10/04/2026
The dressage pyramid of training.
Forward—and willingly carrying the rider forward—is assumed in that pyramid, but it deserves to be explicit. Especially when starting a young horse, that assumption is a big one.
There’s a difference between a horse moving because you keep driving every stride and a horse taking responsibility for carrying you forward. That doesn’t mean rushing; it means a willing response to your leg and maintaining the movement without constant prompting.
Impulsion higher up the pyramid doesn’t replace that elementary understanding. Before refining how the horse carries you, establish that it willingly carries you at all.
Ray hunt would call this learning to “operate the life in his body, through his legs to his feet, through his mind.” That puts the horse’s understanding at the centre of the movement.
