Carousel Coaching, Nancy Lavoie: horses

Dressage

Dressage (a French term meaning "training") is a path and destination of competitive horse training, with competitions held at all levels from amateur to the Olympics. Its fundamental purpose is to develop, through standardized progressive training methods, a horse's natural athletic ability and willingness to perform, thereby maximizing its potential as a riding horse. At the peak of a dressage horse's gymnastic development, it can smoothly respond to a skilled rider's minimal aids by performing the requested movement while remaining relaxed and appearing effortless. Dressage is occasionally referred to as "Horse Ballet." Although the discipline has its roots in classical Greek horsemanship, mainly through the influence of Xenophon, dressage was first recognized as an important equestrian pursuit during the Renaissance in Western Europe. The great European riding masters of that period developed a sequential training system that has changed little since then and classical dressage is still considered the basis of trained modern dressage.

Early European aristocrats displayed their horses' training in equestrian pageants, but in modern dressage competition, successful training at the various levels is demonstrated through the performance of "tests," or prescribed series of movements within a standard arena. Judges evaluate each movement on the basis of an objective standard appropriate to the level of the test and assign each movement a score from zero to ten - zero being "not executed" and ten being "excellent." A score of nine (or "very good") is considered a particularly high mark, while a competitor achieving all sixes (or 60% overall) should be considering moving on to the next level.

Showing posts with label horses. Show all posts

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Website!

I am very excited that our website is getting overhauled and soon will be up and running. Thank you to Frank and Ussupernet for his patience and understanding! The website is really looking great and I cannot wait to get it out there for everyone to see.
We also have some new projects that will be up on our blog, so stay tuned!
Visit us at www.nancylaterdressagehorses.com

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Gladstone

Matt and I made a trip to Gladstone to support our friends that are trying out for our WEG team. What a beautiful day. New Jersey weather was kind to the riders and it was cool and not too humid for the morning Grand Prix. They have done a wonderful job renovating the indoor arena! That is so nice to see, it is no longer dark and depressing but beautiful light finished kickboards and eurofelt footing gives us the feeling that we have people that are interested in promoting our sport and riders!!! Fantastic!!
I was dissappointed not to see more spectators.........we need to rally the troops and be there to congratulate all of the great combinations that have made it this far in these WEG trials.
I will stay away from commenting on all the rides. There were alot of great things and it was wonderful to see the improvement in many of these horses. If you have the opportunity to make the drive to New Jersey DO IT!! They need our support and energy, it is our sport and we need to show people that it means something to us!!!
If you cannot go in person Mary has a link on DressageDaily.com and you can watch it live.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Free Dressage Afternoon!

Well we had a great time at our FIRST free dressage afternoon, and thank you everyone for coming! And thank you everyone that brought refreshments that was GREAT! We will definitely have another tuesday lesson afternoon before the season is over.
We want to hear from YOU! What can we do to make it better? How can we find more dressage enthusiests and get them to join in? Why are we doing this? Because we want to grow our sport in our area..............so if you want to become involved in getting the word out that dressage can be fun! Please let us know you are out there............and join us on our next free dressage afternoon, Date to be announced! Email Nancy at nancylaterdressagehorses@gmail.com with your comments!! Thank you for joining in!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Congratulations!

Ariel and Evita had a great show at Westbrook bringing home 3 blue ribbons with 3 great tests. The first time over 70% in the technical test,(they had scored 72% in the freestyle in May), what a difference a year makes!!!

Also a big day for Alyson and Nirvana 69% that is alot of progress in a very short time! Congratulations!

And Melissa Bilodeau won 3 blue ribbons and made a succesful jump into 3 rd level with Versace. Great job!

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