08/09/2025
Should we do an exercise, just because it has been deemed beneficial or produces results?
When I work with a horse, or teach lessons, I constantly have to make decisions about what exercises to use, do next, and how long to do them. Sometimes, students are surprised to hear that I don’t use certain exercises, although they are very common and they have been told to use them in the past.
For me, a very important guideline for anything I do in the training is: does it improve my connection to the horse?
So yes, there might be exercises that are very effective and get a result faster. And then you look into the eyes of your horse - and what do you see there?
I remember so many defeated horse eyes in connection with certain types of exercises.
When a result of an exercises might be more fancy steps but might result in mental tension or learned helplessness, I’m not interested.
Once, I tried out using the backup more with Weto to achieve more bending of the haunches. Sending him backwards half along side or one circle felt weird, and, even though I used rewards, he seemed to get more and more disconnected each day.
Once, I tried to reduce Minor’s enormous push by working with what’s often called a pirouette renverse, or a turn around the forehand (by doing large, disengaging steps with the hindquarter and keeping the front more stationary). This is seen as a very effective exercise and is largely practiced. I remember how Minor always looked away from me when we stopped to have a break, and how his eyes looked.
This doesn’t mean these are bad exercises, or that other horses can’t benefit from them, or that you shouldn’t use them. What I want to say is, that I always try to pay attention to the feeling between me and the horse, and, to say it in Elsa Sinclair’s words, if it’s getting better, or if it’s getting worse.
In dressage, we can have the tendency to reduce horses to a big pile of meat, a body mass that needs exercising, legs that need to step somewhere, a core that needs engaging, facia trains we want work with, haunches that need bending. And yes, that happens to me, too, sometimes.
However, personally, I don’t want to sacrifice connection for physical results.
And what about us, our feeling when we use an exercise? Maybe you are a very soft person and it feels wrong to do something with your horse? Even when everyone else is raving about it. And then you do it anyway, because the trainer said you should, or because people are having results with that. The thing is, your horse will feel that incongruity…
Some weeks ago I had an online lesson with a wonderful young lady in South Africa. Her horse was very pushy and nippy, and I tried to coach her on how to be more aware of her boundaries and communicate these to her horse. I could see her do it, half-heartedly, and while I would not have had a problem to tell the horse “Oi, I said back off and stay there”, she had. Realising that, I changed my approach and asked her how the horse was at liberty. It turned out, the horse was a lot more relaxed then. So for the next lessons, we will try to work without equipment and with different exercises, exercises in which she doesn’t have to be so confrontational, and then try to transfer that on to working with equipment. I’m curious how that will go, and my student felt very relieved.
So, when you work with your horse, ask yourself: does this exercise make my horse feel more proud, relaxed, connected…?
P.S.: While I abandoned those two exercises I talked about in the training with my two horses, I found others that had the same, or even better, effect AND produced gleaming eyes in my horses. And that felt a lot better to me as well.
Photo by Magda Senderowska
