The Art of Natural Dressage

Many people are talking about collection and there are many stages of collection. What does a minimal stage of collection has to look/feel like when a horse is beginning its training under the saddle? In the books you can see the ultimate goal, perfect picture but where does collection begin do you think?

I think training collection starts from the ground. Lately I attended a clinic by Marijke de Jong, a Dutch Bent Branderup teacher, and she had a really interesting view on how to collect the horse, and in what order.

According to her, it starts with letting the inner hindleg step under the bodymass when walking a volte on the ground, and as an extention of that the shoulder-in. These two exercises let the inside hindleg bend more and place itself further under the body mass. When the horse can do this exercise without falling over the shoulder, she continues with travers. Of course that's a quite traditional order, but I thought her reasons behind this order were very interesting: In shoulder-in to the right, the horse bends his body to the left and places his right hindleg towards the left under the bodymass, but the left hindleg to the left away from the body mass. So you let only one hindleg collect and place itself under the body mass.

With travers to the right, the horse bends his body to the right and places both his hindlegs towards the right, under the bend of the body. The horse now has to bend and collect both his hindlegs. That suddenly explained to me why horses move relatively freely in the shoulder-in, but always go slower and more concentrated in the travers: he's collecting.

When the horse does the travers good, he shows you that he is now capable of collect both hindlegs at the same time, and bend them and place them underneath the body. And then you can start training piaffe.

Maybe other people knew the reasons behind this system for a long time already, but to me it was a real eye-opener; I always thought that the travers was just another sideways movement and didn't see any fundamental difference with shoulder-in (except for the bending to the other side obviously ).

So from the saddle the first feeling of collection could be the one inner hindleg during shoulder-in, because that one stops pushing and starts carrying. From the saddle it indeed feels very soft. Of course there can always be suprise collections when the horse suddenly performs a collected canter leap during the transition from walk or trot to canter, but I think that shoulder-in could be the first step to collection initiated by the rider.

For me collection starts with one hindleg. If that's going well and the horse starts to understand that he can use this to make other manouvres easier (for example the Spanish walk, or canter), he will start to use this to his benefit in other exercises too and will start to collect 'according to the book'; with the back and neck curving upwards and the poll relaxing. So the first collection for me is that hindleg and the way it moves, not how the back/neck of the horse look. You can teach the horse the ramener (flexing at the poll) in halt before he collects in movement, but he will only be able to do this in movement correct if he starts to carry himself from the hindlegs upwards.

Thank you for your explaination Miriam! This is indeed the way I practice it while riding (because my trainer tells me so). I also read somewhere that the bellymuscles are trained this way and that the strenghtening of these muscles is needed for collection. Have you done this in groundwork with a cordeo already? This seems very difficult to me. Piaffe seems to me very good and rather easy to teach collection on the ground but I was told a Piaffe is damaging to an 5 year old horse. Do you know from what age Piaffe can be asked maybe? I heard 8 years old but I don't know if this is correct.

Yup, my greatest pride is the fact that Blacky (since the clinic) now not only has a shoulder-in taught on the cordeo, but also a travers!

This probably sounds really bad, as if I'm only focussing on the exercise and not the ponies themselves, but the travers was an exercise I thought I would never be able to teach without using a halter - or at least a way of putting the head in the right direction. And it's possible! I think I was high for two days after the first times, and Blacky got really happy with both the achievement (which he found pretty silly actually, I guess he had known it was possible for ages already...) and the rewards attached to it.

The thing that makes a travers possible without touching the head, is the fact that the horse has a travers-button on his body: a spot on the side of his neck where, if you slightly push it, causes both the head and the hindquarters to turn towards you, while the belly bends away. It's described by Bent Branderup in his book Akademische Reitkunst, but I never thought it would really work. And it doesn't, if your horse isn't straight and relaxed first - and that's why when I tried it years ago it didn't work with the pony's. Now I've been doing a lot of straightening exercises in hand in walk (shoulder in and stepping under on a volte) to get Blacky's muscles stronger, and he did it the first time I tried, last weekend.

