The Dressage Basics with Clemens Dierks Part 3 – The Trot

The pace that makes or breaks…

In the trot, the riders seat just follows the rhythm of the horse. Think about your driving aids, your leg, back, weight, which combined makes your seat driving aids, and really try and be as still as possible so as not to interfere with the rhythm. Riders who bounce or are too stiff, will interfere with the horse’s paces. You try to teach the horse always with your driving aids in front of your seat.

A good basic trot in a young horse must be active. We call it takt in Germany which means gymnastic. The horse must be energetic, it must not appear at any time to be lazy or labouring. It doesn’t matter what frame you ride your horse in, he must never be on the forehand. That is a big problem in Australia. Lots of people ride the horses round, low and down and down on the forehand.

A horse can be round, low and down and still carry its weight on the hindquarters. There must be more emphasis put on that – to always keep the hindquarters active. The tempo must be always regulated. I look for perfect rhythm, lovely beat – which is the timing of the diagonals going down, and I look for cadence. I try to develop a lovely tempo and cadence and rhythm in the horse.

From a young age they usually have that lovely rhythm by nature and you must concentrate on rhythm right from the beginning as you train the horse. If you ride too fast you interfere with the rhythm and the takt, the beat of the horse. When the rhythm becomes too quick and the horse cannot carry himself. There is no point in riding the exercises in that quick beat.

When you have no rhythm, it’s usually because the horse has been over-ridden because it is not accepting the aids, and it will never create a good mark.

Rhythm can be trained into a horse, and riders must never ride out of it. That is the key to success in dressage – having rhythm. Bridle lameness is caused by riders hanging on the reins, with the horse on the forehand and no attempt to push the horse through to correct the rhythm. Many riders don’t even notice this bridle lameness, and it can become difficult for a professional to fix the problem. The basic problem is usually a lack of rider’s seat and ability and skill. Horses don’t go bridle lame unless they are wrongly trained.

We have four trots.

Collected, medium, extended and working.

A good working trot must cover ground, engaged behind, active, forward thinking, with a lot of impulsion. The best exercise to teach the horse to engage itself more, is transitions. Each transition, in itself, presents half halts, and that makes it probably the best exercise for any horse. Transitions within the paces, from one pace to another, up or downwards, it doesn’t matter – transitions. Because when you have to ride a transition, then you actually have to do things to achieve the result, you teach the horse something. In my opinion the time it takes to train a horse is determined by the horse. Sure, a good rider gets there quicker because he is better, but in the end the horse determines the progress. Exercises develop the muscles, and time and repetition of the exercises eventually develop the horse, and that will determine the progress in the end. It’s like a gymnast. A ten year old child cannot have the strength of an eighteen year old. Physically the horses must be developed to gain their strengths by gymnastic exercises. The horse really speaks to you every moment. He is telling you what he can cope with and what he can’t. If you go further than the ability of the horse, if you ignore what he tells you, you can get yourself into trouble.

With a good rider, the horse will always perform better. The horse always appear to progress quicker, but not really, it’s just better riding. Even a good rider cannot greatly speed the natural development that is required if the horse is to give his best. That’s why you see most horses at their best at the age of twelve and even older.

In collected trot we look again for activity. More engagement than working trot, but the horse must still go forward and cover good ground. Many people confuse collection with going shorter. That’s not the case, not that much.

I explain to people the other side of collection is loosening. Many people are confused and think the other side of collection is extension. But it is not, as even extension has a degree of collection in it.

In collected trot you can have the same stride as in working trot, it’s just more active, more cadenced, more expressive. But the steps must not come shorter – that only happens in a piaffe. Even in passage you can have a length of stride like in a lengthened trot, you just enhance the cadence and the degree and prolonged moment of suspension within the trot, it gives the appearance of all four legs are in the air. Then it becomes more expressive, but it does not necessarily have to become shorter. In extension you look for a good overstep, the hind feet over the front footprint of the horse. You look for an extended frame, but not a long loose connection. The lightness of the horse to carry its extension with a minimum degree of support, depends on the level of collection.

