You have just returned from what you feel was a good show. Your horse worked well, spooking at shadow monsters was kep to a minimum, and you both stayed inside of the ring. You are pleased with your scores and placings. Your next task is to review all of the photographs your wonderful friend, husband, or whoever else you were able to con into operating a camera at the show took. You think to yourself… there have got to be some good photos from that ride. As you begin scrolling through the photos capturing your ride, you find… wow my horse looks pretty nice; I on the other hand need to go back to riding grade school because my position is terrible! The curse of most dressage riders – bad position. Ewww… cringe…think of the non stirrup, muscle building moments in-front of you. Oh man… you think…I’ve got to get it together.
Well my dear reader friend, I will tell you I am in that exact same boat. I think many of us are. Those of us that practice at home alone, without a mirror, can easily develop poor position. It is difficult not to fall back on bad habits when many of us can onlyafford a lesson once a month. We must, however, make working on our position a priority! Your position is the basis of everything in Dressage. Your position influences your balance and aid effectiveness. Proper position allows your body to move with your horse, supporting and not hindering your horse’s freedom of movement and expression. We must have good position, because everything in the Training Pyramid dictates it so!
Now…I step off of my soap box… pull out that bar of soap and take a bath with it, because I am just as much of a poor position offender as anyone. I do may of the position no-nos, such as rolling my shoulders, hunching my lower back, letting my leg slide forward, and lifting my heel. The one I do the worst is breaking my wrists. It looks terrible! Somehow I picked it up early on in my riding career. I will see students of this particular instructor today and all of them break their wrists. When I see it I want to yell at the children, “fix your wrists now, before it is too late!” I grumble to myself, Thanks for putting that bad habit on my riding-to-fix list, FOREVER! We all have something we need to work on and improve. We need to recognize our weaknesses and work on stregthening them just like we do with our horse’s. In my opinion, it is even more important that we work on ourselves.
During my last lesson with my instructor, we worked heavily on my position. After my lesson in 85 + degree heat and humidity, the idea of throwing up crossed my mind several times. I kept it together, went home with my sore muscles, and felt that I had had a good, productive lesson. I really felt a difference when I hopped on my mare a couple of days later, focused on my position, and my sitting trot was MUCH better! Yep… that ole’ position stuff is the root of all that is good and evil about our riding.
Below is a video of Jane Savoie discussing dressage rider position. I thought this was a great video with some good pointers we can try at home to improve our positions. A good practice if you can’t get regular lessons is to videotape yourself riding at home to see how your are doing. How we “feel” we look can be very different than how we actually “do” look!
A toast to the “perfect position”… Even though we will never find you exactly, may we briefly touch your existence to make us better equestrians!
so so true, I’m in the same boat, school at home alone, lesson when the piggy-bank allows and i’m always trying to find neat little fixes and exercises to keep on top of things.