I specifically said half pass was NOT haunches in on a diagonal.
4 other posters said haunches-in on a diagonal…not me.
please don’t put words into my mouth
[QUOTE=purplnurpl;3383498]
Oh boy oh boy.
I disagree with most said.
And no matter what anyone comes back with I will stick to my guns. Therefore I won’t check back on the thread because ya’ll will just make me cry. I’m sure.
The reason 1/2 pass is hard to teach (new horse and rider to the movement) is because you are asking the horse to move INTO your weight, probably for the first time. This is the first move that you cannot get away with. Can’t fake your body weight. If you can’t sit on the inside you ain’t goin no where.
It is not a pushing movement at all (via outside leg).
And I personally can’t think of it as a HI on the diagonal because that would make me think, lead with the haunch. And you should lead from the shoulder.
So when you finish your 10m 1/2 circle, come out of it and keep shoulder fore or SI. Then ask for the diagonal step.
Shoot, first just ask for your horse to trot on the 1/4 mark in the banana shape. That is hard enough for some of them!!
1/2 pass can be the easiest to ride, but the hardest to train. : ) If it were easy to train everyone would be a coach and then the good guys wouldn’t make money. lol.
Once the horse knows what to do you simply lift the inside rein a little and then use the inside leg and seat to move toward the inside (inside being from 1/4 line to rail according to bend)
Figure, if you are pushing your horse over from 1/4 mark to rail then how do you plan on getting from 1/2 mark to rail? How hard can you push? Not hard enough and you shouldn’t HAVE to push that hard!!
Inside leg and outside rein my dear. Outside leg helps hold the haunch steady.
That is what I was taught and I believe in it.
I ready my own body with renvers. It helps me work on putting my weight on the inside of the horse’s body.
I do use HI to ready my horse. But I do not initiate the move from HI. I just do the HI, SI, Renvers sequence on the long side. Back to HI, 10m 1/2 circle, banana shape and then go for it. : )
It’s hard keeping your parts, and your horse’s parts where they should be.[/QUOTE]
Unitil this post, I was going to cry. I agree with this poster.
What I’d like to know is how horses know what you want when you ask for half pass. :lol: But they do!
PS. I agree with purplnrpl about the importance of inside seat bone. I was taught inside leg maintains bend and impulsion, outside leg and inside seat bone asks horse to step over and under.
[QUOTE=slc2;3383500]
I do agree about haunches in on the diagonal, which is a very different thing from a half pass, and is a very different angle and very, very different (and much easier) mechanics that avoid the difficulty of half pass, and half pass should never be initiated by moving the haunches in or by doing haunches in. But don’t try to suggest that here, you’ll get a bunch of outraged women breathing down your neck telling you haunches in on a diagonal is the same as half pass and that’s all there is to it.[/QUOTE]
i doubt debbie mcdonald will come to this board and be all outraged and breathing down your neck about it, but she does say that the half pass is like a haunches in on the diagonal. and i tend to give her a “little” more credit than i give you.
dsorry gucci i didn’t mean to direct that at you.
there is a big difference between ‘like’ and ‘is’. Ask Bill Clinton.
i am saying haunches in on a diagonal is not a half pass.
of course it IS ‘like’ half pass. debbie macdonald is not exactly in doubt here.
i too was taught the ‘importance of inside seat bone’, but i was also taught, ‘just look where you want to go, insteady of TRYING to do something with your weight or seat bones’ looking in the right direction does as much with those seatbones as need be without, again, turning it into a ‘falling to the wall’ instead of a half pass.
[QUOTE=europa;3383186]
can someone give a good sequence of training events for half pass[/QUOTE]First comes BEND around your inside leg. That work starts way before even asking for Half Pass: it starts with riding correct corners and changes of directions: if your horse is correctly bend around your inside leg and your aids are correctly from inside leg to the outside rein - then you can start shoulder-for and shoulder-in, then traverse and renvers. All of those exercisers do work on same thing but in a different manner: BEND. You train horse’s muscles for a lateral work.
