November 20, 2013 – In a recent email, someone asked the following question:
Could you describe a warm-up for a Training, First, and Second level horse?

So here’s what I do, and why I do it.

The point of the warm-up is to take the restrictions away from your horse’s body. So depending on the day, your warm-up could be as short as 10 minutes, or it could end up becoming your entire ride.

1. Since your horse might have been standing in the stall for several hours, spend the first 10 minutes or so walking around on a loose rein.
2. After walking around “on the buckle” for several minutes, pick up a contact so you can begin your warm-up.
3. Focus on the first three ingredients in the Training Scale: Rhythm, Suppleness, Connection.
4. Rhythm: As you walk, trot, and canter around, check that the rhythm is always regular, and the tempo is neither too fast not too slow.
5. Suppleness: Spend as little or as much time as you need, suppling and relaxing your horse both mentally and physically. Work done in tension is a waste of time.
   Use what I call the “+7/+1 suppling” technique to relax your horse physically. Once he’s physically relaxed, he’ll relax mentally.

To apply the suppling technique, do the following:

1. Start on a circle. Use an indirect inside rein to bend the neck 7 inches to the inside. (Turn your wrist as if unlocking a door so you can see your fingernails for a moment. As you turn your wrist, bring your baby finger toward the withers. Don’t open or close your fingers. If you wiggle the bit or open and close your fingers, you’re just asking your horse to flex at his jaw.)
   Do three bends in a row to the inside, quickly but smoothly. Don’t hold the bend and wait for your horse to “give”. (Once again, that’s his jaw giving, not his neck.)
   Also, keep a consistent, steady contact with his mouth instead of letting the rein get loopy.
2. Squeeze with your inside leg at the same time you use your inside rein.
3. Keep your outside rein steady and supporting. Don’t let your outside hand go forward. Your hands should stay side-by-side. That outside rein limits the bend in the neck to 7 inches. Then you’ll use it to straighten the neck.
4. Keep your outside leg slightly behind the girth in a passive, guarding action to prevent the hindquarters from swinging out.
   After the three “supples”, leave your horse alone for six to eight strides, and just maintain an elastic contact with his mouth. Then do another set of three supples.
   If the suppling was effective, your horse will lengthen and lower his head and neck and feel more relaxed.
5. Connection: Use the “Connecting Aids” to put your horse on the bit. Close your legs as if asking for a lengthening, close your outside hand in a fist to capture, and recycle the energy back to the hind legs, and keep the neck straight by giving 3-4 little squeezes or vibrations on the inside rein.
   The connecting aids last approximately three seconds. During those three seconds, you “Add, add, add” hind legs through your closed outside hand while maintaining flexion at the poll to the inside.
   In warm-up, I connect my horse and ride him either long and low (see picture), or if he tends to be heavy on the forehand, I ride in a “horizontal balance” with his topline is parallel to the ground.
6. When things fall apart, always go back to the beginning of the training scale. Reestablish regular rhythm. Then supple your horse. Finally, ask for connection.
7. While focusing on rhythm, suppleness and connection, it’s appropriate to ask the Training Level horse to do school figures like circles, serpentines, and shallow loops.
   The First and Second Level horse can do school figures, leg-yields, and rubber band exercises like gentle lengthenings and then coming back to the working gait.
8. Many people do a lot of transitions from gait to gait in the warm-up.
   Personally, I think your horse needs to be warmed up nicely first before you can expect him to do good transitions. So, I save schooling the transitions until the second phase of my work after the warm-up is complete.

Jane Savoie
1174 Hill St ext.
Berlin, VT 05602
Jane’s Website
DressageMentor.com