Ludi-doodi
Well-Known Member
Quite a few people asked me for the warm up routine I mentioned to Piaffe yesterday. The only reason I didn't post it as it's soooo long, but here's content of the PM I sent to Icestationzebra waaay back in July 2005.
<font color="blue">My horse, Ludo, is a show jumper, comes from a long line of them, and is pretty bold across country but it was always the dressage that lets us down. I've spent 18 months and countless hundreds of pounds on lessons with a brilliant dressage trainer (she broke in H's Mum's horse) who has made massive changes in the way he goes - head in the right position, lovely solid neck muscles and not always doing giraffe impersonations. The massive change in our dressage scores came the day I had a lesson at her yard rather than her come to me, when she saw how tense he gets away from home. We spent the whole lesson - almost an hour - just doing the warm up. It's nothing scientific and hope I haven't built it up too much!
To begin with keep on a circle in walk getting him to relax, make changes of rein within the circles - no straight lines, apparently it stresses them out?!? When he's totally relaxed and listening to you in walk begin to take a bit more contact and push the walk up a notch or two. Once you're happy he's listening, move up into trot, again start slowly, still in the circles and build up the pace/contact. When you're happy with the speed/contact and that he's relaxed and listening, you can go into canter, same system, slowly building it up OR start to make your circles bigger to give them a few straight edges if you feel the circle is too small for canter.
During the warm up you can move the circles up and down the warm up arena if you like rather than sticking to one end but just make sure that you keep the horse relaxed and listening. Once you're happy that he's listening and relaxed in all 3 paces, then you can begin to do more straight lines, but go back to the circles if he tenses up. A bit of shoulder in to start the straight lines is quite a good idea too to keep him thinking just keep building things up until you can go around the arena at the right speed, relaxed and listening to you in all paces. I give myself about 45 minutes to do the warm up and use every minute of it.
Now's the tricky bit and you might need a few helpers. It's best if you can go straight from the warm up arena into the actual dressage arena without stopping and preferably in trot so he doesn't have time to think about anything other than what you've been working on. You might need someone to be on watch out for the person before you to leave the arena so you can go straight in. My instructor said (this was just for dressage comps, don't know if the rules are different for BE) that you get 45 secs after the judge ringing the bell to you starting the test and if you need to take all that time, then do - trot around the boards a couple of times if you feel it's necessary.
The first time I did this method, I was warming up in an indoor arena then had to trot through a yard, through the lorry park and down a slope into an outdoor test arena. But by trotting all the way and being able to go straight in without waiting outside he was totally relaxed and we actually won that class! Earlier in the day on another test we had had to wait just 5 minutes for the person before me to finish their test and Ludo just switched off, got in the arena and his head was up and hollow back as usual, though he did relax into the test much quicker than normal and we got a 5th place, the 2nd test when we went straight in worked a treat!
Since then I've done 2 other tests using the same warm up routine and been placed 2nd and 3rd. </font>
Due to having a 3-legged horse during 2006 I didn't do any comps, but will certainly be sticking to this warm up if and when we get back to competitions.
Let me know how you all get on with this.
<font color="blue">My horse, Ludo, is a show jumper, comes from a long line of them, and is pretty bold across country but it was always the dressage that lets us down. I've spent 18 months and countless hundreds of pounds on lessons with a brilliant dressage trainer (she broke in H's Mum's horse) who has made massive changes in the way he goes - head in the right position, lovely solid neck muscles and not always doing giraffe impersonations. The massive change in our dressage scores came the day I had a lesson at her yard rather than her come to me, when she saw how tense he gets away from home. We spent the whole lesson - almost an hour - just doing the warm up. It's nothing scientific and hope I haven't built it up too much!
To begin with keep on a circle in walk getting him to relax, make changes of rein within the circles - no straight lines, apparently it stresses them out?!? When he's totally relaxed and listening to you in walk begin to take a bit more contact and push the walk up a notch or two. Once you're happy he's listening, move up into trot, again start slowly, still in the circles and build up the pace/contact. When you're happy with the speed/contact and that he's relaxed and listening, you can go into canter, same system, slowly building it up OR start to make your circles bigger to give them a few straight edges if you feel the circle is too small for canter.
During the warm up you can move the circles up and down the warm up arena if you like rather than sticking to one end but just make sure that you keep the horse relaxed and listening. Once you're happy that he's listening and relaxed in all 3 paces, then you can begin to do more straight lines, but go back to the circles if he tenses up. A bit of shoulder in to start the straight lines is quite a good idea too to keep him thinking just keep building things up until you can go around the arena at the right speed, relaxed and listening to you in all paces. I give myself about 45 minutes to do the warm up and use every minute of it.
Now's the tricky bit and you might need a few helpers. It's best if you can go straight from the warm up arena into the actual dressage arena without stopping and preferably in trot so he doesn't have time to think about anything other than what you've been working on. You might need someone to be on watch out for the person before you to leave the arena so you can go straight in. My instructor said (this was just for dressage comps, don't know if the rules are different for BE) that you get 45 secs after the judge ringing the bell to you starting the test and if you need to take all that time, then do - trot around the boards a couple of times if you feel it's necessary.
The first time I did this method, I was warming up in an indoor arena then had to trot through a yard, through the lorry park and down a slope into an outdoor test arena. But by trotting all the way and being able to go straight in without waiting outside he was totally relaxed and we actually won that class! Earlier in the day on another test we had had to wait just 5 minutes for the person before me to finish their test and Ludo just switched off, got in the arena and his head was up and hollow back as usual, though he did relax into the test much quicker than normal and we got a 5th place, the 2nd test when we went straight in worked a treat!
Since then I've done 2 other tests using the same warm up routine and been placed 2nd and 3rd. </font>
Due to having a 3-legged horse during 2006 I didn't do any comps, but will certainly be sticking to this warm up if and when we get back to competitions.
Let me know how you all get on with this.