When your horse has solid muscles for the lateral work and can bend around your inside leg - then you ask for the Half Pass. So ask your horse to bend around your inside leg and connect him to your outside rein - your horse should stay in this position and then just with your outside leg sent your horse forward towards the point that you are looking at, while correcting the amount of an angle with your outside rein. Your body should be pointed towards the point that you looking at as well. Your shoulders should stay parallel to the ground - try not to collapse to the inside during the Half Pass.
The aids for the Half Pass is not hard - it’s the correct BEND that quite difficult and keep the activity going with that BEND.
Some people think that straight Leg Yield is a Half Pass - it is not. If horse doesn’t have BEND in his body, it is not a Half Pass, no matter how much leg crossing you get.
PS: During the shoulder-in, renvers and traverse only ONE pair of legs are crossing: either front or hind. During the Half Pass BOTH pairs of legs are crossing. During the Leg Yield there is no BEND. During the Half Pass there is BEND. Shoulder-in, renvers and traverse all have BEND as well — that is the difference between all of those exercises IF executed correctly.
As for “hunches-in” there is no official definition for that term, so it varies from trainer to trainer.
[QUOTE=slc2;3383907]
I do agree about haunches in on the diagonal, which is a very different thing from a half pass[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=slc2;3383907]
of course it IS ‘like’ half pass. [/QUOTE]
wow.
[QUOTE=Gucci Cowgirl;3383621]
Half passes travel on a diagonal line. Nobody is saying the half pass puts the body on a diagonal bend. THE LINE OF TRAVEL is a diagonal one. It is not straight forward, backwords, or sideways. The horses’ entire body is parallell to the wall, ben in the direction of travel, and travelling on a diagonal LINE across the arena. How do you ride that your half passes travel on a straight forward line? 
You misunderstood everyone’s posts. We all know the body is parallel to the wall, we are saying the line of travel is diagonal.[/QUOTE]
What you say And about the H/P is absolutely correct.
Also the S/I, H/I, & H/P, are all dependent on a strong inside leg,with the weight, if anywhere, on the inside seat bone. The outside leg supports the bend. Now! What you do with your hips, is the key to where you go with this bend. 
Cha-cha, cha-cha, cha, cha, cha!!! :lol:
The reins support the bend.
Now where is that Dressage Today from this past year with the exercises about learning HP as a HI on a diagonal line? It was some BNT. I’m sure she’s sharing a coffee in slick’s kitchen as we speak.
There are some semantic differences going on here. I agree with purple (and others), and don’t think all our posts are all that divergent. For some, emphasis is on weight placement, others leg placement, others bend, etc. which probably has a lot to do with who taught us and what our/our horse’s issues happen to be.
My horse has a wicked HI, and a wicked HP, (when I ride the horse, not the movement, that is). Of course the key is always engagement, forward while applying the aids.
And, slick, I always think HI on the diagonal as my line of sight in the test, I have NEVER been marked down for it, and get good scores. Not “marked down/lose points” as you alluded to. I don’t always think of it that way because I mix it all up at home (SI to HP, SI to HI, SI to med to HP, etc). But in the test, I pick my letter, align the shoulders, and HI/HP all the way to the bank.
Damn that dangling participle again…
SP once told me to start training the HP as a HI on the diagonal, but to me, it made me lose the shoulders on the green horse.
So, what I teach, and how I think when I ride, is “POINT the shoulders and BRING the haunches”
that way, the shoulders are always pointed at the place you want to end up at, and not pointing straight ahead, and the haunches are not trailing beside, but staying right with the horse every step of the way.
the minute the shoulders point forward, instead of to the inside, it’s not a HP.
that’s just what works for me and my students…
I rather like that explanation, too. And to me, it’s basically the same thing. I line up the shoulders with my direction of travel, then “bring the haunches” as you say in a HP.
