Use Al's Short Loping Exercise To Improve Your Lead Changes
The video below was taken by an audience member at the NW Horse Expo in Albany, Oregon-March 2010. We've been getting a lot of positive feedback on the Western Dressage video and thought this clip fit in well with the Western Dressage concept.
The basic concept Al is teaching in this video is to shorten and lengthen the stride of his horse to promote collection and hindquarter engagement. You will notice that Al shortens the length of his horse by driving the hip to the inside of the arc of the circle. He emphasizes having rhythm in your body to help the horse maintain cadence and increase the horses movement in the vertical axis.
To lengthen the horses stride Al simply relaxes and allows the horse to exchange vertical energy for moving out with more forward energy. This is a great exercise for increasing the horses strength and agility. Done properly it is also an excellent teacher for the rider in learning to feel the difference between shorter collected strides and longer freer movement.
This is a helpful foundation movement for improving your horses body control and ability to perform flying lead changes.
This would be a good exercise for a member video as problems performing this drill can bring out areas of foundation training that need improvement. It also improves the riders posture and ability to properly influence your horses stride and alignment.
Team AD
To view the video in full screen mode select the button that looks like a square in the lower right hand corner of the player. It is grainy, but clear enough to see what's going on.
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