Fancy Squares: A Lesson Recap

Today is the first in a series of majorly delayed blog posts. Enjoy my June 12th lesson recap! 

The primary thing I have to say about this lesson is WOW. Dino was completely incredible, he worked so hard during this ride, and we accomplished so much! It made me more excited than nervous to show this season, and I'm just amazed at how far we've come in the last couple years. 

We didn't get a chance to warm up too much before Ashley was ready for us, but it ended up being fine since Dino came to WORK that day. She commented on how good and fit he looked since she'd last seen him a couple weeks prior, and we talked about how well the increased fitness work I'd been trying to incorporate was working for him. 

I asked to work on the shoulder-in - while I felt that Dino's overall response to the lateral aids was improving, in addition to the shoulders I also got his whole body drifting off the rail in the movement, and his tempo would slow WAY down. I had been struggling with how to address these issues, and didn't really know how big of a problem it was as we worked to solidify the movement, and whether it was Dino's response to the difficulty of the positioning or my own body blocking him. 

The answer to my problems was, mostly, to re-establish the boundary of my outside aids so that it was something that Dino moved actively away from, and the shoulder-in became more about that and less about me holding him in position with my outside aids. So, Ashley had me ride a volte in trot, moving into shoulder-in as soon as we took a couple steps onto the rail, and then riding a steep leg yield off the outside aids the moment his shoulders started to fall back to the rail or I lost the angle in any way. He tries to avoid holding his body in the angled shape of the shoulder-in (and haunches-in, and renvers..), so we needed to make it SUPER CLEAR that what I wanted was that three-track shape. 

It was a tough exercise, but really did the trick in getting Dino way hotter off my outside aids and re-establishing that boundary by making it much clearer to him than it had been before. The leg yield had to be SUPER steep going sideways to really make it about the correction of Dino's response to my outside aids, and we ended up going back even more to correct the leg yield response with some turn on the forehand steps. I also had some issues just riding the smaller circles and letting his outside shoulder get away from me, and really needed to focus on looking and sitting to the outside to corral the outside of Dino's body before I even asked for a lateral move. 

Ashley also assured me that the big slowdown I was seeing in the shoulder-in was okay as Dino built strength in the collection for lateral movements, but we did work a bit on sending him forward out of the movement to start increasing the energy there. 

So, we modified our circle-to-shoulder-in-exercise: 15 meter circle starting on the quarter line in collected trot, building the energy as we got back to the quarter line, then sending Dino forward in medium trot, swinging him into a few steps of shoulder-in, then straightening him and riding forward back into a medium. It was a challenge for both of us, and I had to focus hard on initiating the shoulder-in with my outside aids and inside leg instead of pulling with the inside rein, (adding in the medium trot gave me too much to think about!) but it really helped a ton with increasing Dino's energy and quickening his response to the aids. 

After another break we dug into the real meat of the lesson: passade turns, aka Fancy Squares. 

A passade turn, I learned that day, is a square turn ridden at any gait. It's not quite a pirouette, but it asks for a lot more "sit" and hind leg engagement than the way you'd ride a normal corner or circle. It establishes the rider's inside leg as the pivot point around which the horse's shoulders move as the hind legs engage. Passade turns help increase and improve collection, and especially in our case, require a really sharp response to the outside aids. They were pretty much magic for Dino, honestly.

We worked on a square in both directions, making each corner a nice, sharp, quarter passade turn and then moving forward in a straight line on the sides of the square. I struggled a little at first with making the turns fast and active enough - Dino would slow down a little bit naturally as he collected more in the turn, but the energy need to stay up throughout the entire exercise. His hip would swing out to the outside on occasion, but what helped me with that was changing the way I thought about how I asked him to turn with the outside aids - when Ashley told me to start each turn from my hip, it was a revelation! Sitting into my outside seatbone and initiating the turn with my hip instead of my lower leg or outside rein made an enormous difference and kept Dino's outside hip contained. I realized it was about getting the hind legs activated, especially the outside, and engaged SO THAT I could bring his shoulders around the turn, and less about slowing down and then turning the shoulders. And, of course, the passade turns were about getting Dino really reactive to my outside aids so that his shoulders moved lightly around each turn. This exercise gave me a great feeling of how I can really contain my horse between my aids on each side - I could use the outside of my body to move the outside of his body, and my inside leg to truly ask for more from his hind legs. 

It was really freakin' cool! 

We ended the lesson by going back to the shoulder-in now that we had established improved collection and response with the passade turns. I picked up the trot, did a couple passade turns to tune Dino up, then moved him into the most gloriously perfect shoulder-in I've ever ridden in my life! I cannot stop watching the video - we look SO DAMN FANCY. Dino's trot was collected and energized and expressive and the lateral movements look (and felt!) absolutely effortless and fluid. I cannot believe the pair in the photos and video is us. 

These are the moments that make dressage so much fun and so addictive! 

We didn't have quite as much homework to dig into after this lesson, but some things I need to practice and keep in mind while schooling are as follows:

• Keep working on the response to the outside aids. A steep leg yield is a great tool to correct a sluggish response. 
• Begin to add more energy to the shoulder-in by using medium trot before and after the movement.
• Practice passade turns - remember that the inside leg establishing a point to turn around is just as important as turning the shoulders with my outside hip/elbow/abs/thigh.

If you'd like to take a look at the last bit of our lesson, check out the video below: