shoulder-in.”

 

Ali Potasky on the five-year-old mare Irintha shows what a mobilized hind leg looks like. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Shoulder-in, shoulder-fore—we saw these keystone gymnasticizing exercises with every horse in the conference, from the five-year-old mare Irintha, ridden by Ali Potasky, through the Grand Prix-level horses. These movements seem so simple but are frequently performed incorrectly, the clinicians said, with haunches falling to the outside, horses’ heads and necks pulled too far to the inside with an overly strong inside rein, and no bend, which renders the movement a tail-to-the-wall leg-yield instead of a shoulder-in or shoulder-fore. There also needs to be a distinction between shoulder-in, which is a “three-track” movement (the horse’s legs traveling on three distinct “tracks” or lines of travel, with the inside foreleg and the outside hind leg on the same track), and shoulder-fore, which is a two-and-a-half-track movement, Traurig explained.

 

US national dressage development coach Charlotte Bredahl helps Melissa Taylor with her canter pirouettes aboard Ansgar.  Photo by Jennifer Bryant. 

As some of us have learned the hard way, failure to follow the “quality is job one” mantra will come back to bite you somewhere down the road. One of the chief roles of a dressage trainer is to apply critical thinking in analyzing the horse’s performance: what was good, what was lacking, why it was lacking, and what exercises will address the deficiencies. This process requires attention to the smallest details.

As she worked with Potasky, Traurig noticed every time Irintha’s tempo changed during transitions. “We are working to create fluent, effortless canter-trot transitions with no loss of rhythm, maintaining the nose out with a consistent stretch to the bit,” she said. Later, schooling shoulder-in and half-pass, Traurig said: “If you lose something in the lateral work, do a circle. Don’t stay in it.”

 

US national dressage technical advisor Debbie McDonald helped demo rider Kerrigan Gluch take the Grand Prix-level Bolero CXLVII's movements, like this trot half-pass, from "very good" to "wow." (No, "wow" is not the technical score verbiage!) Photo by Jennifer Bryant. 

US national dressage development coach Charlotte Bredahl delivered a similar message to demo rider Melissa Taylor on the small-tour-level Ansgar. As Taylor practiced tempi changes (flying changes of lead in sequence), Bredahl reminded: “If the horse loses his balance, straightness, or impulsion during the tempis, don’t keep going. That’s what I call setting the horse up to fail. I like to set the horse up for success.”

Even at Grand Prix, the training is all about emphasizing quality over quantity. As demo rider Chris Hickey worked to improve the green-at-Grand-Prix Contento Sogno’s passage and piaffe, national dressage technical advisor Debbie McDonald said, “Get out, get out,” every time the gelding’s impulsion and tempo began to wane. Hickey would do something to refresh the energy—ride a few steps of medium trot, go on a curved line—and then reenter the movement. 

 

Debbie McDonald coaches Chris Hickey on Contento Sogno in piaffe, calling the gelding a horse with an exciting future. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

“Don’t get greedy,” McDonald counseled. “Be happy with just a few steps.”

Sure, the tests call for more than just a few steps. But dressage is hard work, and correct work is challenging when a horse is still developing strength and balance. So go slowly, be patient, keep your standards high, and praise your horse’s honest efforts, however small—“Pet him!” was another common conference refrain. Incremental improvements help keep horses happy and confident in their work.

“And at the end of the day, that’s what we want to see,” said McDonald: “that our horses are happy athletes.”

The Right Path

If the horse gets tight in the flying changes, ride the changes on a large circle instead of on a straight line, US Equestrian national developing coach Charlotte Bredahl advised demo rider Jami Kment on Gatino Van Hof Olympia at the 2019 Adequan/USDF FEI-Level Trainers Conference. Ride the more difficult change to the outside of the circle -- "I don't know why it works, exactly, but it usually works!" Bredahl said. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

Although, as newly appointed US national dressage technical advisor Debbie McDonald pointed out, there is no single correct approach to take in dressage training because every horse must be treated as an individual, there is one set of basics: the pyramid of training.

Give short shrift to any aspect of the pyramid, and your dressage will suffer. At the end of the day, regardless of how fancy or ordinary your mount may be, much of your success or lack thereof in dressage will come down to how much time you spend perfecting the basics: how rigorous your standards, how intolerant of “good enough,” how much attention to detail you give the steps and the strides and the straightness.

That was the lesson that emerged today, day 1 of the 2019 Adequan/USDF FEI-Level Trainers Conference, at Mary Anne McPhail’s High Meadow Farm in Loxahatchee, Florida. The event marks the first time since the 2011 Adequan/USDF National Dressage Symposium that all of the US Equestrian national dressage coaches have assembled to lead an educational event. As the high-performance coach, McDonald worked with the two Grand Prix-level horses and riders, Kerrigan Gluch on Bolero CXL VII and Chris Hickey on Contento Sogno. Youth coach George Williams started the day by working with the junior/young riders Tori Belles on Romulus and Sophia Schults on Samour M. Then it was on to young-horse coach Christine Traurig, with Michael Bragdell on SenSation HW and Ali Potasky on Irintha. Newly appointed development coach (and former assistant youth coach) Charlotte Bredahl worked one-on-one with Jami Kment on Gatino Van Hof Olympia and Melissa Taylor on Ansgar. 

