The training scale - what do the different parts mean?

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Hi! 🐴 The training scale is divided into six steps and follows the young horse's education. Each step connects to the one before and cannot really be trained in isolation. 🐎 Rhythm is the number of steps the horse takes per minute. Do not confuse it with tempo, which is the number of metres the horse covers per minute. You want to be able to ride at different tempos without changing the rhythm, meaning you can shorten and lengthen the stride or make a transition without altering the rhythm of the horse's movement. 🐎 Suppleness means the horse is relaxed, both mentally and physically. Suppling exercises include leg-yield, pole work and, not least, hacking out through woods and countryside. 🐎 Contact is the connection between the horse's mouth and the rider's hand. It does not mean propping the horse up with your hand or that it should feel heavy. You want a soft, elastic contact, with no loose rein and no pulling hand. Practise keeping a correct hand position and riding with your seat and arms working independently of each other. You should not balance through the reins, but be able to influence with seat and hands separately. Try riding with the reins in one hand to check you are not gathering the horse up unnecessarily. 🐎 Schwung is the same as spring, and is something you want to achieve in trot and canter. 🐎 Straightness is the horse being straight through its body, much like the horse pushing equally with both hind legs. You can practise straightness by riding between poles laid on the ground, or by riding straight towards a mirror in the school with your eye on a particular point. A horse that does not go honestly forward cannot become fully straight, though, and you often find that honest forward thinking by riding straight ahead out in the countryside rather than in the arena or school. 🐎 Collection is the final step of the training scale, and is only reached once horse and rider have mastered the earlier steps. You cannot collect a horse by drawing it together from the front. The energy has to come from behind. Collecting exercises include the school movements collected and on the bit. 🤓 I recommend reading Ridhandboken del 1 och 2 (the Swedish Riding Federation training manual, with no direct UK equivalent; UK readers may prefer the BHS Complete Manual) to understand how the training scale is built up and how to educate yourself and your horse. The latest edition is available from SISU Förlag: https://www.sisuforlag.se/produkt/ridhandboken-1-och-2/ 🦄 There are other ways of framing the training scale too. Andrew McLean has developed a version that starts more from how horses actually learn, rather than primarily from what we humans want to achieve. There are interesting discussions going on about which method is best and does the most for horse welfare. I hope that answers your question. 😊🐴