And yes, shoulder-in does train the muscles in the underline and belly, because the right side of the pelvis and the right hindleg can only move forward and under the body if the horse shortens these muscles. So training even just stepping under with one hindleg on the volte trains those muscles already. And the beauty of these exercises is that shoulder in and stepping under train only 1 hindleg at a time so that there's less risk of overdemanding the horse. And then the piaffe is better to understand for the horse.

I guess that Blacky being onesided and badly muscled for a long time is why the piaffe never really developed that well. He tried very bravely and gave his best and got al the rewards for trying, but it was never a real piaffe. So I guess we'll wait with that a little untill the travers is old news for him and he has learned to engage both hindlegs at the same time in a sideways movement and trained his muscles to pull under his hindlegs. But as Blacky's already 12, I don't know what the minimal starting age for piaffe is. I think that in the Spanish Riding School it's around 6 years old, and started from the ground without rider, but I don't recall precisely I'm afraid...

Ok, now I'm excited and have questions!

Is there any way for you to better explain, or do a little diagram of where the "button" area is? I can experiment to see if I can find it of course, but if you can...?

Having little clues like this explaination are so nice! I was very unclear on whether the horse should be bent towards you (head and haunches toward you and ribs pushed away) or bent away (ribs toward you and head and haunches away from you). So this has answered that question.

But I have another...should one ask for this along a wall, or out in the open? I would expect, if Cisco did the proper bend in hand, with only one or two steps (or with no steps at all for that matter) would be worthy of a huge celebration..but I was wondering if the horse has a tendency to move sideways away from you in their first attemtps?

I am delighted with the explaination of the muscle development, and this tells me why Cisco is getting a little upset when I suggest to him that we could try a half pass from the saddle. I of course stop when he says to stop, but I didn't understand why he was saying to stop. Now I know. He is not ready to do this, plain and simple. He is very, very good at shoulder in under saddle, but he is still a bit one sided on travers, or haunches-in. He reaches under wonderfully with his right hind on a circle to the left, but on a circle to the right, his left hind does not reach as far. So part of him is not ready for a comfortable travers, let alone a half pass. I did not realize the mechanics involved in this movement.

He is just getting comfortable with a few steps of haunches in under saddle, but I have been trying hard to figure out how to do this in hand instead...he is so happy to learn things in hand, without my weight adding to his dilemma. Until now I wasn't quite sure how to do it, but now I have a better idea.

Thank you!

Hip Hip Hurray for Miriam!! Great that you have accomplised this!!!

I'm very curious also about "the spot" ... do you guys sometimes also wish that every horse would come with a manual?
Well but this will also spoil a lot of fun!

I can and I will (as I had to have somebody to show me too), but I'll do that soon!




Same here! Of course I read a lot on the sideways movements, but I never heard or read anything on the 'why': why shoulder in first, why is travers/half pass much more difficult etc. Quite a few horsemen told me that shoulder in is more easy because then the horse only crosses his front feet, while in travers he only crosses his hindfeet - but I could clearly see that that was just not true. But the real answer just didn't come, and I therefore thought they were just equal in difficulty and that it didn't matter in which order you taught them (and never got Blacky that far to learn the travers...).

I'll write officially about it in the grondwork section as soon as I find the time to order my thoughts on it, but the short version is: The horse has a spot on his neck where a disc of the neck vertebrae can be felt. That's a reflex point: touch/push the button there, and the horse will turn both his head and haunches towards you. The spot can be felt if you stand next to the shoulder and ask the horse to bend his head away from you. When you stroke the lower half of his neck then (to about 20 cm's from his chest), you'll feel a small hard bump. Let the horse turn his head straight forward/towards you again, and slightly push on that spot with a couple of fingers (not one!) or your hand without doing anything else.If your horse was taught to move away from every kind of pressure into a shoulder in, you place him next to a fence/wall so that he can only give his natural reflex. If he doesn't, not even if you try the other side or add a little more pressure, then you know that he's too stiff yet to be able to respond to this and that you should do more stepping under/shoulder in. Three weeks of doing those things at walk (99% stepping under on bends and voltes, 1% shoulder in) will already be a major difference.