US national dressage youth coach George Williams works with Tori Belles on Romulus. Photo by Jennifer Bryant. 

As Williams demonstrated with Belles, it’s never too early to teach youth riders to dial in their focus on the details. He had Belles count strides in the rising trot, figuring out how many strides Romulus takes in a quarter of a 20-meter circle in trot and canter. Williams uses lots of counting in his teaching, from having Belles sit for three or five strides and then resume rising trot, to demonstrating the “enlarge…two…three” circle exercise he uses to help riders learn to regulate their horses’ rhythms and tempos while coordinating the balance between the forward and sideways driving aids.

Some of dressage training is horsemanship know-how, passed down from teacher to student over the years. An audience member asked how Williams decides which is better for warming up a horse, trot-canter-trot transitions or walk-canter-walk. It depends, Williams responded, on whether the horse needs help with his balance and in developing pushing and carrying power (in which case walk-canter transitions might be preferable), or whether the main objective is to loosen and supple a horse’s back and loin muscles (better served through trot-canter transitions). He chose trot-canter as the best method of suppling Schults’s mount, Samour M.

One of the great pleasures of attending a Trainers Conference is the opportunity to watch some of our country’s top horses. Hilltop Farm head trainer Michael Bragdell rode SenSation HW, last year’s national FEI Five-Year-Old champion. As guided by Traurig, Bragdell showed the audience the importance of teaching the horse about the rider’s outside leg and rein aids in terms of straightness and half-halts.

Christine Traurig, the US national young-horse coach, helps Michael Bragdell on SenSation HW, the USA's top FEI Five-Year-Old in 2018. Photo by Jennifer Bryant.

“Everyone says ‘Inside leg to outside hand,’” Traurig said, “but until the horse understands the outside leg and rein aids in keeping the shape of the circle, you can’t use the inside leg correctly because the inside leg contradicts the inside rein.” This is why, she said, horse and rider need to be educated about three types of aids: driving aids, yielding aids, and bending aids.

The basics, the clinicians showed repeatedly, are rooted in equine physiology; correct dressage is not “for looks” or “for show.” For example, Traurig explained that tightness in the sacroiliac and lumbar regions of the horse’s back will inhibit the development of impulsion because the hind legs will not be able to work properly to create power and thrust. Assuming a veterinarian has ruled out physical issues, a “stuck” back can be addressed through simple exercises such as leg-yield, which encourage the horse to reach and stretch over his back. 

Traurig also explained that the horse’s trapezius muscles, which are on either side of his neck, open up “like a Japanese fan” when the neck is stretched and lowered. The muscles also connect to the long back muscle and to the nuchal ligament, which helps to lift and support the back when it is put in tension, sort of like a suspension bridge. 

Together the national dressage coaches showed that improvement in our sport involves a drilling-down into the basics, applying them with increasing exactitude until (theoretically, anyway) every step the horse takes is precisely how, when, where, and how much we want. That level of attention to detail permits no coasting. There are no sloppy, yay-I’m-done-I’m-going-to-drop-the-reins down transitions. “Ridehim to the bit,” Traurig said repeatedly, reminding riders to maintain energy and impulsion even while asking their horses to come down to the walk. And don’t just cruise around aimlessly in your walk breaks. “What walk are you doing? It is extended? Medium? Collected? Decide which one you are doing, and ride that walk.”

Think famous trainers are above helping out at the barn? Think again! Olympian Lendon Gray shows her Dressage4Kids Winter Intensive Training Program participants the importance of keeping the arena meticulously picked up. Photo by Jennifer Bryant. 

Our horses, naturally, rise (or fall) to the level of our expectations. Bredahl instructed Taylor to “make the transition from medium to collected trot—boom! That wasn’t clear enough. If it’s not clear, tactfully walk one step” to teach Ansgar that he must come back when Taylor asks. “Then think it [a walk step] but don’t do it.” Soon the horse was responding more crisply to the aids for the transition. 

Similarly, McDonald told Gluch to sharpen up Bolero CXLVII’s responses to her aids for up transitions. “That wasn’t clean enough,” she said of a walk-canter depart. “At this level, you need to have both ends sharp. You need to have their hind legs.” 

Timing is critical, said McDonald, who didn’t want riders “sitting” on any aids. She told Gluch to quicken her own aids and reactions: “Be quick to sharpen him. Quick to pet him. Quick to half-halt. Never hold him. Everything must be sharper. At this level, the horse needs to be more responsible for his own balance, not rely on your hands.” 

One thing that’s definitely sharpened is my eagerness for tomorrow’s session. See you tomorrow!