Maximising your movements

From suppleness to a quicker reaction to your aids, leg-yields and simple changes bring a whole host of benefits to your training even if the white boards aren’t your cup of tea. Hacking and jumping horses can certainly benefit from these movements, but if dressage is your primary focus, they’re essential skills – you’ll be able to use these movements to improve your scores and prepare for a successful move-up by creating a more responsive ride and generating a more powerful canter, tidying up your transitions and producing more suppleness.

Tricky transitions

While it can seem daunting, simple changes can be broken down into three aspects. It involves a canter to walk transition, followed by three to five steps of walk, before picking up canter on the other rein.

You won’t see a simple change in competition until you reach Elementary. However, I begin teaching it once my horse’s canter is strong enough to begin collection work. This is different for every horse, but he should be able to hold himself up in canter rather than relying on your contact. To assess this, ask yourself a couple of questions – does he speed up in a straight line or flop into transitions? If so, you need to spend more time strengthening him.

Before asking for a simple change, I’d work on exercises that help to replicate or strengthen its component parts…

Lead changes through trot

A great place to start when considering simple changes is by first practising canter-trot-canter transitions across the diagonal or on two 20m circles, changing lead through the change of rein. This helps you get a feel for changing the bend and asking for a quick reaction to your aids, without the added difficulty of direct transitions.

Top tip

Preparation for any transition is key. Don’t try to perform the simple change from a               poor-quality canter – make a circle, produce the pace you want and try again.

To ace your transitions, and improve your leg yield – get your copy of February Horse&Rider out now