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When you watch top-level dressage tests, it’s easy to become caught up in the flashiness of the horse’s paces and the glamour of it all. But there are two sides to that coin – without accuracy, a true connection and harmony between horse and rider, being flashy will only get you so far.

Conversely, if you’ve been perfecting your ringcraft and making sure your geometry is accurate and your horse is completely on your aids, adding sparkle to his paces could be just what you need to eke out a few more valuable marks from the judges. And the best news? Even if your horse is a naturally conservative mover, you can still teach him to have elevation and expression, without sacrificing those all-important basics.

It’s all in the mix

It can’t be overstated how important the scales of training are, whatever level you’re competing at. It’s like baking a cake – you can add fancy decorations and make it aesthetically impressive, but if the batter ingredients aren’t right, it won’t taste good. Adding flash to your horse’s paces is the same – if you rely on toe flicking in the extended trot, but your horse is unbalanced or not using his back, you won’t achieve top marks.

As always, use those scales of training as a checklist as you warm up. Your horse should be…

• working in a good rhythm. This is the foundation of the training scale and something you should be working on from the moment you mount. If he’s behind the leg and feels lazy, it’s hard to retain rhythm, because you’ll feel as if you’re kicking him up to the tempo, so ride plenty of transitions to wake him up and he’ll soon carry himself along to his own internal metronome
• supple and relaxed on both reins. Every horse has a stiffer side, so make sure you ride plenty of changes of rein and figures in all three paces to loosen up his muscles on each side of his body, and let him stretch down to the contact, too, to loosen his back
• steady in the contact. You should feel an even, light weight in each hand, which comes from the two previous scales. If you’ve been riding him from your leg, he’ll seek the bit. If he’s too heavy, lighten him up by riding more transitions with your seat and legs, and if he’s too light, he’s not accepted the contact yet, so encourage plenty more stretching by using your leg and seat aids to ride changes of bend, without fiddling with your hands
• moving forward off your leg. Hopefully, you’ve already laid the foundations for this while establishing rhythm, but if your horse still feels as if he’s dragging himself along, add plenty more transitions between and within the gaits, and use lateral work, such as leg-yield and shoulder-in, to get him really listening to your leg aids
• straight and central between your aids. Riding down the centre line or three-quarter line is a great way to test if your horse is crooked – use arena mirrors to spot if he’s trailing his hindquarters or falling out through one shoulder. But first check your own position – horses reflect their riders, and if you’ve let one shoulder drop or are sitting deeper on one seat bone, your horse will be crooked, too
• able to collect and extend from your seat and leg aids. This doesn’t need to be a big, flashy change in stride, but you should feel that you can push him on a bit by adding leg and opening up the movement of your seat, followed by closing his stride down a little by again adding leg, but also using your seat more deeply and conservatively

Once you have all those fundamentals in place, you’ll then be ready to start adding true expression to his paces.

Discover more of Annabella’s advice to improve your horse’s way of going in August Horse&Rider, out now!