{"id":31060,"date":"2020-10-18T10:42:11","date_gmt":"2020-10-17T23:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=31060"},"modified":"2020-10-18T13:51:26","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T02:51:26","slug":"priorities-in-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2020\/10\/priorities-in-training\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhythm or Balance – what comes first?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Portuguese trained FEI dressage master, Miguel Tavora considers the equestrian chicken or the egg<\/em> dilemma… Which comes first – rhythm or balance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The German training scale is:\u00a0Rhythm, Losgelassenheit, Contact, Schwung and Collection, as\u00a0defined in The Principles of Riding, the official handbook of the German Equestrian Federation.<\/p>\n

Losgelassenheit is interpreted as\u00a0suppleness combined with looseness,\u00a0with complete absence of tension, eg. the\u00a0horse is unconstrained. The same book\u00a0says that none of the points of the training scale can be considered in isolation and rhythm, and rhythm and\u00a0losgelassenheit are put together in the\u00a0familiarization phase.<\/p>\n

Some time ago, I read that a famous\u00a0German trainer said that his philosophy in training the young horse is rhythm, suppleness, contact, in that order. I really never understood why for almost all Germans, rhythm comes first. I don’t\u00a0think that a horse contracted and stiff, with difficulty finding balance, for any reason, can achieve or show any kind of correct rhythm.<\/p>\n

On my understanding of training a\u00a0horse, the first thing we have to do is make him relax, to rid him of all stiffness and contractions. To encourage him to use his whole body without any resistance, enabling him to find and use\u00a0the balance that he should have when he is ridden, only then can he find and move with rhythm.<\/p>\n

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My thoughts on the subject of rhythm are that the trainer who puts rhythm first on his scale is really working towards making the horse loose, relaxed and supple, achieving losgelassenheit in order to accomplish the rhythm. However rhythm is the result of the horse being able to move under the rider in a way that is supple, loose, and without any tension or constraint.<\/p>\n

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At the beginning of his training, the horse shows stiffness mostly because he is uncomfortable because it is not natural for him to carry a rider on his back, and he is unable to find the correct balance according to the movement that the rider is asking him to do. Furthermore, if the\u00a0horse is unbalanced, he can’t find the\u00a0correct rhythm, which means that if I\u00a0want rhythm, I must have balance. To\u00a0have balance, that is supple and\u00a0unconstrained, we must first work\u00a0towards losgelassenheit.<\/p>\n

To develop the qualities of relaxation,\u00a0looseness and suppleness, we need to\u00a0have the correct balance. Lateral work is\u00a0very useful and it is because of this, that I\u00a0start this work very early in the training\u00a0of a young horse, and at the beginning of\u00a0all the daily work sessions with all horses.<\/p>\n

In a previous article, Going to\u00a0Collection Laterally, I explained in detail\u00a0how I introduce the lateral work on a\u00a0young horse. I start the training session almost always by doing small circles,\u00a0around my inside leg (like shoulder-in) on\u00a0a three metre circle at the walk, with\u00a0more movement forward than sideways.<\/p>\n

If I am able to see the outside shoulder\u00a0moving forward and not sideways, I know\u00a0the exercise is correct. I find this exercise\u00a0very good to relax my horse and achieve\u00a0some suppleness. If, later on, I find my\u00a0horse becoming tense or nervous when I\u00a0am training him in some new movements,\u00a0like flying changes, passage, piaffe, I break\u00a0up whatever I am doing with a couple of\u00a0turns around my inside leg at the walk,\u00a0and I get my horse relaxed again, and\u00a0ready to return to the work I was doing.<\/p>\n

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Transitions from shoulder-in in\u00a0medium trot on a 20 metre\u00a0circle, or to a 10 metres\u00a0circle in collected trot are very useful for\u00a0developing suppleness at the beginning of the training.<\/p>\n

My first priority is to have my horse\u00a0relaxed, loose, balanced and comfortable\u00a0to develop and improve further\u00a0suppleness and impulsion.<\/p>\n

Reiner Klimke, in his book, Basic Training\u00a0of the Young Horse,<\/em> puts losgelassenheit\u00a0first on his training scale. He states: “We\u00a0start by developing Losgelassenheit”, the\u00a0horse’s logical result of becoming\u00a0losgelassenheit is that he will\u00a0move in a\u00a0rhythm which is constant. To\u00a0establish the correct constant rhythm, the rider\u00a0must get his horse balanced. This reinforces my opinion that when training the horse, first of all we have to make him loose, relaxed, supple and balanced, even if we have to work on the minimum of all other requirements that he must use to go correctly.<\/p>\n

Readers should try to find a copy of Miguel Tavora’s wonderful book:<\/p>\n

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Portuguese trained FEI dressage master, Miguel Tavora considers the equestrian chicken or the egg dilemma… Which comes first – rhythm or balance?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,4],"tags":[1243,8],"class_list":["post-31060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-dressage","tag-dressage","tag-miguel-tavora"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31060"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56282,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31060\/revisions\/56282"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}