Dressage Discussion- when does bad tension become good tension?

[tristar]

Sorry my question was more how do riders convert negative to positive tension, but also how some create it

do you think negative tension is needed, at all?

or is neg tension and good tension two different things

 

[shortstuff99]

do you think negative tension is needed, at all?

or is neg tension and good tension two different things

Well this was the crux of my discussion. In watching some of the grand prix tests I didn't see much difference between bad tension (which is marked down heavily at the lower levels) and the tension they were showing. Therefore why was their tension not seen as a bad thing?

 

[ycbm]

I personally thought it was a bad move when tail flashing was removed from the signs of tension which were penalised.

The only time my horses flash their tails is when I've got things wrong. It's quite striking with my spotty, as soon as he does it I know I've made a mistake.
.

 

[milliepops]

Whereas mine flicks hers about practically every step even when thoroughly relaxed and through, so it's pretty meaningless in some cases IMO

 

[iknowmyvalue]

I suppose you want to create some level of “tension”, but the balancing act is a fine line for sure and I imagine that a hot horse is very easy to tip over the line with only a small mistake...

 

[Roxylola]

Yeah, Charlie is helicopter propelled by his tail.
Maybe being as it is GP the judges are higher qualified and more likely to start from 10 and work down. Also, on that note there is just more to mark at GP. At novice etc if a transition is between H and C and its tense you might get a 6 because of the tension. In GP if its a transition at C and its tense immediately you've at least got a chance of it being marked up for accuracy despite tension. And/or maybe they mark down collectives rather than batter every movement.
Again, not watched but just because the tension is l you saw its not all that was marked. We haven't seen the individual scores or comments either. I don't want to kill a discussion, but if you aren't judging or writing its very difficult to say what influences scores. I certainly think it might be less that tension is acceptable or positive, and more just that overall it is just one element of the picture

 

[Ambers Echo]

Sport Psychologists talk about controlled emotion. You need emotion/arousal/adrenaline to perform at your best. But you need to be able to manage it so that you are not overwhelmed. Maybe positive tension is basically tension/ excitement/enegy that is channelled well?

Dolly jumps much better if Katie sort of revs her up first with rein backs and things. She's like: 'let me at 'em! If she's too relaxed she's more likely to get flat in the canter and have a pole.

 

[milliepops]

Sport Psychologists talk about controlled emotion. You need emotion/arousal/adrenaline to perform at your best. But you need to be able to manage it so that you are not overwhelmed. Maybe positive tension is basically tension/ excitement/enegy that is channelled well?

Dolly jumps much better if Katie sort of revs her up first with rein backs and things. She's like: 'let me at 'em! If she's too relaxed she's more likely to get flat in the canter and have a pole.

Yeah, I think this is very applicable in jumping, I always struggled to get my blood up enough xc schooling to jump big things but it was pretty easy to come out of the start box focused and ready to attack the course, with that positive edge of adrenaline

 

[ycbm]

Whereas mine flicks hers about practically every step even when thoroughly relaxed and through, so it's pretty meaningless in some cases IMO

It would really worry me to ride a horse who did that, I guess I've just not come across one yet.

ETA i just watched your Inter ii video MP and that isn't the kind of tail flashing I mean.
.

 

[iknowmyvalue]

Sport Psychologists talk about controlled emotion. You need emotion/arousal/adrenaline to perform at your best. But you need to be able to manage it so that you are not overwhelmed. Maybe positive tension is basically tension/ excitement/enegy that is channelled well?

Dolly jumps much better if Katie sort of revs her up first with rein backs and things. She's like: 'let me at 'em! If she's too relaxed she's more likely to get flat in the canter and have a pole.

That makes a lot of sense actually.

Henry is also a lot less likely to spook at random things if I’ve got him really jazzed up and a bit wired. Which you’d think would be the opposite, but there you go...

 

[milliepops]

It would really worry me to ride a horse who did that, I guess I've just not come across one yet.

ETA i just watched your Inter ii video MP and that isn't the kind of tail flashing I mean.
.

Ok be helpful to have more specifics then , because mine does exactly the kind of frequent swishing that people on here often identify as problematic when watching top level combinations.

 

[ycbm]

Ok be helpful to have more specifics then , because mine does exactly the kind of frequent swishing that people on here often identify as problematic when watching top level combinations.

Well for me it would be a lot harder and more frequent than in your video.
.

