06/06/2025
When you look at today’s dressage arenas… what do you mostly see? 🤔
👉 Horses racing forward like uncontrolled missiles 🚀
👉 Big, fast steps with no true collection
👉 Horses looking almost like robots, disconnected, not home 🫥
👉 Forced into rigid head-neck postures, micromanaged every single step 🧑✈️🐴
And the crazy part? 🤯
Modern dressage training is basically endurance training combined with stretching 🏃♀️🤸♂️
✅ Long frames
✅ Endless circles
✅ “Long and low” stretch postures
✅ While trying to “build the topline” they’re sitting on… all while the horse is moving in a stretched, endurance pattern with a rider on top of their back.
If you told any human athlete about this approach, they’d probably laugh 😅
No one builds muscles & strength with focusing solely on endurance + stretching under load ❌
A real athlete who wants to build strength would:
✅ Take out excessive step length and speed
✅ Shift to strength training
✅ Likely use High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
✅ Focus on quality, not endless quantity
Because that’s how muscles are built — through strategic, targeted effort — not endless movement 💪
And the same applies to your horse 🐎
They deserve a training approach that respects how their body works and truly supports healthy athletic development.
This is a wake-up call for those who genuinely want to develop their horse’s body:
Return to real strength training:
🚀 Lift the front
🏋🏽♂️ Shift weight back to the hindquarters
🔥 Develop high intensity movements with low repetitions and develop movements like:
👉 Piaffe
👉 School Halt
👉 Passage
👉 Levade
👉 High collected canter
Build true collection — not endless, empty circles
Your horse deserves it ❤️
If you want to find out how you can start High-Intensity Interval Training to finally build muscles in your horse, comment “ME” under this post
