POINT OF VIEW
slower gaits that do not benefit from momentum. Horses pushed in this way rarely piaffe with any brilliance. The better alternative for the rider is to relax his/her back and offer a path of least resistance. This will usually suffice to convince the horse to move forward again.
Angle of the Back Many arbitrary ideas float in the dressage world about the desired verticality of the back. It has been said by many dressage gurus that the rider must always be ver- tical as seen from the side or from the front. It is obvious that the rider should not be hanging constantly from the same side of the saddle and must be able to remain cen- tered, as needed. Verticality of the upper body is a neutral position that has no effect on movement: when sitting on an exercise ball, the vertical body keeps the ball station- ary. To move it in any direction re- quires leaning one way or the other. Some riders achieve it by advancing the shoulders, others by advancing the hips. This depends on the horse, the moment and the exercise. The angle the rider’s body makes with the horse’s back is the most powerful way to influence the horse’s balance from front to back, back to front and side to side. To appreciate the importance of this concept, it is necessary to understand how balance works: every step we make, we move for- ward, lose our balance for a micro-second and then we project one front forward to catch our lost balance safe- ly. The basic rule goes like this: if the foot is ahead of the body in the direction the body is going (or ready to get there very quickly), the person or horse are safe and feel unstressed. If the body is ahead of the foot long enough so that the foot cannot catch up, the body is in danger of falling and stress ensues. Anybody who has ever gone up or down stairs leaning too far forward will know exactly what I mean. Additionally, if somebody pulls your hand or presses on your shoulder at the same time, an eventual re- covery becomes near impossible. Fast horses increase their level of anxiety for every de-
gree of deviation from the vertical that they don’t know how to compensate for by abducting their foot (stepping to the side) in the right direction. The true reason for the lateral dressage exercises is that they give the horse the ability to secure their balance at any time—as long as he can practice them without being forced by the aids. This
46 July/August 2018
can be taught in hand to a foal in a few lessons. It ensures the horse grows in balance and therefore with a relaxed topline. When the rider leans forward, for instance, s/he will
project weight on the forehand of the horse. At the same time, if the contact is light (as we see here with Carl Hester riding his Olympic stallion Uthopia), the front legs are not bracing on the ground in reaction to the pressure from the reins on the mouth. They are free to react by lifting quickly forward to secure the balance. The horse’s nervous system works
Carl Hester galloping Uthopia: legs solidly at the girth, his body forward, bringing weight to the forehand. Because the horse is left free in his balance (loose rein), he reacts to this freedom by keeping his neck up, lifting his foreleg movement and engaging deeply.
from front to back (in this order: from the eyes that see the ground, the front feet that react to it, to the hind feet that produce a matching action). In short, the more the horse is “sent to his fore- hand” by the rider’s weight, position or action, while being free to react to the ground in front of him by advancing his front feet quickly, unimpeded by too much contact, the quicker his hind legs react and the deeper they come under the body. This may go against the dres- sage dogma that repeats frequently that front legs move only as an effect of the hind legs’ action, but anybody who has ever ridden a horse cross-country or show jumping over a serious course
of fences knows that it works the other way. Before in- venting dogma, we need to observe how nature organiz- es the biomechanics of the horse to deal with the ubiqui- tous law of gravity. In the other direction, it
is often assumed that a rid- er whose shoulders are be- hind the vertical is behind the movement. Though this is cer- tainly possible if the seat goes back as well, the position of the shoulders has to be evaluated relative to the position of the rider’s hips and in function of the action of the hands. Nuno Oliveira is pictured here with his shoulders back but his hips well engaged toward the front of the saddle (“advancing the belly button” as he often said), pushing his hands forward to help the horse round his neck onto a light contact.
Nuno Oliveira on the Thor- oughbred Talar, showing the powerful and relaxed posi- tion he used to teach and perform the piaffe: hips for- ward, shoulders back, poll relaxed, hands advanced and lowered. The horse is balanc- ing himself against the pas- sive push of his seat, and capable of arching his neck. This is the key to achieving true lightness in an energetic collection.
Kit Houghton
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