 

[tristar]

Well this was the crux of my discussion. In watching some of the grand prix tests I didn't see much difference between bad tension (which is marked down heavily at the lower levels) and the tension they were showing. Therefore why was their tension not seen as a bad thing?

thats interesting how its viewed differently at lower, and higher levels, where submission should be rewarded?

i see neg tension for what it is, and good tension as brilliance, tension not being the word that i would use for brilliance

 

[tristar]

I personally thought it was a bad move when tail flashing was removed from the signs of tension which were penalised.

The only time my horses flash their tails is when I've got things wrong. It's quite striking with my spotty, as soon as he does it I know I've made a mistake.
.

or is a flashing tail a sign of resistance at top level, i thought a well carried tail was a sign to look for and considered positive

my horses rarely flash tails, if they did i would want to know why

 

[rara007]

Interesting discussion. I’ve spent 2 years removing all tension from my sensitive horse, but subsequently have had to spend the winter re-gaining some level of tension into both of us. We can do soft regular and relaxed, but to show off we need to add back in a bit of that energy, hopefully keeping it on the impulsion side over tension.

 

[DiNozzo]

I remember being taught that after a warm up you should feel able to ask for and get anything (that your horse has been taught).

I guess tension is an extension of that; it should be a physical extension of 'can we?' and not boil over into 'can we do something, anything else right now'.

I suppose at the highest levels there's not a lot of room given all the things they do know.

 

[Caol Ila]

Great discussion. With Gypsum (back when we could do dressage ), she had three modes: so-laidback-she-was-horizontal, which was how she started most rides. Very chilled, very behind the leg, like your stoner teenage child smoking a spliff in the basement, saying, "Duuuude, I will get around to that shoulder-in. Don't worry." Not ideal. Then there was in-season, super hormonal Gypsum, where she was lively and sharp, but felt like a two-by-four with ADHD. Not mentally with you, stiff as a board through her top line,and likely to explode like a rodeo pony at any moment. Not ideal, either. But if I was having a competent day, I could jazz up stoner Gypsum into something motivated, and she would be lively and forward, but soft and responsive from nose to tail, super sharp off the leg, but in a gentle and unexplosive way, and a lot of fun. She was energetic and snappy, but very different from angry, hormonal Gypsum. Both had tension, but the former I could direct and play with, whereas with the latter, direction was constrained to convincing her to not buck me off. Not a lot beyond that.

She needed the positive tension, or energy, to do useful dressage, but stressed, negative, anxious tension just made her unridable.

 

[TheMule]

Where do we stand on this getting over 80%?

To me, this is both dressage breeding and training taken several steps too far. I can absolutely appreciate the horse is very expressive and there are few 'mistakes', but the whole way the horse is going is tension

 

[ycbm]

Where do we stand on this getting over 80%?

To me, this is both dressage breeding and training taken several steps too far. I can absolutely appreciate the horse is very expressive and there are few 'mistakes', but the whole way the horse is going is tension

He looks reasonably relaxed to me but I hate it. It looks like a cross between a circus trick show and those show bred GSD dogs with the horrible sloping backs. We came a long way when Valegro was at the top, this looks like a very backward step to me

 

[milliepops]

Where do we stand on this getting over 80%?

To me, this is both dressage breeding and training taken several steps too far. I can absolutely appreciate the horse is very expressive and there are few 'mistakes', but the whole way the horse is going is tension

Hmmmmmm. I think if the nose was out 2 or 3 more inches it would all look very different. it's 9 I think so it's reasonable to expect that to come because whatever you say about him, Edward Gal does get the necks out in competition. i don't see only tension, i see a lot of positive qualities and I think the short neck makes it look more tense than it is.

cut together clips make it very hard to be objective anyway.... I'm probably not going to say a lot more because last time there was an Edward Gal thread i was told i was too establishment (hahaha have you seen the horses i have ) but I think this horse is pretty much exactly the predictable response to the criticism of Totilas - they've bred a better hindleg into him and maintained the lightness/spider legs feel.

 

[shortstuff99]

I was going to post this test but didn't want to be the one starting the debate again ?.

In my honest opinion this is more then just a young horse briefly dropping BTV. I think it reflects the training style he likes.

What I've seen of this online on multiple groups, it hasn't been received very well. Not like what Totilas was at the start.

https://www.facebook.com/298584240521837/posts/1357259554654295

 

[rara007]

I do wonder if he’d be getting the same response if the rider was a different name and the horse different bloodlines, even if they produced the same test as a just turned 9yo. He’s super supple and for the majority shown keeps a strong rhythm even in the pa/pi work. The trot half pass and the change of bend in that is almost super-equine. The way he’s moving over his back I don’t only see tension.

