Don’t let these ladies scare you off of dressage.
Dressage is not some moldy old academic thing that people just do in a riding arena. The basics work anywhere and are useful anywhere.
Alot of endurance riders DO feel they don’t need dressage. But I also have a couple endurance rider friends who DON’T feel that way! Event riders, show jumpers, even hunt seat riders make use of the basics of dressage. No…they aren’t riding with their thigh, using indirect reins, or anything fancy.
I feel there’s a basic set of things in dressage that really can benefit just about any rider. If you stick to that, it’s very useful. Some dressage people just LOVE to make it more complicated than it has to be. It doesn’t need to be. My friend’s little tiny kids were doing dressage with their fat little hairy ponies…with a ribbon tied on one hand because they didn’t even know left from right, LOL.
But, let’s take the indirect rein first. I have never been taught to use an indirect rein on the outside of a turn to circle, and neither have many other people in dressage - I actually think it’s wrong, even for much more advanced dressage, even a 2 time Olympian doesn’t teach people to ride at the basic levels that way. So let’s just take that part of it off the table - it shoudln’t even be there.
The classical, basic dressage aids are actually very, very simple, effective and useful for any rider, the way I have been taught them, and that is pretty much how I described up above in a previous post - which you understood and were able to echo back.
If a person wants to they can make it much more complicated, they can dig out a lot of old books and quote them, but it really is not necessary to get the benefit: A horse that is straigher and more balanced is a less tired horse on endurance.
I’ve had several endurance riders tell me that they take dressage lessons and as a result, their horse is less tired after an endurance ride. They still do their conditioning work - they just add some basic dressage work.
If you want more detail, please feel free to read on -
If I am riding a horse long distances, I want him straight so no one set or muscles (or legs) is doing more work - meaning his hind end is directly behind his front end.
Whenever I turn, steer, change direction, I want ALL his legs to be taking an equal amount of weight, I don’t want him leaning off to one side, where one leg or 2 are getting more weight on them than necessary. I want him ‘balanced’ and I want him ‘straight’.
That’s what basic dressage is about. That’s all. The way a horse is trained to do that is very simple, and the aids one uses are very simple.