Actually, I am well aware there are going to be multiple ACCURATE descriptions of the same movement. And no, I do not mean, multiple accurate WAYS to do the same movement, just how people describe them. That’s why I can take a clinic and have a light bulb moment when the clinician says exactly what my trainer says in every lesson!!!
It just jumps in my craw when someone (not directed at you GC) says something must NEVER be described/ridden that way, it is wrong wrong wrong, you will lose points, it will ruin your horse, it will ruin your hair, the gods will cry, etc. And with that, now that it has cooled down, I’m gonna go out and ride me some HP (or is that HI on the diagonal), while others ride their keyboard and tell me I’m doing it all wrong 
Interestingly half pass is call traversal. And the rules say: i. Half-pass. This movement is a variation of travers, executed on the diagonal insteadof along the wall. The horse should be slightly bent round the inside leg of the rider in orderto give more freedom and mobility to the shoulders, thus adding ease and grace to themovement although the forehand should be slightly in advance of the quarters. The outside legs pass and cross in front of the inside legs. The horse is looking in the directionin which he is moving. He should maintain the same cadence and balance throughout thewhole movement. In order to give more freedom and mobility to the shoulders, whichadds to the ease and grace of the movement, it is of great importance, not only that thehorse is correctly bent and thereby prevented from protruding his inside shoulder, but also to maintain the impulsion, especially the engagement of the inside hind leg.
If one puts poles on the diagonal line and rides travers along it, they will be doing half pass. The long diagonal with the line of medium tests, and the short diagonal that of fei. The horse is NOT parallel to the (longside) wall (that is LY). Inside leg is to sustain the energy or to change to go straight ahead, the outside leg supports the bend. (And to keep the energy it is forward/sideways, not sideways/forward).
To develop think that s.i. is the first step onto a circle, the travers the last step of a circle. Once the horse can do travers, just start a step of shoulder in and then rider travers on a diagonal line. Pulse the aids. Bringing both hands buoyantly and with a hint of inside/forward directs the horse while supporting the outside shoulder and yet the slight forward hint gives the horse a longer posture.
The hindlegs do not cross in SI, but it is the only exercises where they do not cross. They are consider to cross in the all the others.
HUH? I never said i would not do haunches in on a diagonal. that’s an exercise i use. i said it’s not half pass, and i agree with GC, that it loses the shoulders if one tries to develop a half pass right out of it. ie, start diagonal in haunches in and develop half pass. i do both, but i do them as separate exercises.
i said if you go in a show and you start half pass with the haunches in off the track, you lose points, and you do, and it is a very hard habit once it’s established. the haunches are not supposed to lead in half pass, even when just strating the half pass.
On the leg yield both sets of legs should cross, the body should be straight the neck should be bent slightly to the inside, and the horse should be moving away from the direction of the bend.
The shoulder-in can vary. Basic shoulder-in is a three track mpovement where the front legs will cross and the outside hind leg will just step over into the track of the inside hind leg. The shoulder-in should be moving more forward than sideways. It is acceptable to have a more extreme shoulder-in than just the three-track version, where there is more reaching under with the outside leg to where it begins to cross over and the movement becomes slightly more sideways and still goes forward.
Half-pass both sets of legs cross. It is as much forward movement as sideways movement. Technically you could do it down the centerline and the body (spine) of the horse would be at a forty-five degree angle. Yes, it is usually done coming off the wall and travelling on the diagonal with the spine of the horse remaining parallel to the wall.
As far as using the inside seat bone goes for either the shoulder-in or the half-pass or any lateral movement, I hesitate to describe using the weight of the rider like that since I have been taught that the rider should essentially be carrying their weight equally on their seatbones throughout all movements. That does not mean they don’t use each seat bone seperately throughout the strides to influence the horse’s back, but they should not drop their weight into one seat bone for an entire movement or even an entire stride, they should be rolling through their seat bones. They can add a bit of weight to, or lighten up, one seat bone or the other as they “roll through” the rythym of the gait.
