Hi again. A week or so ago I mentioned my uberstreichen excercises and many of you wrote in asking more about them. Well, the good news is that I have just given the green light to produce a series of DVDs on how I use them. These will be coming out later in the year and in the meantime, here is a piece I wrote about how the excercises can help with dressage.
Uberstreichen or more correctly, überstreichen, comes from German although there doesn’t seem to be a literal translation you can use (unless you can tell us otherwise!). What I like about the exercises are that they can be used on all horses no matter what level of training they have received. The purpose of the exercise are to enhance the forward expression of the horse’s gaits. They improve collected and extended gaits by giving the horse the ability to perform with ease. They support the horse’s way of going by removing locked muscles while simultaneously schooling the horse to respond correctly to rein and leg aids.
The eight uberstreichen exercises are exaggerated requests of the half-halt. There are eight because they cover the different ways we want the… Read more
