Fundamentally True

This week marks yet another week that I have been reminded of something so fundamentally true, it can not be escaped:

“Teach what your train, train what you teach.”

Having recently returned from a successful outing at the Bromont International Driving Championship CDE, I turned to planning the next steps in Loretta’s training. In that process, I reviewed the areas in our work that are going well, and where the opportunities for improvement are.
As I reviewed and compared our dressage scores over the past 4-5 competitions, I could see steady improvement in some of the most challenging aspects for Loretta. Moving from two star FEI competitions up to the top level of three star presented new challenges. Specifically, the canter work and the shoulder-in.

A lot of our training focused on building Loretta’s skills in those more advanced movements. In both cases, she has shown significant improvements from where they started. Yay ‘Retta Roo!

Now it’s time to take advantage of a bit of a summer break from competition. That means refocusing our training to continue Loretta’s development. While analyzing her performance, I could see those clear gains in the hard stuff, but not much change in the areas that she was already proficient.

Back to Basics

One of the most basic skills that Loretta has only ever scored marginally on is the walk. The fact of the matter is, her walk in a dressage test is… uninspiring. Her average score on that skill hovers at about a 6.

I chose to revisit an old lesson plan that I created many years ago called “Developing the Walk.” This is core fundamental training for any horse, competitive or otherwise.

To be honest, there was a part of me that had misgivings. At some level, there was a little voice in my head saying something to the effect of “This is too basic for an FEI 3* competitive horse.” Fortunately, there was the other side of the argument in my head saying “If it’s that easy, she’ll knock it outta the park, and we can move on. Besides, you’ll never regret revisiting the fundamentals.”

Small Investment, Big Rewards

The first reward in the training went to Loretta right away. After months and months of working on really challenging skills in the dressage ring, we finally dialed back to something more relaxing. After all, one of the core tenets of a good walk is relaxation.

Of course, as we know from the training scale, relaxation is a byproduct of rhythm, another important component of a good walk. With a little more focus on that rhythm, my own timing became more reliable, making it much easier for Loretta to follow my requests. That all opened up some band-width for us to start cleaning up her transitions.

Since we build a gait in the transitions, not only did the quality of her walk improve, so too did the quality of her trot. Her working trot, which had become “acceptable,” bloomed back into a trot that you’d have a hard time looking away from.

Still developing, but showing improvement in these workouts has been lateral flexibility. That means that her straightness is more correct on the straight lines, and in the corners. The natural byproduct of that is showing correct bend, and having more control over where she’s placing her hind limbs as she moves. That will be quite handy when we move on to revisit those shoulder ins!

Even her canter work showed better balance and relaxation.

The Big Picture

Looking at the big picture, these are very small, incremental improvements. After all, we’ve only worked on this lesson plan twice this week. We didn’t even make it all the way through the lesson plan, choosing instead to end while we were still getting good stuff done. What’s more important is that we laid down some really good ground work on how we can continue with Loretta’s development.

All of this from revisiting a lesson plan that I first devised for training and preliminary level horses. Who-da-thunk? Well, I did, because I tell my students all the time “You’ll never waste your time by working on the fundamentals.” I just had to listen to my own teaching to be reminded.