Learn Basic Dressage Terminology

• Self carriage: your goal to achieve is moving the horse in a correct and balanced frame without your horse relying on you to hold him there. In other words, he carries himself by himself. (This can be tested by giving with the reins as some horses just hold themselves in their riders hands.)
• Resistance: when the horse resists the rider’s aids and refuses to do as asked
• Suppleness: when the horse responds to the rider’s request to bend and give flexion without resistance.
• On the bit: the horse moves forward with energy into the rider’s hands. He accepts bit contact, even seeks contact with the rider’s hands. He is not resistant to contact. He doesn’t come above the bit with his head raised or suck back behind the bit, refusing contact.
• Contact: constant communication with your horse via your hands through the reins to the bit. The feel is consistent, active and alive. Think of this as keeping the same weight in your hands.
• Flexion/Roundness: bending with suppleness of the horse throughout his body (typically when referenced to mean the poll but also means neck, back, stifle and hock as well). Some refer to this as riding one’s horse round.
• Bending/bend: when the horse creates a curve through his body from ear to through the spine to the tail. Bending creates more suppleness as well as engagement of the hind legs for lateral movements. Think of this as bending to the arc of an imaginary circle that you are riding on. Your bend is correct if you turn your head and look at the imaginary center of the circle and in your peripheral vision you see both your horse’s nose (seen by one eye) and hindquarter (seen by the other eye).
• Engagement: think of this as tracking up well in the hind end but with added flexion in the hock and stifle. This causes the horse to “sit" more by lowering the haunches. To get proper engagement, you must ride your horse correctly on the bit, moving forward and working toward self carriage.
• Lateral movements: movements such as the leg yield or shoulder in that require a horse to cross his legs while moving sideways and (typically) forward.
• Impulsion: the forward energy. With the horse moving his hind legs well under him, “tracking up," more thrust energy goes forward.
• Suspension: Picture the passage in dressage…the lofty trot where the hooves seem off the ground more often than on. With greater suspension, more energy and collection take the horse’s energy upward more often than forward, though still moving forward. The horse’s stride appears shorter because there is more lift upward, more height, in the stride.
• Collection: if you take a balanced horse in self carriage and add engagement so he his hocks flex well under him, impulsion so he is still moving with energy forward, and suspension, so the energy is collected from going more forward, you create a frame that has a shorter stride because of increased height. The haunches are lower and the frame is shorter. This is not to be confused with going slower as many novices think. There is still the same forward energy, just compacted, and sent upward. Think piaffe, the trot in place.
• Through/Throughness/Traveling through: as the horse steps up well under himself with his hind legs, the energy travels up over his back, creating a round back with lifted belly, then over the top of his neck, creating a relaxed softly rounded neck, relaxed flexion at the poll, and down to the bit. It’s the route that the energy travels, and if the energy is blocked at any one place, the horse isn’t traveling through.