 

[shortstuff99]

I do wonder if he’d be getting the same response if the rider was a different name and the horse different bloodlines, even if they produced the same test as a just turned 9yo. He’s super supple and for the majority shown keeps a strong rhythm even in the pa/pi work. The trot half pass and the change of bend in that is almost super-equine. The way he’s moving over his back I don’t only see tension.

For me personally, I would have the same comments whoever is riding because this is not how I like dressage. It's an aside that I dislike EG training methods too.

He looks too hypermobile to me in an unsustainable way, will be interesting to see how he develops.

 

[milliepops]

I do wonder if he’d be getting the same response if the rider was a different name and the horse different bloodlines, even if they produced the same test as a just turned 9yo. He’s super supple and for the majority shown keeps a strong rhythm even in the pa/pi work. The trot half pass and the change of bend in that is almost super-equine. The way he’s moving over his back I don’t only see tension.

yeah agreed. i don't think anyone would be particularly even watching if it was an unknown rider or a horse bred differently.

To be clear, i don't condone the training methods and that's what I was hinting about above. i think a young fairly green horse is a transparent window to how he is trained whereas the older more established horse can do both the stuff that goes on at home, AND yet also present a test with the nose IFV and the neck out.

 

[TheMule]

I think any horse scoring 80%+ on its GP debut at 9 would probably attract interest. I do agree that with EG's history and well known use of Rolkur it is always going to invite more criticism, but quite rightly so in this case IMO

 

[daffy44]

Not been watching and also not a post to get carried away typing on a phone ?
But in the abstract... I think the difference between good and bad tension is something that you can sort of feel subconsciously, will need time to figure out how to put it into words, but I guess for me positive tension enhances or heightens the brilliance of a performance, and negative tension causes fundamental faults. I guess one can swap to the other without careful management.

Leaving aside the recent EG video because there is nothing about it that I like. I think MP has the best description of the difference between positive and negative tension. I think we should always be able to keep things simple whenever possible, and this is genius to me, positive tension improves the work, negative tension makes it worse. I dont think either tension affects only one part of the body, I think its everything, a whole body thing.

But when you see one thing in isolation I think its important to again look at the whole horse, tail swishing was described, and I think thats a good example, some horses are more expressive with their tails than others, it doesnt necessarily indicate tension. If the whole horse looks happy, relaxed, comfortable in the work, nice in the contact, on the aids etc, but has a swishy tail, then I wouldnt be remotely concerned, I'd assume it was personal quirk of the horse. But if the horse looked tight over its back, disengaged hind legs, against the contact etc and was swishing its tail a lot, I'd assume the tail swishing was due to the negative tension that the whole body of the horse was displaying.

 

[oldie48]

So where do people stand on this, another 80%+ GP Freestyle by a 9 year old and another famous horse?

 

[ycbm]

So where do people stand on this, another 80%+ GP Freestyle by a 9 year old and another famous horse?

To me, that is clearly a horse which is showing which parts of the test it's happy doing and which parts it's not, and if we truly want our horses to be "happy athletes" that strength of tail whipping should get a lower mark than a horse which does the movement equally well without it.
.

 

[shortstuff99]

So where do people stand on this, another 80%+ GP Freestyle by a 9 year old and another famous horse?

I've never been the biggest fan of this horse, and the tail is off putting in some of the moves. However looks less tense in parts then the above horse.

Although as mentioned before it is easier to get 80+% at a freestyle then a straight test.

My original discussion was about good and bad tension in a straight tense. I have a horse that can be tense, I 'get away with it' more in freestyle and its become much less of an issue now I'm at AM and working PSG +. However, I was intrigued why a similar seeming tension issues were punished less at GP then say Novice.

 

[MummyEms]

I find this really interesting, looking forward to seeing the responses. Nowhere near the levels of those riders but the horses I like (hot, forward, busy) tend to hold a fair amount of tension by nature. Perhaps it’s the amount of necessary energy and impulsion held that turns into tension if not carefully managed. I think it’s the sensitive overthinkers that hold a lot of tension, it makes them lovely horses that are keen to do the job, but riding them is a balance of allowing them the sparkle needed to do well, whilst encouraging the relaxation so they don’t overboil.

Sounds exactly like my horse and that is how I have to ride her everyday. She's super forward and pingy but if I'm quiet and still enough she'll contain herself enough to just look sparkly responsive and not explosive!!