Granted I don't know very much about dressage, so most of this lesson was over my head, but it was still cool to watch. Here's some things I picked up:
- Shoulders-in to remove tension from the horse
- Performance = Potential - Interference
- Go to the limit, but not over it
- "We look because we're nosy. The horse looks because he wants to survive."
- The walk should maintain the same rhythm in freestyle as it does in finesse. If it doesn't then the horse doesn't trust the rider's hands.
- Horses can't learn when they're tense
- The walk should be forward, lively, immediate and not hesitant
- Canter "up in heaven" (If I understood correctly that means that the horse is up above you, and your focus is where you're going, not looking at his ears)
- Horses don't make mistakes on purpose
- When the horse gets tight/afraid/tense, you're pushing the limit
- Dressage means the highest level of animal training
- Whatitative (what you do) + Qualitative (how well you do it) = Quantitative (how often/much you do it)
During a break right before the Linda's lesson, Linda did a Q&A. There was also a saddle-fitting demo going on, so we watched the saddle-fitting one. But I caught the end of the Q&A, and Linda mentioned that to ride Remmer engaged she changes her body. She explained super-quickly, but she said she flexes her thigh muscles, pulls her belly button into her spine - so her spine stretches, and pulls her armpits down. Linda was taught this by Jane Dulak.
And lastly, Lauren Barwick came in on Maile (prononced May-lee) and showed us her Freestyle routine she performed at the Olympics. Then, she told us her story about what happened to her and how she's made it so far. She is paralyzed from the belly-button down from a hay bale -100 pound hay bale, I think- that fell on her from 10 feet up. And she talked about how at first her attitude was "Why me?", but eventually she changed it to "Why not me?" Lauren was very inspirational, and showed that anything is possible.
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