{"id":57183,"date":"2023-05-26T13:34:40","date_gmt":"2023-05-26T03:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/?p=57183"},"modified":"2026-02-08T14:27:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T03:27:14","slug":"top-tip-throughness-how-to-get-it-how-it-feels-with-princess-nathalie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/2023\/05\/top-tip-throughness-how-to-get-it-how-it-feels-with-princess-nathalie\/","title":{"rendered":"Throughness, how to get it, how it feels, with Princess Nathalie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Princess Nathalie zu Wittgenstein, has proven herself as one of the world’s top dressage competitors, but she is also an exceptional trainer of riders, and that is why she is currently the coach of \u00a0Cathrine Laudrup-Dufour and Daniel Bachmann. In this article she unravels one of the most confusing concepts in the world of dressage – Throughness<\/i><\/h3>\n

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Danish winning team members, and individual medal winners, Cathrine in the warm up at Aachen<\/em><\/p>\n

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As Christopher Hector discovered, Nathalie believes it is all a matter of balance:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe left hand balances the left shoulder, the right hand balances the right shoulder, the horse is not allowed to balance himself on your hands, you\u2019re only allowed to have the shoulders on your hands.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018You tell the horse to stay in the middle of his shoulders and to keep your lower leg on the girth, not behind, so as to keep him \u2018straight underneath you.”<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he gets heavy on the outside rein, little half halt with inside rein, but keep him straight, and then halt. He has to wait for you.<\/p>\n

Keep both shoulders in your hands, making a tunnel through your hands, and you want to keep his shoulders in that tunnel.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Cathrine and Cassidy demonstrate<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cPut his hind legs under your seat. Once he stays there you can ride him bigger.\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n

\u201cThe horse needs to have his weight on his hindquarters, so that you can move his shoulders anywhere you want to, if his weight is on his shoulders you cannot move them.\u201d<\/h3>\n

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\u201cLet him go slightly longer \u2013 he\u2019s not allowed to hang down there \u2013 just so that he arches through your hand. You don\u2019t want him to shorten and quicken, you want him slightly longer in the neck as it is easier for him to push off.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is the same in canter, \u201cdon\u2019t let him go short in the neck and hollow his back \u2013 longer \u2013 go back to trot without shortening the neck, he can\u2019t lose that long neck.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Cathrine demonstrates weight on seatbones…<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cReally try to get your weight on your seatbones. If you\u2019re half leaning on your thighs, you\u2019re stopping the horse\u2019s movement. You need to feel how to swing with the movement. Leg not so far back. You can\u2019t get the hind legs under if you can\u2019t get the front legs to move away.\u201d<\/h3>\n

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Cathrine and another star, Bohemian<\/em><\/p>\n

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Princess Nathalie zu Wittgenstein, has proven herself as one of the world’s top dressage competitors, but she is also an exceptional trainer of riders, and that is why she is currently the coach of \u00a0Cathrine Laudrup-Dufour and Daniel Bachmann. In this article she unravels one of the most confusing concepts in the world of dressage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":66310,"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":[81,4,1901],"tags":[20,366,1447,2135],"class_list":["post-57183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-dressage","category-grand-prix-dressage","tag-dressage-training","tag-princess-nathalie","tag-princess-nathalie-zu-sayn-wittgenstein","tag-throughness"],"acf":[],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57183","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57183"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69425,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57183\/revisions\/69425"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.horsemagazine.com\/thm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}