10/21/2025
Let’s talk about the sometimes confusing pyramid!! 30 years ago. I thought this thing was stupid. 20 years ago I thought it needed a few tweaks, and was generally confusing, and not really helpful. 10 years ago I realized it is absolutely genius.
Then over the last 10 years, I’ve incorporated more classical French flavor into my training and realize it’s possible to stand this thing on its head, but I don’t claim to be an expert at that. So for right now, let’s just focus on the genius that is the training pyramid.
The train pyramid comes from classical German - not modern German, and not classical French. Think Steinbrecht through Reiner Klimke, or the Spanish Riding School in Austria.
RHYTHM….When you first start a young horse, they don’t know that leg means forward. They don’t know how to steer. So we do some groundwork to teach them what we can. If we are looking at the classical German system, this probably means work on the lunge line, maybe in some loose side reins,  where the goal is just to get them out on a basic circle traveling at a consistent acceptable speed. When we first climb on, we are going to repeat that goal… don’t get stuck, and don’t run away. At this stage, we are also going to learn basic steering, but in the German school, we are going to focus a little more on advancing the tempo control. We want to be able to speed the horse up and slow them down with the seat pretty early in the training. (French classical would work on bending and steering first)
RELAXATION…. This one doesn’t translate great. Read the subheading instead. Let’s start over….
ELASTICITY AND SUPPLENESS… bendy bendy bendy bendy. If a horse won’t trot past the scary corner, your best friend is circle circles and a rudimentary shoulder in. So when we say relaxation, think about how tight a horse gets when they are thinking about losing their brain, and then how do you relax them? You bend them. It might be some rudimentary bending initially. Obviously you need contact in order to bend. The pyramid is NOT saying that you’ll ride on a loose rein until the next step.  Ride with the best connection that you and the horse are able, but at this stage, you’ll probably have to pull the horse’s nose where you want it. 🫣 yes I know that sounds horrible, but that’s why this stage is called relaxation and not “ perfect proper bend”!!! We want it to be that every time you pick up a rein, the horse responds and softens. That’s what this stage is about.
CONNECTION…. Yay! Finally! Lol I say that sarcastically- you should be dabbling with connection and getting decent at it by the time the horse has 30 to 60 rides under saddle. (assuming that the Rider knows what they’re doing which is a pretty huge assumption!) These stages are not supposed to take a year each!!! You start your ride, making sure that you can get some steady forward tempo. Then you supple your horse up and make sure that you can separate steering and bending a little. And by the end of the ride, you should have some connection!! Have you ever ridden a horse that is heavy as hell in one rein?? I guarantee the horse was way too light in the other hand! If your horse is leaning constantly on the right, it’s most likely because they have zero acceptance of the hand on the left. This is the stage to fix that. This is when we build inside leg to outside rein connection!!
IMPULSION…. Energy, hmmm, didn’t we do this already? Not really because before our horse was a sack of potatoes and we were just trying to get him to speed up or slow down, but he wasn’t connected yet. Now that we have some connection we should be able to ask for the type of energy that gets the horse to lift the thoracic sling!!! This is thoracic sling stage!! if you felt it, you know what I mean. If you haven’t, there’s nothing that anyone is going to write that’s going to explain it fully. But now when you play with the energy, it’s way different!
STRAIGHTNESS…. annnnnnnd, enter the confusion!!! This is the part where everyone gets dumbfounded. Isn’t straightness like the first thing we should be teaching???? Yes!!!! That is if you think getting a horse to go in a straight line without completely bulging either shoulder, counter bending, we’re trying to gravitate to the middle of the arena is what we mean by working on straightness! That part is so Elementary they didn’t even include it on the pyramid. Think of that as in the basement.
The straightness we are talking about now is so much more!!!  This is also the part that when ignored, causes lameness!! In this stage we are making sure that in every single lateral movement, the horse is using all four legs evenly, offering correct poll flexion, not over bending at the base of the neck, flexing correctly through the rib cage, staying between our hands and legs, etc. If you have to hold your half pass together with your inside rein, your horse isn’t straight!!! Can us English speakers just rename this “ COMPLETE LATERAL BALANCE”????? Also, when you start trying to collect,  the horse will use crookedness as evasion. Imagine you are holding a Dressage whip at each end and pushing the two ends towards each other. We want the middle part to bow up, but it could potentially bow in any direction! Maintaining straightness is what allows us to prevent it from bowing sideways so that we can achieve a convex arch upwards
COLLECTION… I don’t know, man. I still suck at this part. I can get a horse to lift through the thoracic slang, amazingly well!!!! But I’m not great at getting them to REALLY sit behind. And that seems pretty common amongst those who practice the German system . (I think the French school gets better sitting behind, but doesn’t always get the lifted thoracic sling, which is why I’m all about learning both! As much as I love French, classical German has been more accessible.) but anyways, this stage is ultimately about piaffe and pirouettes, however, that doesn’t mean that you don’t work on it until you are at FEI level!!!!! if you have a horse that is dreadfully on the forehand, you are going to work on achieving a 50-50 balance as early in the process as you can! That horse may not be collectED,  because we typically save that term for horses that are shifting more weight behind than 50%. But the horse might be collected for him at that stage. I’m tempted to make a graphic where I take the top half of the triangle and scale it way down and place it on top of the full size foundation to show what it looks like if you have, let’s say, a really well trained five-year-old horse! The foundation is pretty much completed (obviously every horse will need reminders) and then you are working on all three upper steps, but you have a lot of work to do with all three!
Then there is the French classical school, where we first get the horse to balance and then “add forward with an eyedropper” or whatever the quote is. Unfortunately, you almost have to learn both schools in their entirety and pure form before you can be be really good at picking back-and-forth and layering. And sadly i think most humans need more than one lifetime to really master both methods and then create something uniquely their own. Apparently, Nuño Olivia got it done, but it’s pretty well accepted that he wasn’t really able to pass that one to his students so much.
Anyways, you guys can add your own thoughts or argue as much as you want in the comments because I’m really not emotionally tied to the German train pyramid. Even if I have been thinking about the damn thing for three decades!!!

