Dala Dressage Training

Dala Dressage Training The vision of Dala Dressage is to help bring horse and rider into harmony, and to help riders meet personal riding goals.

05/21/2026

Qualities that make a good leg-yield:

✅ The horse moves both forwards and sideways on two tracks.
✅ The rhythm and tempo remains consistent.
✅ The horse's body stays straight with the shoulders about one hoofprint in front of the hindquarters, and a very slight flexion at the poll away from the direction of travel.
✅ If in trot, the horse's inside legs pass and cross in front of the horse's outside legs.
✅ The horse moves freely forward, working through his back without tension or resistance, and the balance is uphill.
✅ The contact is elastic and consistent.
✅ There is a clear start and end to the movement.
✅ The positioning of the leg-yield remains the same throughout the movement, without steep or shallow variations.

To find out more about the leg-yield (including the aids and how to ride it), check out our newest book on Amazon. Link in the comments.

Illustrations created and copyrighted by How To Dressage

05/16/2026

Boulder Valley Dressage is excited to announce our Summer Symposium: The Rider’s Seat ABCs with Suzanne Galdun! ☀️🐴

Join us for an educational and inspiring event focused on developing a stronger, more effective rider’s seat.

📅 Auditor registration opens May 1
📅 Rider applications open June 1

Sign up at www.bouldervalleydressage.org

We are proud to be sponsored by Front Range Equine Performance, Renovo, and Bank of Colorado.

Stay tuned for more details!

05/15/2026

EDIT: Clinic opening is filled!

Heads up! I have an open weekend due to a cancellation June 6-7. If you can pull a clinic together on short notice, let me know! Fun fact: three weeks was the same amount of time I had to organize the first clinic I hosted in the Chicago area. That was just the beginning of my biomechanics journey thirteen years ago. Trips to Colorado, Texas, Michigan and later to Maine are also on the calendar. Reach out if you are interested in riding or auditing!

05/13/2026

As riding instructors we spend a lot of time managing the gap between what new students expect riding to be and what it actually is. Most of that gap could be narrowed significantly with one honest conversation before the first lesson ever happens. So here is everything I wish every new student and every new riding family walked in already knowing...

1. Riding is harder than it looks
This is the one that surprises people most. Watching a good rider looks effortless but it is not effortless. It is years of muscle memory, feel, balance, and body awareness built through consistent work over a long time. Your first lessons will feel awkward and uncoordinated and that is completely normal. Every rider you have ever admired felt exactly the way you feel right now when they were starting out.

2. The horse is not a bicycle
It is a living animal with its own personality, its own opinions, and its own good days and bad days. It does not always do what you ask the first time and that is not always your fault but it is always your responsibility to figure out the communication. Learning to work with a horse rather than on top of one is one of the most valuable things riding teaches and it starts from the very first lesson.

3. Progress is not linear
Some weeks you will feel like you have jumped forward three levels. Other weeks you will feel like you have forgotten everything you learned last month. Both are completely normal parts of learning to ride. The students who improve consistently are not the ones who never have bad lessons but they are the ones who show up anyway and keep working through the frustrating ones.

4. One lesson a week is a start but not a program
A single lesson per week gives you exposure to riding. Two lessons per week builds skill significantly faster. The riders who progress quickest are the ones who ride consistently and frequently enough that their muscles and nervous system have time to develop real memory around what correct feels like. If budget allows for more than one lesson per week it is worth it.

5. Your position will feel wrong before it feels right
Correct position in the saddle feels deeply unnatural to most people at first. Heels down feels like you are pushing your foot through the floor. Sitting tall feels like you are leaning back. An independent hand feels like you are doing nothing. Trust the process and trust your instructor. The things that feel strange now become automatic eventually but only if you commit to doing them correctly rather than defaulting back to what feels comfortable.

6. The time around the lesson matters as much as the lesson itself
Grooming your horse before you ride. Learning to tack up correctly. Understanding how to read your horse's body language in the cross ties. This is not the boring part before the real lesson begins. This is horsemanship and it makes you a better rider than an hour in the saddle alone ever will.

7. Bad rides happen to every rider at every level
Including the ones you look up to most. A bad lesson does not mean you are not cut out for this, it just means you are learning something hard and doing it on the back of a living animal that is also having a day. Come back next week and it will be different.
Your instructor is on your side.

8. Every correction we give is in service of your progress and your safety
We are not pointing out what is wrong to make you feel bad but we are pointing out what needs to change so you can get where you want to go faster and more safely. The students who improve fastest are the ones who hear a correction as information rather than criticism and apply it without taking it personally.

9. Riding changes you in ways you will not expect
The patience it builds, the confidence that comes from communicating with an animal ten times your size and being understood. The resilience that develops from falling short of a goal and coming back for it anyway. The community you find at the barn. None of that shows up in the first lesson or even the tenth but it will show up at one point. For most riders it becomes one of the most significant things in their life and not just what they do on Tuesday afternoons but part of who they are.

If you are a riding instructor share this with every new family who walks through your gate. If you are a new student or a parent of one - welcome. You picked something genuinely worth doing!

What do you wish someone had told you before your very first riding lesson?

05/12/2026

The Roots of Dressage 🌳🌿

"When we watch dressage as spectators, we should be delighted with the beauty of harmony between horse and rider. The horse must enjoy his work for the rider to have joy. He is our heritage, and it is our privilege to let him carry us in our quest to preserve that which we have learned from the past as we journey into the future as partners."

In this original article, Kentucky-based dressage professional, historian, and US Equestrian ‘S’ dressage judge, Sue Kolstad, shares her presentation on the "History Tree of European Dressage," walking us through the eras of our sport that have landed us where we are today.

