Warm up time- dressage?

Kokopelli

Kokopelli

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How long do you warm up for a dressage test?

I have discovered today that 45 minutes is required to get Andy working well. The idea is to get him tired so he won't bother fighting with me. It's working really well as by the time we get in the arena he's got 'spark' left but isn't being a complete knob. The only problem now is when he gets fitter it will take longer to stop him being an idiot but hopefully by this time he won't be so much of an idiot. :p

Is this too long to warm up for?

(I only do 1 test when I go dressaging- haven't got the brain capacity to learn 2 tests.)
 
Eventing dressage - 15-20 minutes of actual working in, 5 minutes beforehand on long rein to get him used to sights and a bit more chilled. However if he comes out the box on his ears the longer the warm up the more wound up he gets, so that's literally walk, trot, canter, unwanted passage, piaffe, a few fly bucks and then straight in :P

For pure dressage - yeah probably about 45 minutes :) Not too worried about tiring them out as much as at a ODE :)
 
Totally depends on the weather for me!!

If its sunny (headshaking weather) I do 40 mins or so if rainy then 20mins!

I think it depends on your horse, I say go with what works!!
 
It definitely depends on the horse I think.

Dela would be doing the test backwards if I warmed her up for that long, she has serious energy issues. :rolleyes: We do 2 mediums each outing currently (booked our first advanced medium today) and I warm her up for just over half an hour before the first test and more like 20 minutes for the second test. She's very rarely tense (only at regionals usually - typical), it just takes that long to get her going forwards. She pretty much (thinks she) knows it all so the movements don't take that long for me to practise. I'll have to make the shoulder in more expressive and get her thinking about her medium trots to ensure she doesn't die more than necessary during our test :o
 
Thanks for tips, will give him the 45mins next time I'm out and see how we get on.

ChloeC418- my lad sounds totally opposite to your mare, in my last test I felt like I was sat on an un-exploded bomb until about half way through where he exploded and did a wall of death around the arena. My fault, I forgot to tell him that his shadow wasn't going to eat him. :rolleyes:
 
Competely depends on the horse. The grey in my sig requires atleast 50 minutes warm up, even when eventing!!! With my bay she only requires 20-30mins, which can be shortened to 15mins if the weather is hot.
 
Our lad require a 40-45 minutes solid warm up with very few walk breaks as this is the only way we manage to contain the spooking during a test! Seems to work for us at the moment, this is eventing to btw.
 
Kokopelli said:
Thanks for tips, will give him the 45mins next time I'm out and see how we get on.

ChloeC418- my lad sounds totally opposite to your mare, in my last test I felt like I was sat on an un-exploded bomb until about half way through where he exploded and did a wall of death around the arena. My fault, I forgot to tell him that his shadow wasn't going to eat him. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

My Lilly used to feel exactly like an unexploded bomb in dressage tests. Found a new calmer (ProKalm - AMAZING stuff), worked REALLY hard on hacking (in front, facing our fears and learning to chill out) and have never looked back. Did a test today on a calm, sometimes mildly speedy pony, who for the first time I wasn't holding onto with a death grip to prevent her galloping out of the arena. More work, regularly, does help, cracking the hacking helps, but for us even with all that, I had to ride without the calmer yesterday and she felt exactly like her old self - horrible!
 
About 30-40mins for the girl & pony. Took her ages to finally figure this out as she's brand new to dressage & he only needs max of 10mins for jumping!
 
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