09/14/2025
In my opinion every trainer has to be able to give you an answer to all of these questions. If not? Find somebody who can.
The effectiveness of the aids
- Do you know when you should be using your inside hand and when you should be using your outside hand?
- Do you know what to do when you have to keep kicking your horse to maintain a certain speed and you want to change this?
- Do you know why ‘holding your horse until he releases’ is never the answer to a soft connection?
- Do you know how to fix your seat when someone tells you that ‘you are sitting behind the movement’?
The biomechanics of the horse
- Do you know what happens in the horses body when you bend left or right? *hint: where do the shoulders go?
- Do you know why you should always have vertical balance before horizontal balance?
- Do you know the difference between collection and ‘going slow’?
- Do you know how to position the head and the shoulders of the horse left and right seperately?
The ability of the horse to learn
- Do you know why it’s positive if your horse makes ‘mistakes’ during training?
- Do you know why getting mad at your horse is NEVER the solution?
- Do you know what are the signs when your horse is mentally closed off and can’t process your aids anymore?
- Do you know how your horse communicates with you when he’s in pain, or when he doesn’t understand you?
These are 12 questions most of my students had no answer to when we first started working together. And I’m the first one to admit that for a long time in my riding carreer I also had no answer to. But in my journey of talking to professionals, riding lots of horses, teaching lots of different students, reading books, signing up for webinars, watching other people ride, listening to podcasts and attending clinics, I realized that simply knowing the techniques of dressage will get you nowhere if you don’t know the answers to the questions above. Those 12 questions are solely just the basics (and I could actually come up with at least another 12 questions). When you make it to the upper levels it becomes even more complicated.
I am hoping to launch a new website sometime this year or maybe next year. Which I envision to become a platform where members can learn not only about how to become a good dressage rider, but how to become a good partner to your horse. Whether you ride dressage, western, show jumping, eventing or anything in between.
To my students: do you know the answers to all of these? If there’s one or more missing answers, please ask me in the next scheduled lesson!
