Dressage
JFK Storm Chaser, WDAA World Champion
look at it at this learning level. The leg aids also have an inside and outside. The inside leg used at the girth can be looked at like a pole that you are turning around. Its purpose it to help create bend as the rein aids guide the horse’ s head around the turn. The outside leg is just back a little still acting like a wall to prevent slide out. Your reins turn together, one coaxing the horse’ s nose into a new direction and the other slightly pushing the neck into the new direction. The rider’ s legs are working together too, the inside being turned around gently coaxing the shoulders to bend around it and the other holding the haunch. This might sound immensely complicated until you understand why, balance. A horse trips in the front mostly because his head quickly looked out away from the bend of a turn or away from straight while traveling straight. This loaded the opposing front leg and he stubs his toe. Turning in balance prevents this until there is a SqUiRrEl to look at!
Introducing the idea that the rider is using all four of the his appendages just to turn sounds like a lot. You do it subtly and it becomes natural over time. A rider and horse in balance looks pretty to watch as it promotes correct movement. There is another benefit in using the rein and leg aids together in that it slowly starts the process of rounding the horse into an athletic position.
Understanding Pressure
Rounding is asking the horse to slightly lower his head and hip over a slightly lifting leg. Dressage, or the training of the horse, asks us to use our hands and legs together to develop correct movement. Rounding brings in another aid in the use of our seat. Any pressure applied by the rider’ s hands to the bit has created pressure. Pressure can’ t be created without also creating counter pressure. This is Newton’ s Third Law or the law of action and reaction, that states that when two bodies interact, they apply forces to one another that are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. This means that forces always occur in pairs, and one object cannot exert a force on another without experiencing an equal and opposite force itself. Newton’ s Law states that when we create pressure to the bit there must be equal counter pressure somewhere. Your seat sits on a specifically designed angle slightly sloped back toward the pocket of the saddle that your seat bones rest in. Your crotch wraps around this angled slope and that is where the pressure drawn on the reins is countered. You create pressure to the bit that asks the horse to lower his head while at the same time this pressure is countered and felt by the horse in the saddle as your crotch is drawn against and resisting being pulled forward by the saddle’ s design causing the counter pressure to be redirected by the saddle’ s sloping pommel downward to your seat bones, the bottom of your pelvis. You draw the horse’ s nose and head downward while at the same time your seat with counter pressure is pushing the horse’ s hip downward. At the same time you apply a slightly lifting leg to coax upward lift of the horse’ s back between the two downward pressures. The horse’ s head goes down, his back goes up and his haunch goes down into engagement. This is because there is a lifting pressure between two downward pressures. This is being round and is obvious enough for the horse to follow easily through this time tested method using fairly light pressures.
I assume that some of you are glazed over and at best thinking but I just wanted to trail ride. Look at riding as a game, the more you invest in learning this
20 NWHA National News | March 2026