classical dressage v dressage

To me classical dressage indicates someone who wishes to make a statement that how the horse goes and feels is more important than competitions.

Dressage indicates to me someone who is training their horse to compete in dressage.

This is just my impression, I don't think there is an 'official' one.
 
I don't think you would ride a test any differently, just that your training to get there might be different.

I think of classical dressage as being quiet riding, as opposed to kicking and sawing on a horses mouth you see too often.
 
IMHO classical dressage is training for the sake of it - to achieve lightness, balance and straightness, through carefully structured gymnastic exercises. Competing with this in mind is to test how far you have got. Otherwise people train just for competition, which may or may not include short cuts along the way, and I think we all know that sometimes poor judging encourages this
 
I think Charlie was referring to the competitions run by classical riding clubs?
In which case a friend has done well BD and certainly not been trained in a classical way, and these comps so not a huge amount of difference at the lower levels at least! Bonus marks for no whip/spurs etc, but you can use a pelham :)
 
Yes ester, thank you, sorry if my op was unclear. I'm supposed to be competing in a classical dressage comp on Monday. We do normal dressage so was just wondering if I should be riding differently. Although its too late now to change how we go!! Its only intro level, as we are still intro/ prelim normally. Didn't realise you could use a Pelham!!
 
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