Lightness is only self carriage. Self carriage is not necessarily the lightness in your hands, which some riders create with loose reins – that just makes the horse drop on the forehand and run. Through correct training and with a build-up of strength, the horse learns to carry himself, and take two thirds of their weight, which is normally on the forehand and middlehand, onto the hindquarters. Add to this the rider’s weight, which is also on the forehand, and you can see why only horses who have the strength on the back end, can have lightness – which means lightness of the paces, self carriage, but not necessarily lightness in the hand, that’s a by product.

Too many riders give their horse a loose rein, and kick him in the ribs, and say ‘here I go’, they will never teach their horse to extend properly.

To get that extension where the horse really sits back and goes slowly while making huge strides, the horse is ridden from behind uphill to the extension. Some horses are by nature born more uphill than others, but you work at it as we discussed, with transitions, building collection, then you can make the horse more uphill. You don’t gain collection if you practice piaffe alone. Collection has to be developed within paces and through transitions from one pace to another, no matter how brilliant the horse, it takes time. The horse develops in its own natural time until – if you are lucky – it can come up with brilliance.

Some horses are naturally born with brilliance and exceptional talent. Some horses are born with no possibility to collect. But every horse with decent basic natural paces, should be trainable to gain sufficient marks to win, depending on the skill of the rider. Passage. To me this is one of the easiest paces to train. Again it cannot be rushed. You must wait until the horse is able to do it. If you basically have your horse going correctly, it will fall automatically into passage. If you do your basic work right, it will all come together, you don’t have to do much.

But if you try to ride passage, with no acceptance of the aids and no acceptance of the bridle, or collection, you will never be successful . The main thing with passage is that it must be developed from behind, not by trying to hang onto the reins and lifting up the forehand – that doesn’t work, it has the opposite effect.

For me passage is one of the last movements. Piaffe is a more essential exercise. Horses by nature offer passage. You might take the offer, but don’t overdo it, and don’t ask for more than the horse can cope with at the time, if you get greedy, that will allow irregular strides to come in. Piaffe in the beginning, is more half steps. It’s a problem to keep the piaffe forward in the beginning. The horse must be very light in front. The heavier it is in front, the less lift and activity you can get. The horse must be supple and soft enough in the front and through the neck and back to be able to move forward. The horse must be able to be activated and be brought back into a piaffe. Always ride your horse into piaffe through your driving aids, never try to achieve piaffe with your reins and hands acting backwards. The frame is not that important if you can, then keep it round, but don’t try and keep the horse round so that it fights you in front, while you try and do piaffe at the same time.

The horse usually tells you ways to approach these difficult exercises, as many horses are different. Some you may have to work in hand, some are more nervous than others, some you ride more forward than others. It all goes back to basic aids, that’s the only one way to explain it. It goes back to self carriage. If a horse cannot carry itself on the hindquarters, how can you expect piaffe? It has to become a tangled up mess.

The horse must give you the feeling it will perform the piaffe. You see many riders kicking the horses, the ones who kick the most, have the least piaffe. It makes no sense to punish the horse every stride. It doesn’t like continual kicking. You have to get your horse responsive enough to your aids that you don’t have to ask him every stride.

In such a high degree of collection, the lightness must be greater than at any other pace. It must feel like the horse is just the weight of the reins in your hands. If the feeling is any stronger than that, then the horse, because it can’t carry itself, looks for an escape. The piaffe is like everything else, if the horse has been taught to accept and respond to the aids, and he has been properly exercised to build his strength, then he should be able to perform some steps of piaffe, but as with any other pace, some horses will show more brilliance than others.

We can try to select brilliant horses, we can train them so that they are strong and supple enough to let the brilliance shine, but essentially, that brilliance will come from within.

Go to part 3 : The Canter