The rider is asking the horse to allow for the rider to move/bend the spine of the horse and activate the hind legs of the horse through the use of the seat bones and leg aids.
As far as someone saying that they had been taught to lead with the shoulder in the half-pass, using the outside leg as the predominant aid for the half-pass does not preclude leading with the shoulder.
The angle of the spine of the horse at the half-pass may be 10 or 20 degrees off parallel to the wall.
Snip…snip…there do you feel better ?:winkgrin:
Riders should start HP with a step of shoulder in, then ask for the HP (traversal).
Shoulder in (even on four tracks) should never cross the hindfeet, it has to do with the degree of bend (ie shoulder fore a step onto a 20m circle/shoulder in a step onto a 10m circle/and four track shoulder in a step onto a 6 or 8m volte).
The four-track shoulder-in can be more flexible when done down the long wall. It certainly is possible to have a bending horse moving away from the bend and crossing both sets of legs over. Basically a leg-yield with bend from poll to tail … slightly more forward than a leg yield maybe, but similar.
I only bring this up because I tend to use it as a somewhat exaggerated movement that the horse begins to understand quicker.
Edited to add: actually it’s been years since I gotten a horse to leg yield. I haven’t asked for it. I like getting bending going.
I don’t understand your posts. What does starting half-pass on the centerline at a show have to do with the topic of conversation? It’s easy to fix angles in a half-pass, and if you can’t, then perhaps you’re not ready to show at that level?? One should be able to make haunches lead…and then trail…and then simply follow as an exercise in obedience and suppleness. You should be able to place the shoulders and haunches anywhere if you are working at third level and above. In fact, if you’re riding fourth level test 2, you are tested on your ability to differentiate between shoulder-in aids, volte aids, and half-pass aids (they come one after the other on the centerline). And if you’re actually riding haunches in on the diagonal as described by ideayoda, the haunches aren’t leading to an observer at C.
FWIW, I weight the inside seatbone and leg in the halfpass (i.e. stand slightly in the inside stirrup), and use the inside leg to keep the bend. So my horse stays under my weight as we go sideways. I use the inside hip to encourage reach with the inside foreleg. I use the outside leg to keep the activity in the crossing and hind-end and maintain the position of the haunches in relation to the line I’m riding. I control the shoulders and the front end elevation with the outside rein. THAT said, I’m aware not to over-aid so the horse stays free and swinging (ideally). BTW, I weight the inside seatbone for the shoulder-in, too. I do different things with my hip and thigh and knee, though, to direct my horse. Here, I think analogies to ballroom dancing are very appropriate. I lead, the horse follows. Ideally. :winkgrin: This is how I learned it from my most excellent trainers and this is how I ride it.
J.
[QUOTE=BaroquePony;3384414]
The four-track shoulder-in can be more flexible when done down the long wall. It certainly is possible to have a bending horse moving away from the bend and crossing both sets of legs over. Basically a leg-yield with bend from poll to tail … slightly more forward than a leg yield maybe, but similar.[/QUOTE]If both front and hind legs are crossing - this is no longer a shoulder-in according to the rules and that “move” will score a 4 or lower.
If all legs are crossing - it’s either Half Pass or Leg Yield. Half Pass has inside bend. Leg Yield has no bend, but has outside flexion. The movement that you are describing doesn’t exist: has counter bend and both front and hind legs crossing. Either you invented a new movement or it’s a not correctly aligned Leg Yield.
Dressage judging 101, biomechanics of dressage lateral work:
Leg Yield - both front and hind legs crossing, no bend, slight outside flexion.
Shoulder in - only front legs crossing, hind legs trot up straight, has bend to the inside.
Renvers - only hind legs crossing, front legs trot up straight, has bend to the outside (hunches out)
Travers - only hind legs crossing, front legs trot up straight, has bend to the inside (hunches in)
Half Pass - both hind and front legs crossing, has bend to the inside.
