A Basic Introduction - Dressage

Dressage, which comes from the French word meaning training, and is pronounced to rhyme with visage, trains horses to be active, obliging, flexible and receptive. Dressage, when done well, is seen as like a ballet for horses. Perhaps, this is so because ballet asks the same, flexibility, smoothness and vitality of its performers as does dressage of its horse and riders.

To be performed at its best dressage requires horse and rider to be as one, only then will its full elegance and refinement be achieved. Both the horse and rider must be fully in touch with each other and as such it can be seen as the pinnacle of team sport. Dressage at all levels improves balance, suppleness, and obedience with the purpose of improving and facilitating the horse's performance of normal tasks.

Dressage dates back to the horsemanship seen in ancient Greece, and the work done by Xenophon. Dressage became noticed in Western Europe as a very useful training of horses in the renaissance period. It was during the renaissance in Western Europe that the most important horse trainers implemented a training regime that moved from stage to stage for classical dressage that almost unchanged today is utilised for modern dressage training.

With the degree of ritual black is the predominant colour for tack in dressage. A dressage saddle is used within dressage only; this is an English-style saddle. It has been developed with a plumb and large saddle flap, the leg of the rider is echoed by the length and the slight curve at the knee.

Despite this dressage is very much a competitive sport; there are hundreds if not thousands of small dressage competitions are being held all over the world. The standards of riding and training took and great leap forward with the introduction of dressage in the 1912 Stockholm Olympic Games. Within the Olympics today dressage is included with eventing and jumping, all three going together for the three day event.

Dressage is undertaken in a 60 meter long, with the width a third of the length arena with letters, A-K-V-E-S-H-C-M-R-B-P-F. The letters designate where movements are to be executed; the letters also assist the rider in judging specific distances, such as the size of a circle. Dressage horses when they are at the top level of development can be endlessly adaptable to a rider's persuasion and accomplish whatever is required with a minimum of fuss or apparent effort.

Movements such as the piaffe, passage, half-pass, pirouette, and tempi changes are what is required to succeed in competitive dressage. This differs from the movements completed in classic dressage, specifically with respect to the aires above ground that horses no matter how well trained struggle to perfect. The Musical Freestyle represents the optimum part of the competition; this is when the dressage rider completes required movements and figures to music but to their own planning. The requirements within dressage exclude "tricks" to be learned by rote; the point of training in dressage is for the horse to develop both in body and mind, at one with the natural development, and these tests are "pointers" to exhibit the achievement of stability, endurance and attentiveness his training has allowed him to reach.

I hope with this information you are sufficiently interested to look to learn more.

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George Young has years of experience writing great and well-written articles on eventing these can be found at myhorsenews.com

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