01/22/2026
2026 Masterclass with Kyra Kyrklund, Jan Brink, and Cathrine Laudrup Dufour Notes
So much experience in one arena and they were so good at collaborating and making it fun for everyone.
- No gripping/squeezing legs. If horse doesn’t react, ask again with a quick, brief leg/whip touch. “More leg/seat” will scrunch you up out of the saddle. Relaxed, hanging legs allows you to sit deep
- Using a rope around the neck and holding it can help teach the horse to lift through the base of its neck. Helps horses who are long and down in the shoulder.
- You don’t always have to focus on the hind end - touching the shoulder with the whip, using the neck rope, and keeping the tempo from getting too fast, can help create lift and elevate the forehand
- On over tempo/hotter horses, use your posting and rise 2 steps, sit one, WITHOUT pulling on the reins. It changes the feeling and the horse will often start to wait.
- Halt, turn on forehand. Simple exercise to train a quicker reaction to your leg. The horse only has to do two steps PROMPTLY and then praise. Less is more to make them sensitive.
- Train for the initial reaction and then praise, it’s not about how long the horse can stay in something
- An exercise to teach someone to turn horse w weight - at walk, turn your head and look to his outside hind. This should shift your weight to the inside and make him turn to inside
- Putting outside leg too far back in 1/2 pass/pirouettes can cause your weight to shift to the outside.
- Practice leg yielding the rib cage away from both legs in canter. This helps the preparation for flying changes
- Flying change exercise - S half circle left towards C. Flying change on centerline. R half circle right towards C. Flying change on centerline. This keeps the lines short and if the canter is not good, you can abort and just circle.
- Polo wrap under horse’s belly and hold the ends in both hands. This helps to suck your seat down and keep your hands steady because if you pull too much on one rein, it will pull your other hand down. Practice keeping them level.
- Cues for a deep seat and open chest: “Sit on your a**l ring and keep your bra clasp closed” 😂
- “Hold glasses of champagne” to fix elbows and hands
- You have to do things millions of times so that it moves from your big brain to your small brain and then you don’t have to think about it
- Canter-trot is hard and only gets harder when horses learn to collect in canter - use a figure eight and make C-T over centerline. If horse continues to canter, still turn and make counter canter which is hard and as soon as he trots, praise. Eventually the aid will be close the outside leg and rein (to prepare to turn the other way)
- Many brief walk breaks teaches the horse to relax and also be picked up again easily (like in tests)
- Double bridle rein holds - snaffle lifts, curb lowers
Fillis hold to really feel the difference between the snaffle and curb. Tilt your hand back to use the snaffle and lift, and tilt hand forward to engage curb and lower neck. Altered fillis (snaffle normal, curb under pinky)is more subtle. 3 in 1 w both curb reins on stiff side to get more help/leverage from curb
- In snaffle bridle, cross reins to help find “the tunnel”
Most coaching is about helping the rider stumble upon a new feeling. You can describe it all day long but it’s impossible to know what strawberry jam tastes like until you’ve tried it. Dressage is the same - don’t be afraid to try “weird” things because the whole point is that you might create a new feeling!