Check it out at the link below:
🔗 https://wp.me/padgUY-q4h

📸 Dressage judge and historian Sue Kolstad painted this History Tree of European Dressage, depicting the evolution of the sport. Artwork © Sue Kolstad. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

04/29/2026

🐴 DRESSAGE SOLUTIONS: Improve your position alignment and seat 🐴

To improve your self-carriage and alignment and deepen the connection to your seat …

Imagine the fascial current as a continuous circle of energy that is both uplifting and grounding. Fascia is an elastic, tensional network that connects all parts of your body. Visualize the energy of the fascial current running up the front of your body lifting the p***c bone toward the breastbone, going over the head, circling down the back to the shoulder blades, the base of the ribcage, through the seat bones and flowing down to the heels. This visualization will improve the connection of the seat bones and uplift and align the trunk over the pelvis, beautifully supporting you in self-carriage.

— Helen Fletcher

🎨 Illustration by Sandy Rabinowitz

04/23/2026

Your students' warm up sets the tone for the rest of the lesson, here is how to teach a proper warm up session...

A warm up is not just letting the horse stretch his legs and the rider get comfortable in the saddle before the real work begins. It is the foundation the entire lesson is built on and there are riders at every level that have absolutely no idea how to do it with any intention whatsoever.

Watch how some students warm up and here is what you will see: a loose rein, a wandering track, no particular pace, no particular focus, and a rider whose brain is elsewhere. The horse is barely awake and the rider is barely present. Then ten minutes later you ask them to work on something specific and wonder why it takes so long for either of them to find any quality. The warm up is not neutral time -it is teaching time and here is how to use it:

1. Start with a purpose not a pace
A warm up should have an objective just like the rest of the lesson. Not a complicated one but a clear one. Today, the warm up objective is forward and straight or today it is finding rhythm at the rising trot before we ask for anything more. Or today it is loosening the horse's back through transitions before we touch the contact. One clear focus that prepares the horse and rider physically and mentally for what comes next. Without that focus, the warm up is just time passing.

2. Teach your students what they are actually warming up
The horse's muscles need progressive loading by starting quiet and building gradually toward the work of the lesson. The rider's body needs the same thing. A student who understands that the walk is not just filler before the trot but that it is where they establish their position, their breathing, their feel for this particular horse on this particular day will use it completely differently than one who is just waiting for something interesting to happen.

3. Make it diagnostic
The warm up is where you find out what you are actually working with today. How is the horse moving? Is he tight through the back? Is he more forward than usual or less? How is the rider sitting? Are they carrying tension from a hard week? Are they loose and relaxed or braced and distracted? A purposeful warm up tells you everything you need to adjust your lesson plan before the main work begins. A wandering warm up tells you nothing.

4. Give them specific things to feel for and not just do.
At the posting trot, ask your student if they are on the correct diagonal before they look down. Ask them whether the rhythm feels even or whether one side feels different from the other. Ask them where in their body they can feel the horse's hind leg stepping under. These questions switch the brain on in a way that no amount of circles and transitions ever will on their own. A rider who is actively feeling and noticing in the warm up is a rider who is ready to learn the moment the real work begins.

5. Scale it to the level
A beginner warm up looks different from an advanced one but both need intention. A beginner might spend their warm up establishing a balanced rising trot and practicing steering away from the rail. An intermediate rider might use transitions and simple school figures to find suppleness and rhythm before asking for more. An advanced rider might work shoulder-in on both reins and a few transitions within the gait to test the horse's throughness before any serious work begins. The principle is the same at every level. The warm up prepares, it does not just pass time.

The lesson that starts with a purposeful warm up is a completely different lesson from the one that starts with ten minutes of wandering. The horse is more through and the rider is more present. The work that follows is better quality and it gets there faster so teach your students to warm up like they mean it.

How do you structure the warm up in your lessons? Drop it in the comments... I want to hear what works in your program.

02/11/2026

The number one most dangerous thing a horse can be is behind the leg. This includes being behind the forward aid from the ground; horses who are sulky to lead or want to walk behind the rider have any number of life-threatening tricks they can pull from being behind the aids. And of course there are any number of physical reasons why a horse might be sour to the leg or unwilling to go forward, but it is imperative that a horse learns - first and foremost! - to go like hell from driving pressure. We joke-not-joke around here that we’ll slow them down when they’re 8. (Maybe.)

And that’s forward, by the way. Not fast. Fast isn’t forward. I know plenty of horses who go fast behind the leg, and piaffe or canter pirouettes are forward. In order to be safe, a horse has to accept the driving aid with a smile. If he doesn’t, he’s not properly backed yet. The kindest thing to do for your horse’s long term safety and security is to make sure they go forward when they’re told, both under saddle and in-hand.

02/09/2026

Loops must be symmetrical in shape and length and ridden as a series of curves with no sharp angles that would disrupt your horse’s balance and rhythm.

Loops serve multiple purposes in your training:

✅ An Ideal Exercise for Young Horses - Loops require changes of bend without an extreme change of direction, minimizing the likelihood that your young horse will lose balance or alignment (straightness).

✅ An Ideal Warm-Up Exercise for Advanced Horses - For the same reason as above, loops are an ideal exercise to ride during the warm-up of more advanced horses, because they require gradual changes of bend.

✅ Improve Lateral Suppleness - Loops test and enhance your horse's ability to transition smoothly from one bend to another, promoting lateral (side-to-side) suppleness.

✅ Improve Rider Coordination - Riding loops challenges your coordination because you must smoothly and effectively adjust your aids and body position.

✅ Counter Canter Preparation: Loops can be used in the introduction and training of counter-canter.

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Illustration created and copyrighted by HowToDressage

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