Lisa Wilcox Dressage Clinic

I have been on one of my favorite BB, Chronicle of the Horse http://chronicleforums.com/eve/ubb.x. And there is a topinc about the Lisa Wilcox, dressage rider/traininer/Olymipian, clinic that was held in New England. The clinic organizer wrote about what Lisa worked on with each student. I found it a simple exercise and immediately incorporated it into my training.

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The clinic organizer wrote the follow:

Lisa starts each horse working on circles and serpentines getting them honestly through to that outside rein. She works on going from hand to hand by changing out of the circle. She decreases the size of the circle to a volte, and works volte to volte and then back to a larger circle. She does serpentines through the school to see if they accept the new bend. She is always trying to increase the bend by adding shoulder-in on the circle and long sides and going back to voltes. This bending work gets them swinging in the middle (mittlehand) so that the spine moves both up and down AND side to side. This stretches the muscles in preparation for the next movements. This is especially important for that area just behind the saddle which tends to get tight and block. If that area is blocked, you will not have a swinging back and no horse stepping under. It is many minutes just stretching and preparation work, almost all done in shoulder fore or shoulder in, with the GOAL to get the inside hind leg stepping under the middle of the horse to carry the weight. She likened these exercises to a gymnast...they cannot just go out and do their tumbling routine without stretching. It was not to perfect the shape of the circle, it was to stretch the horse, get them stepping under, which gets them off the forehand and lighter in the shoulder. When through, carrying, and engaged, the gaits go from ordinary to extraordinary, with a lot of freedom of the shoulder and hock articulation. Anyone could see this, especially when she was riding--also on Sunday.

Once correctly carrying, doing a half pass is like butter. Once you lose the bend, you turn that half pass back into shoulder in and go straight. She would not attempt to do changes, or any of the p's without the horse through, carrying, light on the forehand and carrying on the hind end. Without these requirements, you can force them out behind, get them to block, and many other things that would lead to muscle stiffnesses. Once you start to develop a stiffness, you have to stretch those muscles...just like we do. She said we must be physical therapists up there for our horses.

She gets to half pass with all of her horses, even the 4 year olds, but it is not steep and only for a few strides and only when they are correctly through. In half pass, it is too easy for them to learn to step away from the body because they lose the bend rather than under the body and carrying. Shoulder in always fixes this.

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I of course went right out the barn and incorportated some of this in my exercises. While I always to circles, changes of directions and such, I am not sure I was understanding why and what it would do for my horse. So yesterday, Dublin was in a good mood and we worked on 20 meter circles and really making him bend around my inside leg and making his inside leg really step under him. He could supple left or right on the circle (note: I didn't crank his head around, just enough so I could see his eye)

I then happened to be going down the long side and noticed a little more "bounce to the ounce" in Dublin's trot that I hadn't experienced earlier. It was wonderful to feel a result so quickly.